A Dozen Years of Amateur Monasticism

Twelve years ago, on September 10th 2006, I made my final oblation to Saint Martin’s Abbey in Lacey. I am an Oblate of the Order of Saint Benedict. Much has happened in those years, but much remains the same.

As an Oblate, I promise to follow the Rule of Saint Benedict inasmuch as it applies to my state in life.

When we made our Oblation, we promised in the presence of our Abbot or of his delegate ‘the reformation of our life,’ which means a turning away from the world in order to live in Jesus Christ. The Lord appeared to us then as the solid rock on which we wanted to ‘build our house.’ We knew that He alone has the promises of eternal life and that none of those promises is empty….

Let us recall to mind often the promises of our Oblation, in order to maintain or to reestablish the harmony between our actions and the divine will. Dominus exspectat quotidie … ‘The Lord is waiting every day for us to respond by our works to His holy lessons.’

(COMMENTARY FOR BENEDICTINE OBLATES, September 5, Prologue)

I am also required to pray some form of the Liturgy of the Hours and, as I was reminded by my spiritual director recently, to practice Lectio Divina. For this is the charism of the monk, amateur or otherwise.

I remember that Lectio was one of my great initial loves of Benedictine Spirituality. I’m not entirely sure when it was that I lost the habit, but it has been a joy to return to it. It is as though I am returning to the springs that nourished me at the start of my journey.

Although my spiritual life is grounded in the Breviary and the Rule, its foundation is the Holy Scriptures and the Sacred Liturgy. Of course, the Breviary is a liturgy in itself, and the Rule nothing more than Saint Benedict’s guide for living the Scriptures and Tradition.

So twelve years later, I continue to wear the black scapular and try to live in the spirit of Saint Benedict in the modern world.

O holy Father, Saint Benedict,
blessed by God both in grace and in name,
who, while standing in prayer, with hands raised to heaven,
didst most happily yield thy angelic spirit
into the hands of thy Creator,
and hast promised zealously to defend
against all the snares of the enemy
in the last struggle of death,
those who shall daily remind thee
of thy glorious departure and heavenly joys;
protect me, I beseech thee, O glorious Father,
this day and every day, by thy holy blessings,
that I may never be separated
from our dear Lord,
and from the society of thyself,
and of all the blessed.

Through the same Christ our Lord.

Amen.