community of monks at Monte Cassino. Here is something profoundly important for all of us. Unless and until I first learn to respect my own solitude, revere my own identity, recognize the mystery that I myself am, I cannot respect that same solitude in others, revere their own identity, and recognize them for the mystery that they are. The harmonious interaction of any individual, as of any community, demands a strong affirmation of both principles. If one is weak the other will dominate; if both are weak the result will be inaction rather than interaction. Just as in any community there will be both sorts of people, the solitary and the communal, so also each one lives a common life and yet also requires time apart, some form of withdrawal. It is the recognition and affirmation of both which allows me fully to realize the extent to which I am separate and alone, and yet also profoundly connected to others in brotherhood and sisterhood.
The holding together of body, mind and spirit is one of the most basic of the tensions in the Benedictine way of life. The Rule tells us that we are made up of these three elements, that we go to God – and also achieve our own full humanity – through recognizing and respecting the role of each element. This balanced way of living was something written into the daily and hourly routine (horarium) of the monastery; time for work, for study, and above all time for prayer. It promotes rhythm and balance, a pattern of alternating activity, for which I am deeply grateful because it challenges me to become a full person and a whole person. I must learn to respect the whole of myself. If each of these elements is accepted, honoured and enjoyed, each can become a way of reaching God as well as of becoming the integrated human being God is calling me to be.
But then I encounter another contradiction. The Benedictine vow of stability calls me to stand still, to stand firmly planted not on any plot of ground (which is likely to be impossible) but within myself, not running away from who I am. Yet in the vow of conversatio morum (which literally translated means “conversion of manners” or “conversion of life”) I am presented with the necessity of living open to continual conversion, ready to grow and change and move on. On the one hand I find that I must stay still; on the other, that I need continually to change. As I try actually to live in this way I find that here I encounter a fundamental tension that I know I can never expect to escape or evade, but one which answers a deep need in me, so that simultaneously I stand firm and yet also I move on.
In the Prologue St Benedict makes it clear that he has unshaken confidence in my use of my natural gifts and free will to serve God: my particular gifts are the actual medium through which God acts on me. Yet he is telling me that I cannot do anything good unless God first turns to me, calls me, extends his grace to me – reminding me that I am a totally dependent creature, my nature powerless without God's grace. Here again I am clearly presented with a tension that runs throughout my life. I am nothing without God; it is his grace that calls me and upholds me. Yet my human nature is good, and God looks to me for the activity that will make use of my gifts. Again, I believe that if I can enter into this paradox and incorporate both these elements into my life I shall escape that passivity that encourages me to do nothing at all and hand everything over to God, or that terrifying compulsion of over-activity that comes from reliance upon my unaided self.
Now from the interplay of these contrasting elements, and from the determination not to let one dominate, comes a vigorous interaction of all which brings with it energy. And in a world in which we see so frequently on the one hand energy directed in so many different directions that it is totally disseminated into some quite frenetic activity, and on the other hand inaction, sometimes to the point of paralysis, it is good to be confronted by the Rule, and by the energy which diffuses the Rule.
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