MESSAGE FROM SISTER ANNA MARIA REYNOLDS, C.P. (original) (raw)

JULIAN'S BENEDICTINISM

RICHARD NORTON, MONOS - CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF MONASTIC SPIRITUALITY AND CULTURE

Richard Norton

he Rule of St Benedict

1 takes those enrolled in the �school of the Lord�s Service�2, that is each of us, on a deep inner journey to the centre of our souls in order to find there shadows of the Trinitarian God and from there to hasten onwards to a broader vision of the One who is Three. This journey is only possible because Benedict is convinced that every human creature is made in God�s image (imagio dei) and that the goal, end and entire purpose of our lives is to grow to be like Christ (imago Christi).

This being and becoming is deeply paradoxical. We are made in the image of God completely, but we must also take the twelve steps of humility

3 if we are to find an ever closer union with God. God looks on us and sees that we are beautiful and yet we still need to be enfolded in his love. We are saved and yet we need to be forgiven and the grace to forgive ourselves and one another. We are caught in the tension between the now and the not yet, between the announcement of the promise of God and its fulfilment.

The theology of the Rule is a theology of Hope not least because for Benedict, as for John of the Pastoral Epistles, our origin our present and our destiny are saturated by the divine:

�How great is the love which the Father has lavished upon us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is what we are!...Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.�

This is another great mystery, a vast arc from creation to glory, drawing us ever into and endless encounter with God, shining, ineffable and incomprehensible.

I believe this to be true of Julian too. So I want to argue that it is this Johannine concept of the lavishness of loving Grace which connects Benedict with Julian and gives shape to her Benedictineism which, with one or two notable exceptions, seems to have been somewhat neglected by scholars.

I will do so briefly and in two ways: looking, first, at their shared understandings of what Prayer is and does and then at their concepts of the Holy Trinity.

PRAYER
begin by suggesting that the vocation of the eremite of Subiaco and that of the anchorite of Norwich is the same; to be a living prayer, a perpetual �pray �er� whose praise to God goes on inside and outside the individual and whose day is marked by continually returning to the Abbey or sitting quietly in her cell to pray, and in this way create a continual communion with the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Such prayer is the basis on which the whole opus dei is built. It is fundamentally contemplative in character, recalling as it does the saving deeds of God for the whole human race in Jesus Christ.

Prayer is sitting in silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, praising God until we ourselves are a constant act of praise.

By this �God is�, as Benedict says quoting First Peter, �glorified in all things�

6 and because God first reached us in our depths and called us by name.

Or as Julian says:

�Prayer unites the soul to God, for though the soul may always be like God in nature and in substance restored by grace, it is often unlike him in condition, through sin on our part. Then prayer is a witness that the soul wills as God wills and it eases the conscience and fits us for grace. And so he teaches us to pray and have firm trust that we shall have it; for he beholds us in love and wants to make us partners in his good will and work.�

Before we can do anything God is acting on our behalf, in our lives; and prayer responds to that prior action. We do not pray seeking a response from God. Rather we pray as a response to God.

As Thomas Keating has persuasively argued

�Contemplative prayer is the opening of mind and heart, our whole being to God, the Ultimate Mystery. Beyond thoughts, words and emotions it is a process of inner purification that leads, if we consent, to divine union�

God calls us but leaves us free to respond or not. God�s action and our response are essential for living a dynamic life in Christ and this means in turn that the prayer that is offered is intended to be a vital (literally life giving) part of the life of women and men.

�And so we shall� says Julian, �by his sweet grace in our meek continual prayer come into him now in this life by many secret touching of sweet spiritual sights and feelings�.�

The praying community however large or small it may be, becomes a manifestation, an epiphany, of the mystery of the Risen Christ in the world; the �source of spirituality and nourishment for�prayer�

For Benedict, in praying the Divine Office there is always a clear relationship between the action of God, the liturgy and the rest of life. It is what, for him, the consecrated life is all about. Julian follows this so exactly that for her every hour of every day is, in principle at least, capable of becoming a liturgy which is offered to God as a sacrifice of love. Like Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection everything, even the most mundane occurrence is, for Julian, an occasion on which to practice the presence of God.

This is only possible because for Benedict and Julian all our acts of prayer are meant to be dialogue with the Saviour.

For Benedict, God speaks to his people in the revealed word of scripture and silence, in signs, symbols and sacraments. We speak to God with words and silence, gestures and receptive souls and bodies.

Julian agrees but given the ecclesial circumstances of her day adds that God also speaks in the magisterium, however sceptical she may appear to be at times. And it is important to insist, I think, that it is from her deep, practical working knowledge of all these sources that her Revelations arise. They do not, as some populist versions of quotations from her work would have us believe, arise ex nihilo.

The genius of Benedict and Julian is to have the courage to take a range of existing sources and traditions and apply them in new ways which will bring them and others to fresh insights into the relationship between God and human beings, especially in prayer.

There are times when neither Benedict nor Julian feel up to or enthused by the life of unceasing prayer.

11 Benedict warns his monks that there will be times when it is especially difficult, even alarming but that it is at these times that the perseverance in stability comes into play. Monks must face it head on and not run away12 and Julian too is often surprised and grieved by her own weakness and laziness in striving for an active participation in the things of God and yet has the assurance that �God��keep us safe all the time, in sorrow and joy; and sometimes people are left to themselves for the profit of their souls, although their sin is not always the cause.�13

But deep down Julian shares Benedict�s strong desire and a commitment to persevere to such an extent that it is not practically possible for her to make excuses or absent herself from the communal or solitary praying of the offices. And yet this is no mere following of rubrics or fulfilling an obligation. Rather, the communal or private worship of the Church, which includes the opus Dei, is given to both of them as a powerful means of intimate communion with the God who made them, to contemplate the mystery of salvation in Jesus Christ and to speak to their ever present Lord. This loving encounter is especially expressed, for Benedict in Praise and, for Julian, in thanksgiving and gratitude which, after all, amounts to the same thing.

God�s plan of salvation for us as individuals and community, as the Church at large, is revealed in the concrete circumstances of our life in Christ reminding us of God�s saving deeds in sending his Son into the world.

Once again we can see here a clear Johannine reference:

�In this the love of God was manifest towards us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins. Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.�

Prayer opens the eyes of the soul to God�s presence and causes it to rejoice that God is so near and all that he has in store �for those that love him.�

It is this which, for both Benedict and Julian, brings about a unity; a unity of the community and the individual with God. Praying in community or as an enclosed individual makes the pray-er part of the praying church, ecclesia orans, spreading throughout the entire world. Just as the Apostles and the Blessed Virgin were constant in their prayers after their Lord�s Ascension (Acts 4:32), so now, it seems to me, Benedict and Julian are conscious of carrying on this apostolic tradition of prayer and encourage others to do the same until the kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.

At the root of Benedict�s communal prayer is a mindfulness of the praying Church and this is no less true of Julian alone in her cell. Enclosed she might be but Julian is not detached from the koinonia, the holy community, which belongs to Christ and has Christ as its head.

This spirituality of communion, as we might call it, is summed up well in two quotations from the bishop-martyr St Ignatius of Antioch who died in 107 AD. It might be interesting to speculate whether and to what extent Benedict and perhaps by extension Julian knew of his work.

Using a not inappropriate musical trope in the first quotation he says this:

�In the symphony of your concord and love, the praises of Jesus Christ are sung. [You should] form a choir, so that by joining the symphony by your concord, and by your unity taking your key note from God, you may with one voice through Jesus Christ sing a song to the Father. Thus he will both listen to you and by reason of your good life recognise in you the melodies of his Son. It profits you therefore to continue in y6our flawless unity, that you may at all times have your share in God.�

And in another place he says:

�In common let there be one prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope, one love, in joy that is without blame, which is Jesus Christ � for there is nothing better than he. Gather yourselves together, all of you, as unto one shrine, even God, as unto one altar, even One Jesus Christ, who proceeds from the one Father as in one and returned to one.�

Christ is the centre of all monastic prayer as he is for Julian too. Christ calls them to pray and is fully and really present when they do so. There is something sacramental about prayer. In prayer Christ acts as their mediator and brings them an ever deepening sense of Go�s Love. He is, for them, quite literally Emmanuel, -God in their midst � who calls them to be open to divine mercy and grace.

In prayer we are invited to experience the real and active presence of the Holy Trinity and it is to the distinctively Benedictine theology of the Trinity in Julian�s work that I now turn.

THE TRINITY
n the �Directory for the Celebration of the Work of God and Directive Norms for the celebration of the Monastic Liturgy of the Hours� which was prepared for all Benedictine communities we find these words:

To be authentic, the celebration of the Work of God (opus Dei) requires that three dimensions should always be found in the liturgical assembly, namely an ecclesial dimension (a community bounded by space and time in which the story of the Church is actualised); a community dimension (all are one body yet each has his or her own place and function); a personal dimension (encounter with God does not happen to a nameless crowd, but to beloved and fully conscious human persons.�

There is no doubt that the personal dimension is a fundamental condition for the existence of all the others; if this is absent then the other two disappear. The celebration of the opus Dei is intensely personal.

As we might expect Julian put all this much more succinctly.

We can say, I think, that her �Showings� are a treatise explaining how this is so and how these threefold dimensions lead us to the conclusion that, as she says �The Blessed Trinity is always pleased with its work�

Everywhere she looks, in every passing thought and every hope Julian sees three facets of spiritual growth and desire. When she looks at God she sees three. When she looks at Christ she sees three. When she looks at her own life in Christ or that of her �even-Christians� she sees three. For proof of that we need look no further than her parable of the little thing. This is sometimes, but in my view wrongly, described as the parable of the hazel nut. Julian is very clear on the point - whatever the little thing is it is like a hazelnut. She does not say that it is a hazelnut: predication not identity.

The identity of the little thing, God tells her, is everything that has been made

20 it exists because God loves it for �all things have their being in the grace of God�

�In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second is that God loves it. The third is that God keeps it. But I cannot tell the reality of him who is my maker, lover and keeper, for until I am united to him in substance, I may never have complete rest or bliss.�

For Julian, the three -ness in God envelopes all that is in creating love and sustaining Grace. God is her maker, lover and keeper. Each of these three activities become visible, become present to her, in the little thing, in all created things, in her soul.

But, of course, it does not stop there. It leads her into all truth as the Johannine Jesus promised:

�When he, the Spirit of Truth has come he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and will declare it to you.�

Or, as Julian puts it;

�Truth sees God, and wisdom contemplates God, and with these two a third and that is the marvellous delight in God which is love.�

This love of the Holy Spirit, as the third person of the Trinity, has another perhaps higher meaning in the sixteenth revelation: ��given charity is virtue, and that is a gift of grace in deeds, in which we love God for himself, and ourselves in God, and that God loves for God�

The words �a gift of grace in deeds� indicates that the grace of the Trinity is active within us and as we receive the Holy Spirit, we make every attempt to live in word and deed. Julian does not indicate how faithful Christians should carry out this insight into practice in the way, say, her contemporary Margery Kemp did, or recommended by St Catherine of Siena.

This lack of prescription echoes, I think, Benedict�s reflections on scripture and the liturgy in which he too saw the distinguishing marks of each person of the Trinity and its activities, but apart from spelling out how and why his communities should be ordered and disciplined as a result, said very little about translating them into the works of charity. Even as the persons of the Trinity share completely in purpose and energy, they each act according to their person. The Father originates as the begetter, the Son shines as the begotten and the Holy Spirit moves as the breath of both.

Each of these activities reaches every aspect of life in the cloister, for this too, as we have seen, has its origin in the call of God, proceeds in Christo-centric prayer and the unique monastic chrism is completed in the Holy Spirit.

The unity of the persons of the Trinity and their activities work in diversity and in complete synchronicity, each acting in and through the other, so that for both Benedict and Julian each person of the Trinity does what he is, not that each person is what he does.

In the same way then, mutatis mutandis, both Benedict and Julian are careful to avoid being specific about answering the questions �What are we do? Or �How then shall we live?� For them as for the present Holy Father it is enough to know that �The Holy Spirit transforms us. With our co-operation he also wants to transform the world we live in.�

And yet, neither Benedict nor Julian is content with a functional description of the trinity. Their theologies are much more complex in that the roles each person of the Trinity make visible their distinctions so that the one divine activity is completely effected by each of the persons and yet, paradoxically, is distinctly inflected by them.

The Father is the giver, the Son is the gift bearer and the Spirit is the gift; Maker, Lover, Keeper.

As the entire Rule of Benedict reminds us this truth about the nature of God seeps into our souls and becomes real knowledge which in turn leads to wonder, love and praise.

Julian knew this:

�Suddenly, the Trinity filled my heart with the greatest joy. And so, I understood, it will be in heaven, without an end for those who come there. For the Trinity is God: God is the Trinity. The Trinity is our maker, the Trinity is our keeper. The Trinity is our everlasting lover. The Trinity is our endless joy and bliss, through our Lord Jesus Christ and in our Lord Jesus Christ. This truth was shown in the first showing and in all the showings, for where Jesus appears the blessed Trinity is understood, as I see it.�

Endless joy and bliss as a result of the Trinitarian action in our lives yes, but as we might expect by now mingled with the paradox of the continuing power of cancelled sin,

26 penance and spiritual struggle:

�All of us who shall be saved have within us during our life time a marvellous mixture of wellbeing and woe�By Adam�s falling we are so broken in our feelings in different ways (by sin and by various pains in which we are made dark and so blind), that only with difficulty can we take any comfort. But in our intensions we wait for God and faithfully trust that we shall have mercy and grace�and this is his own working in us. By his goodness he opens the eye of our understanding, in which we have sight, sometimes more, sometimes less, as god gives us the ability to accept it. Now we are raised to the one and now we are allowed to fall into the other. And thus the mixture in us is so puzzling that it is only with difficulty we know of ourselves or of our fellow Christians how we stand, with the strangeness of different feelings.�

The question is how is it possible for people to live like that? And the answer which both Benedict and Julian give is by being ordinary.

In his book �Julian of Norwich: Theologian�

28 my academic friend and former teacher Denys Turner spends a very great deal of time unpacking just what might be meant by Julian�s term �even Christian�. What he has to say is, as we might expect from him, quite remarkable. If I have understood him correctly to be an �even Christian� in prayer meant, for Julian, coming to terms with the need to divest herself of any and every theological or ecclesial understanding or privilege which makes her feel special or which elevates her in the eyes of others.

If I am right about this then in a symposium such as this we might wonder whether if, as we are so often told, Julian was just an ordinary everyday woman, where and from whence could such notions of pride in scholarship arise? The options in Norwich 640 years ago are very limited indeed and the only answer is I argue, that she was a Benedictine, right here at Carrow. Now, that does not of course, make her a Nun. As Janet Burton et al have recently argued there were a wide variety of functions for women all requiring education and sophistication in the medieval Benedictine family.

But to return to the point, Turner�s point, to be an �even Christian� means learning that we are not special after all. A hard lesson for some of us as indeed I think it was for Julian in her visions and for Benedict fleeing Rome, if St Gregory�s Dialogues are to be believed.

Once a person grasps this troublesome truth it is easy, to make the mistake of thinking that being an �even Christian� is to be one of the lads or one of the girls, just one of a nameless crowd.

Turner argues that this is exactly what Julian does not mean. While being an �even Christian� has nothing to do with intellectual or spiritual snobbery neither does it create a herd mentality. Religious pride has destroyed many lives, as the history of sixth and fourteenth centuries attest, but the reverse snobbery that will do anything and everything to fit in and be part of the hoi polloi is equally destructive.

Being an � even Christian� means being none other than who we are, who God created us to be.

And that, of course, does not just make us special it makes us quite extraordinary!

That too looks very Benedictine. One of Benedict�s greatest contributions to western monasticism was to draw it back from extremes. He will not lay down anything that is �harsh or hard to bear,�

30 but neither will he let his monks become too excited either, as the Chapter on Humility and his strictures against frivolity show.

His monks were cut off from the world in some ways, but their communities were also integrated into the wider world. Their basic life-style was simply that of the subsistence farmers amongst whom they lived. Benedict was never a priest, and he envisioned his monasteries as communities of laymen. Benedict�s Rule is not an esoteric treatise that ushers its devotees into the mystical realm through the mastery of arcane knowledge and bizarre asceticism. Benedict is no guru! His Rule is a practical guide for ordinary women and men to follow Christ perfectly by living in community. As such, its principles can be applied to all lay people, families and every Christian community of faith.

While it is enclosed, Julian�s anchorage was also not elitist or extraordinary. The contemplative life is a vital and ordinary part of the whole Church. If the Church is a body, then women like Julian are its heart and its lungs, beating and breathing with the liturgy and with prayer which keeps it alive with passion, with the passion which vitalises the whole people of God and makes them whole.

Surely Julian saw her entry into the cell as the most natural thing to do. Her visions were for ordinary Christians precisely because she thought of herself as an ordinary Christian.

CONCLUSION
And that, it seems to me, is the most important legacy which Julian may have received from Benedict: the call to find ourselves, and so God, in ordinary life. The �little rule for beginners� lies open before everyone. It provides one path leads through the real demands and details of everyday life. The family, the school, the parish, the workplace can be and are all schools for the Lord�s service.31 Because both Benedict and Julian know that God is present in ordinary life, their vision transforms mundane existence. Suddenly every moment shines with the possibility of heaven and surges with potential joy. This understanding infuses Benedict and Julian with a rush of energy, so great vigour Benedict calls on his brothers and sisters to

��rouse�ourselves�run while we have the light of life� if we wish to make our home in the dwelling place of his kingdom, there will be no getting there unless we run towards it by good deeds.�

Julian also radiates a magnificent vitality in calls to arms more numerous than time allows here to mention. And is it not precisely this that enables St Therese of Lisieux some six centuries later to proclaim:

�In order to be holy, the most essential virtue is energy. With energy one can easily reach the height of perfection.

33 You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or not at all.�34

And someday scholars will look at what connects the_Showing of Love_ of our beloved anchorite with those of the young French Carmelite too.

Notes
1 Rule of St Benedict. (hereafter RB) Trans. Abbot Timothy Parry OSB with an Introduction and Commentary by Ester de Waal.
2 RB Prologue.
3 RB chapter 7.
4 I Jn 3:12.
5 Fr Richard Rohr O.P. in a meditation sent as an email message from his Centre for Action and Meditation 29th April 2013.
6 1 Peter 4:11.
7 Revelations 14. The edition of Julian�s writings used here is that in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library series at www.ccel.org Last Accessed 01 May 2013. It is interesting to speculate whether and to what extent what Julian has to say here influenced the remark given by Fr. Basil Pennington OCSO in an interview with Mary Nurrie Stearns in 1991: