Abbot's Letter

Letter of Father Abbot President Bruno Marin O.S.B.
to the Monasteries of the Subiaco Congregation

Dear Brothers and Sisters

At the beginning of each new year, it is the custom to exchange greetings, something that we have already had occasion to do during these days of Christmastide. Today, I would like to repeat what I did last Pentecost, and share with you some thoughts that come to me from the daily experience of our monasteries, as reported to us, here at Sant’Ambrogio, or that I have been able to gather from my visits (and there were very many of them in the year which has just ended). I hope, by these few lines, to be able to help us make 2008 a year that “is pleasing to God and sweet to us” (cf RB c.5): so, a very happy new year to you all!

One thing I am convinced of (and it is a conviction also shared by the Visitors of our provinces, when we meet twice a year) is that all our communities suffer from a certain fragility. Even those that are numerous and strong have nonetheless seen the number of monks diminish, while the number of tasks to be undertaken remains the same. Other communities that were very strong in the past are today facing a grave crisis of recruitment. Many small communities are also in real difficulties. They suffer, perhaps, from internal divisions that manifest themselves during the difficult election of a Superior or in the nomination of a Prior Administrator. They have the further difficulty of not always having a sufficient number of monks to carry out the various offices in the community; and if, as is the case in various places, they are a place of pilgrimage or a renowned sanctuary, struggle hard to face the pastoral obligations created by the situation.

Fragility can also be found especially in individual monks and nuns. Today’s world no longer offers us the strong structures and points of reference that, in days gone by, gave monks a part of their confidence. From this, I believe, come two temptations:

1) first, a certain individualism: a tendency to make the best of one’s own life, and thus to think of the monastery only insofar as it refers to self, and not the other way round. Following the Rule, we could call this a kind of sarabaitism.

(2) An opposite tendency is to look for a strong monastic identity whose rigid structures would offer a remedy for the uncertainties of the present. We think that we can find the key to this remedy in an idealised vision of the monastic past, which we baptise as “Tradition”. However, sooner or later reality makes itself felt, and the fragility that we thought we had camouflaged rises up again more strongly.

Perseverance, which was always difficult, is even more so today, for some, perhaps even many, do not have enough interior strength to face the normal tensions that are found in every kind of human life lived in common. Questions that relate to affectivity are even more complex.

n such a situation, we must above all hold on to hope. It is not for nothing that Pope Benedict XVI, having spoken of charity in his first encyclical, speaks of hope in his second. Before we throw ourselves into theoretical, theological, monastic, liturgical or other matters, we must live the fraternal life (Deus Caritas est) and look towards the future (Spe salvi).

What is fraternal life? Is it not: to love one another – something that means, concretely:
to esteem one another;
to welcome each other ceaselessly;
truly to hear one another;
that is, to “open the ear of our heart” (RB Prologue);
to be able to hear ideas that are different from our own;
to speak, in our turn, words that are just;
to act generously;
and, above all, to pardon one another, tirelessly.

In this regard, Chapter 72 of the Rule is a charter that we cannot ignore. I ask you to see if it is living and active among you, if it creates a spirit of belonging to one another. Such charity is based on hope, that is, on the tenacity of God, who never ceases to open up the future for his Church, and thus, if we will take what is offered to us, for us monks too. In other words, we are invited to return to the foundations of the Christian faith, to an appreciation of the salvation that is given us, to the freedom brought us by Christ, so that, as Jean Vanier puts it, we may always find better ways to make the community “a place of forgiveness and festival”. To do this, we have no need to be many in number, nor strong. Remember Gideon: to wage his war of liberation most effectively he was obliged to reduce the effective number of his troops several times! If we can live this way, then no matter whether the monastery we belong to is big or small, a life based truly on the Gospel is always possible for us.

While we are on this subject, I would like to put you on your guard against something which, in the end, would be a refusal to hope. It is this: as I said above, we can start to imagine that the solid bases that we are looking for will be found by returning to the past, in “building temples” whose time has gone by. When King David had finished his wars of conquest and was wanting to construct a Temple for God, the prophet made him see things completely differently: that it was for God to build his true Temple by grace, and that such a temple is nothing other than the faithful community itself. The history of Temples built of stone in Israel – and of their eventual ruin – is very helpful to us here. No, “the Temple of God is holy – and that Temple is you!” Such a temple has more in common with the Tent of the desert than with the imposing structures of our basilicas, no matter how beautiful they may be.

There is much talk of liturgy in the Church today. Let us remember that we can find incontestable and living guidelines in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (which I strongly urge you to re-read and study), in the liturgical books with their introductions that give the sense, promulgated by Pope Paul VI with all his apostolic authority; then, for us monks, there is the Directory that appears at the beginning of the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae, published in 1976. These texts are still alive, and thus invite us to keep alive our own Liturgy at the heart of a loving community, to adapt it to times, to places, to cultures. We will be “true Benedictines” if we continue the effort we made during the last quarter of the 20th century, not by returning to a literal observance of the chapters of the Rule dedicated to the Office (which even Saint Benedict does not ask of us), while perhaps we take too great a liberty with other chapters that are, however, more important.

I hope that you will feel in this message my conviction that the monastic life, no matter how fragile, is an immense hope for the Church, but only on condition that, as Paul VI put it, we “build the church of love”, which we monks may read as, “the community of love”. This is the only authentic and, God willing, effective way constantly to reform our old monasteries.

As regards countries which we used to call “the Third World”, they need essentially places of true Christian life, rooted in the Word of God, which gives hope, and a mutual love that ensures belonging. In saying this, I am not closing my eyes to the demands of monastic formation, whose difficulties I well know, for we lack formators to some extent everywhere and not only in the Third World, and we are making efforts to relieve this relative dearth. But these are our foundations: the Word of God, a liturgy that is alive, fraternal love, true humanity. These things bring about formation and give it its programme and its opportunities.

I believe also that, even though we are weak, we must not lose sight of the growth and extension of the monastic life, and thus the possibility of foundations, or re-foundations. Being a parent is, after all, a sign of life, and we must truly desire that the monastic message be spread abroad as much as possible in time and space. We should all keep this work in our hearts and in our prayer. In our present circumstances, when our effective workers are less numerous and our capacities diminished, we have to do these things together, speaking about them as a Province, or as a Congregation; we need to study, not only the proposals made to us, but what our own possibilities are, the spirit and the form of life that we might found or re-found. It is also important to concentrate our resources and not disperse the small financial means that we have, and so on. In other words, let us try to keep alive the hope of a growth in the monastic life and, insofar as we are able to undertake something, to do so in communion and collaboration.

At the end of January, the Commission for the General Chapter will meet and will explore the subject of a “Charter of Charity” that might animate our entire Congregation and give a flavour to our Extraordinary General Chapter to be held in September this year. I think that this Charter will develop along the lines I have indicated in this letter. In Spring, I will write to you again about the Chapter.

“God is Love” and “Saved by Hope”: two phrases which light up our path in 2008. If we hear them, day after day, this year will indeed be good, for each monastery, for each individual, for all our Congregation.

Given in Rome, Sant’Ambrogio, the Feast of St John the Apostle, 27th December 2007.

D. Bruno Marin
Abbot President

P.S.
If you have any reactions, positive or negative, to what I have written in this letter (or to past or, God willing, future ones) do not be afraid to send them to me, so that our dialogue may be fruitful and help us to make progress.