By Delores R Lecky, taken from ‘The Record’ 9 November 2006 – from CNS
Several choices Pope Benedict XVI made during the first year of his pontificate helped me to evaluate my everyday life as a Catholic Christian. The first choice, his name. It honored the founder of Western monasticism and reminded me how important the Rule of St Benedict has been in my life.
I noted how years ago, with a household full of young children and trying to find some balance in the midst of diverse responsibilities, I was introduced to the Rule. I found in this ancient document and especially in Benedictines and lay people who had absorbed the wisdom of the Rule, a way to live a centred life. Not a perfect life, but a life of meaning and hope.
Eventually I wrote a book about how the Rule applies to family life. I called the book The Ordinary Way because it was about the dynamics of everyday living with others.
The Ordinary Way explored different dimensions of intimacy in families: the unique intimacy between husband and wife, the intimate life of parents and children and the trusting intimacy of friendship, within and beyond the family.
Busy households can be noisy and sometimes stressful. What parent hasn’t longed for some silence and solitude? So the other side of intimate community – family – is solitude and silence. St Benedict says that monks should be zealous for silence at all times, but especially during the night. In families, this often is desired more than realised. Sometimes the opportunity comes in unexpected ways.
In the early years of marriage and motherhood, I contracted rheumatic fever, which required several months of bed rest. My two small daughters were cared for by their grandparents in another state. My husband left my lunch by my bedside when he went to work every day and I lived day after day in a state of enforced quietude. We had no television and a radio that didn’t work very well. My circumscribed world at that time was filled with books and silence. Ever so slowly silence turned into prayer and I began to taste gratitude in ways new to me.
Eventually I returned to ‘normal’ and with the addition of more children to the household, life was busier than ever. Still, a question remained. How could I arrange for life-giving silence? Lent gave me the answer. One year when I elected to go to daily Mass (which meant 6.30am so I would be home before my husband left for the day) I discovered silence wrapped around daily worship. Lent came to an end, but the daily Mass routine continued. Then there was the silence of children’s nap times. Instead of chores, I read and pondered and prayed. The Rule and my own growing experience helped sustain the practice of silence. The exercise of authority is obviously important in families. It is important in monastic life as well. The key is, how authority is exercised. The abbot is to consult all members of the monastic community about matters that will affect the life of all. We read that after listening carefully, the abbot must turn over in his own mind what he has heard and then do what he thinks is best for all. A key point is, that he be called upon for counsel, because ‘the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best’.The same can be said for families.
Hospitality, long has been recognized as characteristic of monasticism – “Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, for He is going to say – ‘I came as a guest and you received Me.’ To all let due honor be shown.” There are so many ways to express hospitality in the home – ‘the domestic church.’ Welcoming the children’s friends is one way. Reaching out to different others – people of different races, ethnic origins, economic strata – is not only simple hospitality but a way to get beyond cultural determinism. When our children were in school we often had student guests from different countries spend holidays with our family.
Dolores Lecky is a senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Centre, Georgetown University.
