Some weeks ago, I was asked if I would offer the homily today: the Feast of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. In addition, I was told that we would be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Sr. Lynne Smith’s monastic profession and the 1st anniversary of her installation as prioress of our monastery. The challenge and the honor were quite a shock at first. The shock passed–well, somewhat–but a good deal of my anxiety has persisted over the intervening days. I asked Sr. Lynne if there would be any special readings for this Sunday. Like a good Benedictine, she said that we would be using the regular lectionary readings for this day, following the regular cycle of the liturgical year. That news certainly did not allay my worries. But then I saw that our gospel reading was to be Luke’s account of Jesus’s debate with the lawyer, followed by the Parable of the Good Samaritan. What a blessing and a relief that was. Why? Because I think this gospel text encapsulates the fundamental end and means of the Christian life. And, in turn, it does the same for the Benedictine life…because they are the same life. The Benedictine Way is essentially the Christian Way with a special accent; with its own particular personality. I will try to make this clearer as I go along. Let’s start with the gospel.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan is right up there at the top of the charts with the Parable of the Prodigal Son as the most remembered gospel story. There is debate–of course, there’s always a debate!–among commentators about how to name this parable. Some think it should instead be named the Parable of the Man Who Fell Among Robbers. They argue that the “Good Samaritan” subtly implies support for the prevalent view at the time among Jews that all Samaritans were bad–the “Good” Samaritan being, then, a remarkable exception. Lucky for me, I don’t have to take a side in this debate about story titles. The important point is that, at that time in Palestine, Jesus chose a category of person who would have been anathema to his mostly Jewish audience…he chose that person, a Samaritan, to be the good guy in the parable. This is a clever and shocking turn, as usually happens with Jesus’s parables. Luke’s Jesus does another very clever thing in this debate with the lawyer: in response to the lawyer’s provoking question–And who is my neighbor?–Jesus pivots, tells a story, and then, turning the tables, concludes by asking the lawyer a question of his own. The lawyer’s original question concerns social identity; a concern that is all too painfully familiar to us these days. He wants to know who counts as a neighbor. He wants to know, in effect, at what social distance from him someone needs to be to qualify as a neighbor. The lawyer wants to know who qualifies for the love that is required by the Second Great Commandment that Jesus spells out earlier in their dialogue. Jesus ignores the question and tells a story; a story focused not on who IS a neighbor–not on a delimited social identity. Instead, Jesus describes what it means to BE a neighbor. To BE a neighbor means to extend self-sacrificing love to whoever comes across our path, even our enemy. To BE a true neighbor means to disregard social identities. There are no contingencies that set limits on this love. To be a neighbor is, then, to fulfill the Second Great Commandment. This commandment, coupled with the first–to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind–these coupled together are the beginning, the means, and the end of the Christian Way. And, I have to say, this is also the heart of the Jewish Way. Paraphrasing Rabbi Hillel, after these commandments, everything else is just interpretation. And let’s not forget: Jesus was not a Christian, he was a devout, observant Jew.
Well, you ask, what about the Benedictine Way? What’s the connection? Put simply, the heart and soul of the Benedictine Way is a very straightforward version of these two Great Commandments. They are everywhere in Benedict’s Rule, though he voices them in his own way. He chooses to speak in terms of Christ. He speaks in terms of the reality of the infinite Divine Mystery incarnate in the finite world. In Chapter 72 of the Rule, on the “Good Zeal of Monks,” Benedict’s concluding injunction is, Let them [the monks] … Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ. This is his final, insistent word on the beginning, the means, and the end of our life. Prefer nothing whatever to Christ sounds to me no less ultimate than the whole and complete love of God that is demanded by the first Great Commandment. Benedict inflects this commandment to focus on the reality of God infinitely present and manifested in our finite life: the Christhood that is the ultimate ground of all our lives. Paraphrasing Columba Stewart, a monk of St. John’s Abbey, the foundation of the Benedictine life is the awareness that Christ is everywhere. Our undivided total attention to the ever present reality of Christ is our love of God, which is the beginning, the means, and the end of our Christian life.
And then there is loving our neighbor. In chapter 53 of the Rule, the chapter on the reception of guests to the monastery, Benedict says, All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ. This is the foundation of the commitment to hospitality which is a hallmark of Benedictine communities, and particularly of our Holy Wisdom Monastery. We experience it every time we walk through the doors. For a moment, though, I want to play the role of Luke’s lawyer and ask, Who is a guest? And, if I may be so bold as to ape Jesus, I’m going to answer this question with a story. Many years ago, when I first brought food to the Luke House Community Meal Program, I was busy serving food to the people I thought of as the guests. After a while, my friend, Paul Ashe, one of the founders of the program, came up to me and told me I should sit down and eat. I looked at him puzzled–a look that I’m sure Paul had seen on the faces of many of those who provided and served the food. He smiled and said, “Everyone here is a guest.” Yes, every one of us is indeed a guest. We are all guests of the Infinite Generosity–the Infinite Hospitality–that creates and sustains us in every moment, and we are all guests of one another. Benedict’s injunction about the concrete reality of welcoming guests to the monastery is grounded in the deeper truth of the Christhood of ourselves and everyone we meet. To welcome the other as Christ is, ultimately speaking, Christ welcoming Christ. There is no separation. We are all expressions of the One Love that is our beginning and our end; as we are told in the letter to the Colossians, “Christ is all in all.”
All that said, I have to end by bringing us back down to earth. The genius of the Benedictine Way is its groundedness in everyday life. This is the humility that is the day-to-day practice of our life. Humility has the same root as the word humus–organic earth, soil. Humility means accepting the earthly reality of ourselves and of one another. Our love of God and our love of neighbor, and all their fancy theological underpinnings, mean nothing unless they are realized in and through our life with one another and with the earth that sustains us. We are, after all, nothing more and nothing less than One Body.