Perhaps this is one of the more challenging chapters of The Ruleto properly apply to our contemporary age, especially in a community dispersed in the larger society. Still, there are lessons for our community.
Granted, we do not receive children to raise them in the walls of a monastery as our predecessors did in St. Benedict’s day. However, we must seek ways to free us from the entanglement of family issues that distract us from spiritual transformation. The primary focus of the monastic heart is to be ever seeking paths to greater communion with God. We make vows to seek cruciform life, that is we pursue to changed more and more into the image of Christ. Family issues have the great potential of distracting us from that journey, veering from the path of Benedictine Spirituality. Our Lord said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”[1]This is a hard teaching that we often gloss over. However, to understand our Lord’s teaching is key to understanding the application of this chapter of The Rule.
Personally, I find many commentaries wanting in their explanation of St. Matthew’s record of our Lord’s teaching in the passage above. Albert Barnes writes, “The meaning of this is clear. Christ must be loved supremely, or he is not loved at all. If we are not willing to give up all earthly possessions, and forsake all earthly friends, and if we do not obey him rather than all others, we have no true attachment to him.”[2]While this is an excellent explanation of Christ’s teaching, it falls short on the practical application of living out this precept. I can find it easy to say that I am willing to give up all things, but to actually do it is another thing altogether.
Must we walk away from our families and deny our loved ones any relationship with us? When we read St. Gregory’s writings, we discover that monks were still in contact with their families. Benedictines maintain their relationship with their families, even those who live in cloister. So, the answer to our question is – no. Holy Scripture commends us to provide for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our families.[3]The challenge that we face is the maintenance of an inner, psychological and emotional space that is absolutely necessary to be able to seek our Lord in through monastic spirituality of prayer, study, and service. The inner relationship with God must form and inform every other priority, even that of our loved ones.
Abbot Philip Lawrence, Christ of the Desert writes, “In some ways it would be easier just to end all relationships of the brothers and sisters with their families, but this is not the way of Saint Benedict. Our monastic path demands more maturity and more growth on the part of the brothers, sisters, on the part of the abbot and on the part of the community to maintain family relationships and to keep working at purifying such relationships so that they really do contribute to the building up of the monastic vocation and the community. May God help us!”
[1]Matthew 10:37-39.
[2]Barnes, Albert. “Commentary on Matthew 10:37”. “Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament”. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/matthew-10.html. 1870.
[3]1 Timothy 5:8.
