(Note: this piece was originally composed in response to Rebecca Bratten Weisss recent postwhere she wrote about how the evils of the world can often accompany the members into the life of lay intentional communities. Father Stephanos writes about the same phenomenon as a feature of the Benedictine monastictradition.Michael)

Here in the monastery we must work hard to screen out applicants who may have motivations or qualities that are unhealthy, mistaken, or unvirtuous. We dont always succeed at that.

During a mans formative years in the monastery before we permit him to profess perpetual vows, the man can hide his flaws until weve allowed him to make perpetual vows, and THEN the real person comes out. However, once hes in perpetual vows it can be very hard to deal with him, to get him to change and grow, or even to encourage him to leave if we determine that is necessary.

Sometimes during the formative years of a potential monk, we may see signs that he would not make a healthy, reasonable, basically good monk, but we, as a community, may fail to agree to confront the issues, and the majority of us might vote to let the man into perpetual vows. Then afterwards we end up struggling with the results.

Community life is hard work. It would be even more problematic and unrealistic if the monasterys goal were to be an Us-against-the-Outside-Option. That is not what St. Benedict had in mind. Rather than a mentality that would say, We are Christians inside the monastery, and people outside are not, St. Benedict wrote of the pride, stubbornness, and other vices that every monk has inside himself.

We monks with our personal flaws and gifts are a challenge and a support to each other in striving to be men of justice and charity in living together. It would be unhealthy, unwise, and unvirtuous if the monastic option were that of seeing the people inside the option as the good guys, but seeing those outside the option as the bad guys. No! For the real St. Benedict each man inside the monastic option is both a good guy and a bad guy. He wrote of his urgent expectation that the laity and clergy outside the monastery should hold those inside the monastery accountable for living virtuously. If all the monks were to connive at corrupting the monastery, St. Benedict wrote of having the laity and clergy outside the monastery step inside to stop it; he even said it would be a grave sin not to intervene. That is a real option a mandate from St. Benedict himself.

Fr. Stephanos Pedrano, O.S.B.

Prince of Peace Abbey

Oceanside, California

(image via Wikimedia Commons)

Go here to see the original:

Saint Benedict's Mandate - Patheos (blog)