St. Benedict on Suffering and Patience

The following is Sr. Mary Catherine's Ash Wednesday talk to the members of St. Walburg Monastery.  

            Like many of you, I have given some time since Saturday thinking about the presentations we heard from Fr. Ken Overberg. Quite a bit of conversation that day was given to the pros and cons of offering up our suffering to make atonement for our sins and failings—a concept that is familiar to us, especially at the beginning of Lent. I wondered what Benedict had to say about suffering. 

           Benedict uses the word suffering only once in the Rule. It’s found in the last verse of the Prologue: Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. Benedict does use the word patience, a word that has the same Latin root as suffer, at least 10 times in the Rule. Sometimes the reference is to God’s patience; sometimes it is about patience with other members or with myself.

            That led me to reread Chapter 49 with a different focus. Benedict’s words are very clear, concrete and proactive in what he says we ought to do. Keep your life pure. Wash away acts of negligence. Devote yourself to prayer, reading, compunction of heart and self-denial. Add to the usual measure of service by way of prayer and abstinence from food and drink. Do not indulge in evil habits. Benedict’s Lent asks us to correct our faults, not atone for our sins. Benedict asks us to put our lives back on track. That is to live each day putting into practice active fidelity to our profession to seek and find God in this community. Our monastic life and practices and behaviors are not suffering that is offered to God. The daily round of common prayers and meals, sharing house hold tasks, caring for the characters we all can be are the stuff of every day—the glue of community life here on earth and the path we follow to eternal life.

            The commentaries on that last verse of the Prologue acknowledge a difficulty in translating the obvious close connection of patience and suffering in the phrase: through patience share in the sufferings of Christ. RB80 refers us to Colossians 1:24 where Paul writes that he rejoices in his suffering for their sake and is completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, the Church.

            Terrence Kardong’s commentary on the closing of the Prologue picks up the same theme and the verse from Colossians, noting that patience is a central theme in the Rule. In his wry way he notes that the practice of patience is essential given the stress of living community life with a variety of characters (2.31). We’ve all learned to some extent that you cannot offer up characters to God. They don’t go anywhere until God calls them. Benedict’s Rule requires patience if we are to have community. Terrence Kardong further remarks that the monastic life has the reputation of being ascetic and a hard life. But Benedict’s vision of monastic life is essentially joyful and dynamic. In living the life, not offering it up, we will grow in love of God and others. Kardong concludes his commentary by saying that this kind of growth needs nor has an end.

            I encourage you to use the Prologue of the Rule for Lenten lectio sometime during Lent.

                        Sr. Mary Catherine Wenstrup, OSB