The Benedict Option: What Does It Really Mean?

The following comes from R. Jared Staudt at Crisis:

 “Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: ‘Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?’” (Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict, quoting Psalm 34:14-15).

The Benedict Option—what does it really mean? In my mind, it is quite simple: taking St. Benedict and his Rule as a model for the Christian life within the context of our culture.

The term Benedict Option was coined recently by Rod Dreher. He initially defined it in somewhat negative terms as “pioneering forms of dropping out of a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values.” It is not surprising to think of St. Benedict in this light, as he himself withdrew in disgust from late fifth century Rome in favor of a cave in Subiaco. However, Benedict did not stay in isolation long, and quickly became an Abbot, gathering large numbers of men to himself.

Dreher points to a “community of Catholic laity” growing around Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma as an example of the Benedict Option. It is important to note, however, that there is not a formal lay community there. People simply want to live near the monastery, many have become oblates and participate in the liturgical life of the monastery, and they live in friendship and fellowship with one another.

Dreher’s articulation of the Benedict Option has recently been criticized by John Goerke on Crisis. He fundamentally questions the legitimacy of the term in relation to lay people seeking to emulate monastic life:

The question is: Is this the Benedict Option? The answer is: no. First and foremost there is the obvious point. The members of Clear Creek and Eagle River are not monks. Their lack of organized prayer life betrays this fact…. If taking the Benedict Option means a strict imitation of Benedict’s move to the wilderness, then it is an option to be taken only by monks.

Goerke then concludes that we need to look at Benedict more deeply in order to emulate his life andRule:

To find out what God wants, and to truly imitate St. Benedict, we must go to the substance and not the accidents of his life. The true Benedict Option is not a flight but a fight. It is a fight to be waged in the heart of every Catholic. It is a fight to undertake two strenuous tasks with humility and love: Ora et labora. Pray and work.

I think that Goerke’s argument is somewhat incongruous in that he claims that those who are striving to unite themselves to St. Benedict by associating with a monastery are not part of the Benedict option, but then argues that Benedict is nonetheless a model for us. Do we not need to soak in St. Benedict’s spirituality by learning from monks, precisely so that we can fight for Catholic culture?

Drehrer, in fact, says that Goerke has misunderstood him and explains the Benedict Option in more general terms:

When I talk about the Benedict Option, I don’t mean—or don’t mostly mean—a physical retreat to a quasi-monastic community, but rather an intentional and thoughtful retreat into narrativity, by which I mean a reclaiming of the church’s story, inculcating commitment to it within the lives of its members, in defiance of the narrative collapse around us. To achieve this, one must be aware of the conditions in which we live, and under which we are raising our children.

Nonetheless, this newer articulation does not clarify the Benedict Option. Rather, it somewhat makes it more elusive, as Drehrer himself admits: “People like to talk about the Benedict Option as a Christian response to our post-Christian culture, but nobody really knows what it means. I came up with the concept, and I’m not sure what it means.” Looking at the life of St. Benedict and his Rule, does it really need to be so confusing?

As a Benedictine oblate myself, I feel compelled to offer my own two cents about the relevancy of St. Benedict as a guide and model for our time. I would propose that the Benedict Option is something simple, which anyone can live, whether they have withdrawn to an enclave or not. There are a number of reasons why St. Benedict speaks so strongly to us today:

1. An Ordered Way of Life and StabilityThe life of the monastery is completely directed and ordered toward the glory of God. Monks live a balanced life of prayer, work, and sleep (in pretty equal proportions). This is a model of the Christian life as every one of our actions should be religious in the sense that they are ordered directly to God, for his glory and our sanctification. The monks also live a life of stability, committed to one monastery and the Rule. This counters our lack of a grounded identity and models how the faith should shape and govern our lives, rooting us in a constant and firm practice.

2. The Centrality of the LiturgyBenedictines live a life that is defined by the liturgy. It shapes and orders the day, week, and the year, and can even be said to be the reason for the life of the monastery. The monks traditionally pray the Divine Office eight times a day and seek to live a life of continual prayer. The prayer of the liturgy, and especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, is heightened by the practice of Gregorian Chant, which draws out and embodies the meaning of the prayer. We are certainly undergoing a crisis of liturgical prayer in our age and the Benedictines model for us how to pray the liturgy. As St. Benedict directed: “Prefer nothing to the work of God.”

3. Hospitality and SimplicitySt. Benedict notes that a monastery will always have guests. It is somewhat ironic that the monastery, in its withdraw from the world, becomes a magnet for visitors, who are served as Christ. The monastery is a place of charity and its exercise of hospitality helps to shape the world, as those who leave it do so changed. The family and home are also meant to be a source of service and charity, a place of welcoming, a refuge in the world. Though the layman cannot hold with Benedict that private property is an “evil practice” (though it is for monks!), the monastery also witnesses to the need to live simply and detached, which helps us to make better use of earthly things for the glory of God and the service of others.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis: Saint Joseph and the dignity of labor

(Vatican Radio) To mark International Labour Day which coincides with the Feast day of Saint Joseph the worker, Veronica Scarisbrick takes a look at the special devotion Pope Francis has for this Saint. As well as focus briefly on one of the social issues central to his thinking: the dignity of labour.

Let’s begin with his devotion to Saint Joseph as there’s quite a list of things that connect Pope Francis to this saint. Among them the choice of the date for the beginning of his pontificate the 19th of March, Saint Joseph’s feast day, and the choice of the nard flower symbolic of this saint on his coat of arms. Then in July 2013 his decision to consecrate Vatican City State not just to Saint Michael, as had been previously planned, but to Saint Joseph as well. And on a more personal note his admission to cherishing a wooden statue representing a dormant Saint Joseph, dressed in gold trimmed dark green and red garments according to Hispanic iconography, by which he places prayer requests. Simply because as he mentioned when he confided to us this personal gesture: “ He’s a carpenter and he gets the job done, even though he sometimes makes you wait”.

As for what links Pope Francis to Saint Joseph, International Labour Day and workers why not shine the spotlight on his words the 1st of May 2013, so the very first year of his pontificate, during his weekly general audience. Words which focus precisely on work and the figure of Saint Joseph. In a special way on the role played by Joseph as the legal father who teaches his son his skills as a carpenter in the workshop in Nazareth on a daily basis and shares with him, the efforts, the commitment, the satisfactions and problems that come with the job.

On this occasion Pope Francis goes on to remind us of the dignity and importance of work. The Book of Genesis, he says, tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it, but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work: “Work is part of God's loving plan, we are called to cultivate and care for all the goods of creation and in this way participate in the work of creation! Work is fundamental to the dignity of a person...it gives you the ability to maintain yourself, your family, to contribute to the growth of your nation. And here I think of the difficulties which, in various countries, today afflicts the world of work and business; I think of how many, and not just young people, are unemployed, many times due to a purely economic conception of society, which seeks selfish profit, beyond the parameters of social justice. I wish to extend an invitation to solidarity to everyone, and I would like to encourage those in public office to make every effort to give new impetus to employment, this means caring for the dignity of the person, but above all I'd like to say do not lose hope; St. Joseph also experienced moments of difficulty, but he never lost faith and was able to overcome them, in the certainty that God never abandons us.And then I would like to speak especially to you young people: be committed to your daily duties, your study, your work, to relationships of friendship, to helping towards others; your future also depends on how you live these precious years of your life. Do not be afraid of commitment, of sacrifice and do not look with fear towards the future; keep your hope alive: there is always a light on the horizon".

But while Pope Francis on this occasion shares with us words of encouragemen as we've just noticed he also chooses to highlight some of the evils of society in the area of work and denounces once again, the practice some companies have of adopting policies that favour profit over human dignity or even human life. And then uses an image to express how fundamental work is to the dignity of the person:"... work to use an image ‘anoints’ with dignity, fills us with dignity, makes us similar to God who has worked and still works, who also acts”.

One last word perhaps: let’s hope the prayer requests that Pope Francis places by the reclining and dormant figure of Saint Joseph are eventually answered…As he once assured us, they always are!

Prayer and Work

Work: An Act of Worship

The following comes from Catholic Exchange:

Has man’s God-given vocation been entirely lost sight of?  

Look around you. You live in a world that has lost faith. Religion has been replaced by work and achievement. In such a world, men take work very seriously. They want nothing less than perfection in it. Hence, their goal and their norm of judgment is efficiency. Consequently men are judged not by what they are, but by what they cando. No wonder your economic world wobbles. It has lost its center of gravity.

Your primary vocation, like that of every other human, is to be, not to do. Your life’s aim is holiness, not efficiency. God and godliness, not production, is your goal, for you have an immortal soul; you are not a machine. Every work and every profession, even the highest, is but a means for man to express his inner wholeness and to acquire more holiness; none of them is ever to become any man’s idol or total absorption.

You are now grappling with truths that have been horribly distorted in your day. Twist them back into shape so that you will be able to live twenty-four hours a day as a human, a child of God, and not spend a great part of your life on earth as a robot that keeps going through the motions so that it can make a living, but which is really only waiting for the whistle that will allow it to go out and play.

Realize first that while all men are created equal, all men are not born equal. Far from it! Some are born with silver spoons in their mouths; others with a pick and shovel by their side. In his encyclical on labor, Leo XIII showed that society always was and always will be stratified. God so wills it, as is evident from the fact that “among mankind, differences of the most important kind exist: people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength. Unequal fortune is the result of unequal condition.”

But note well that for attaining their last end, for getting back to God whole and holy, each human has been liberally endowed by His Maker. No man has grounds for complaint. You may not be gifted enough to conquer the world, but you have more than enough to conquer your sinful self — and that is, of course, the only conquest that counts. In eternity, you will not be judged on productivity, but only on Christlikeness. Hence it is essential that you learn how you can grow in Christlikeness while at work, for work you must. It is the God-given law of life.

Work is part of God’s plan for humans. But God is your Father, and God is all-good. Therefore, the work potentials He gave you must be for your happiness.

Work is holy

The second step is easy. If work is God’s will, it must be sanctifying; for, in ultimate analysis, sanctity is only doing the will of God. Therefore, work is a sacred thing; it is a “sacramental” — an outward sign that can give grace. Hence, you can go to work for the same reason you go to church to worship God! Work is a religious thing. It is holy.

That view, of course, is the antithesis of the way many modern men conceive work. They exalt it, but only by a complete reversal of values and truths. The person who helps produce impersonal goods is placed far below the goods he helps to produce and is thus completely dehumanized. Pius XI exposed this situation in his Quadragesimo Anno, saying, “Conditions of social and economic life are such that vast multitudes of men can only with great difficulty pay attention to the one thing necessary; namely, their eternal salvation.” But you can combat those conditions and overcome that very real difficulty. All you need to do is to think with the mind of Christ and will with the will of God; then you will go to work for the same purpose you go to church.

Is that possible? Well, you are what your thoughts are. A man is his mind. What are your thoughts and motives for going to church? The same can be had for going to work, for first it is God’s will. Therefore, you can make it an act of obedience to your Father. Faith, hope, and charity are already exercised in that one act and attitude of mind. Further, since you know it was the first penance laid on a sinner, you can make it reparation for your own sins and the sins of the world. You can make it plead with God for mercy on all who toil and thus fulfill those two commandments of love of God and love of neighbor which Christ said was all that is required of man.

Have you ever realized that, in making you a worker, God has given you a share in that universal Providence by which He governs the human race and in His act of conservation by which He keeps the world in being? If you are a farmer, you well know you work hand in hand with God in the production of food for man’s body and, hence, indirectly for his soul. The multiplications of bread and fishes, twice told about in the New Testament, were truly marvelous happenings. Yet St. Augustine is right to laugh at those who marvel, as he points to the relatively few seeds that are sown in the earth and the millions that are fed from their harvests. He reminds you that this annual miracle is due to God just as much as those multiplications you read of in the Gospels.

But God’s Providence does not end in the fields. He rules the entire process from the sowing of the seeds to the growth, the harvest, then the threshing, milling, and marketing. He has a hand, too, in the baking of the bread and putting it on your table. So, in all truth, every human who helps in the process is actually working hand in hand with God.

This truth brings Heaven very near. Prunes may grow in California, potatoes in Idaho, peaches in Georgia, wheat in Kansas, and corn in Kentucky; beef may be raised in Texas, and hogs butchered in Chicago. But none of these commodities will ever be served at any table miles and miles away unless all sorts of men and women cooperate with God in producing, processing, preserving, shipping, selling, and preparing them. So everyone from the grower to the boy who pastes on the labels to the housewife or the hired chef are God’s helpers — so that you may have a meal.

Viewed in that perspective, how can work be anything other than worship? Since Adam fell, work should be a sacred thing! For it can be offered to God in thanksgiving for the pardon He extended to the sinner, as expiation for the sin committed, in petition that there be no more falls, but rather an ever-increasing adoration of God’s will and His Providence. But those four ends are the four ends of the Mass. Hence, your work can be, and should be, Eucharistic: sacrifice and sacrament.

Only out-and-out pagans can consider work servile. In the Roman Empire, before Christ and Christianity, slaves did all the work. The so-called cultured class deemed it beneath their dignity to toil. But since the Son of God became the village Carpenter, no truly cultured person can look upon work — hard, manual labor — as anything less than ennobling, even deifying.

The Council of Trent has taught that the Passion and death of Christ were the principal means He used to redeem mankind. That explicit bit of dogma teaches you implicitly that it was not on Calvary alone that Christ redeemed. In other words, when Jesus was down in Nazareth working on wood, He was redeeming mankind just as truly as when He was on Calvary nailed to wood. It tells you that when Jesus’ hands held a plane or a saw, He was doing His Father’s will and thus making salvation possible for you, just as truly as when these same hands held spikes and were held by them! The Son of God was redeeming men at the carpenter’s bench in the obscurity of Nazareth just as surely as when He was followed by crowds that would take Him and make Him king — just as surely as when He was followed by that other crowd that had taken Him, mocked Him, and crucified Him for being King!

The Coffinmaker

St. Josemaria Escriva: Work is a sign of God's love

I came across this quote at The Deacon's Bench:

“We have reminded Christians of the wonderful words of Genesis which tell us that God created man so that he might work, and we have concentrated on the example of Christ, who spent most of His life on earth working as a craftsman in a village. We love human work which He chose as His state in life, which He cultivated and sanctified. We see in work, in men’s noble creative toil, not only one of the highest human values, an indispensable means to social progress and to greater justice in the relations between men, but also a sign of God’s Love for His creatures, and of men’s love for each other and for God: we see in work a means of perfection, a way to sanctity.”

– St. Josemaria Escriva.

Laboring with God