Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict

Seeking Life

Esther de Waal is one of today’s most popular authors writing in the field of spirituality. She lives in Herefordshire, close to the border between England and Wales, having returned to the countryside where she grew up. She spends two months each winter in Washington DC as the Senior Fellow of the Cathedral College, where her teaching centres on the development of the religious imagination. A sense of place has always been important, and it was the buildings and the landscape that originally encouraged her to explore the Benedictine, Cistercian and Celtic traditions. Although her main interests are her garden and her increasing number of grandchildren, she also finds time to write, to take retreats and to travel – feeling a particular connection with Southern Africa.

Other titles by Esther de Waal, available from Canterbury Press

Seeking God: The way of St Benedict

A modern spiritual classic, exploring the relevance of the Rule of St Benedict in everyday life.

978-1-85311-346-8

Living with Contradiction: Benedictine wisdom for everyday living

Further reflections on the Rule in the context of a fragmented and polarized world.

978-1-85311-545-5

Lost in Wonder: Rediscovering the spiritual art of attentiveness

‘de Waal’s knowledge of the spiritual tradition, choice of poetry and reflective wisdom reveal to us that the capacity for the spiritual is also the capacity to be fully human in a world in turmoil.’ The Tablet

978-1-85311-552-3

Tintern

From the Pilgrim Guide series, a contemplative tour of Tintern Abbey in a succession of prayer – so that the building gives images for knowledge of the self and of God.

1-85311-312-3

Seeking Life

The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St Benedict

Esther de Waal

© Esther de Waal 2009

First published in 2008 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

(a publishing imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Limited,

a registered charity)

13–17 Long Lane, London EC1A 9PN, UK

www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.

The Author has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-85311-879-1

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

For Zoe

Zoe with her mother at Eardisley font

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

I Baptism

Introduction

Preparing for Easter

Recovering Our Historical Roots

Recovering Our Symbolic Identity

The River of Grace

II The Prologue

The Prologue

Lectio Divina

III Reflections

Listen

Son

Beloved

The Battle

The Heart

Transformation

Light

Good Deeds

Love

The Paschal Mystery

Continuing to Learn

IV Anthology

Acknowledgements of Sources

Preface and Acknowledgements

I owe thanks to many places and many people in the writing of this book. Both sides of the Atlantic have played their part. Canon Jim Fenhagan and Canon Howard Anderson, the Wardens of the College of Preachers, subsequently the Cathedral College in Washington DC, welcomed me into the life of the College community for two months each year, which brought me hospitality, friendship and conversation in a warm and stimulating environment. This book could never have been written without the Woodstock Center at Georgetown University, in which I found a library of incomparable resource, with the material unavailable in the depths of the Welsh border countryside where I live. Its access to open shelves allowed me to wander and explore widely, and find material not only for this book but also for the series of lecture courses I have been giving at the same time. My warmest thanks go to Fr Leon Hooper SJ and his colleagues.

The practical help that was urgently needed to allow me to finish this book in the spring of 2008 came from the patient teaching of Zoe Maslin of Rowlestone Mill and the incomparable expertise of Ray Rose who dealt with my technological dramas with understanding and enjoyment.

Throughout this undertaking I have been supported in prayer by the sisters of the community at Tymawr, the Society of the Sacred Cross, the Anglican community with whom I have been so closely associated over many years. They are a few miles away, across the border in Wales. My own cathedral, of Hereford, has fulfilled its role as a mother church, bringing an excellence of liturgy, music and preaching – a source of beauty and energy for which I am deeply grateful. My debt to the yearly experience of the Easter Vigil, which has played such a seminal role in the genesis of this book, however, crosses the boundaries of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches and I must mention the names together of the Dean, the Very Revd Michael Tavinor, and of Fr Michael Evans OSB, parish priest of St Francis Xavier, Hereford, and Benedictine monk of Belmont Abbey.

My thanks therefore cross the divides of England and Wales, America and Britain, Anglican and Catholic – which is just as it should be for someone who lives in a borderland, for my greatest support has been my own home, the garden, the stream and waterfall, the orchard of this cottage which was given by my father to my husband and our four small boys forty years ago this spring. As I kept the anniversary on 21 March (this being the traditional date for the exchange of property in the country) I reflected with gratitude what it has brought me: the stability which has earthed me in times of much travelling, and a gentle rhythm of changing times and seasons, which has become a very essential undercurrent of my life.

My deepest debt is of course to St Benedict and the Rule which has continued to play such a vital role in my life over the years since my first encounter with the Benedictine tradition at Canterbury. My life has changed since then but the Rule remains a source of continuing support and challenge. Written for a community, it made sense in the years of my family life, but it has also allowed me to come to terms with life on my own in the past ten years. The vows bring me the strength to change and build as each new chapter of my life unfolds, and I know that this will continue until the day of my death.

This is a very personal book, and the way in which I handle my subject and the interpretation that I bring must be seen as entirely my own, and my responsibility. My hope is that my readers will be able to identify with my approach and that they will find here something of the excitement that I found in the writing of it.

Esther de Waal

Feast of St Benedict, 11 July 2008

List of Illustrations

Illustration from The Four Gospels, 1931, decorated by Eric Gill

Detail of twelfth-century font, Castle Frome, Herefordshire

The Resurrection, Russian 15th century

Canterbury Cathedral crypt

David Jones, The Royal Banners (detail), Vexilla Regis, 1948

David Jones, The Waterfall, Afon Honddu Fach, 1926

Heather Williams Durka, Saint Benedict icon

Transfiguration of Christ, Sinai, 12th century

Romanesque font, c. 1170, St Michael’s Castle Frome, Herefordshire

I Baptism

Introduction

This book was originally written to meet an earlier deadline, which, however, never materialized because my antiquated, indeed antediluvian and archaic, word-processor met its death the previous week, and as a result everything went either into limbo or, some sections (notably the references and quotations), into undecipherable hieroglyphics. I could do nothing about it for some time because in the following months I was, as always in the winter, in Washington DC at the Cathedral College. A heavy teaching programme left little time for writing or research and when I returned to England just before Palm Sunday I immediately found myself plunged into Holy Week and Easter.

The reading I had been doing in preparation for writing the book meant that I entered, as I had never done before, into the liturgical life of the Triduum, those days from Good Friday to Easter. It became a powerful three-day experience, and I tried to keep it, in spite of many other demands, as it should be kept – as ‘a time of vigilant prayer in preparation for the passing over from the old to the new’.¹ This meant that the Easter Vigil itself, and above all the renewal of baptismal promises, gained a depth and meaning that they had never had before.

As a result I then began to rewrite the book in a totally different way, and I was grateful that an apparent catastrophe should become the occasion of a new start. The change was that I decided to make Easter (or more strictly the Easter Vigil in the context of the Triduum) my starting point. My central theme still remained the renewal of the baptismal covenant, and although it takes place in particularly splendid and significant circumstances during the Easter Vigil, I would not want this book to be seen only in that context. Of course if it is read during Lent that would be extremely appropriate, but I hope that it will not be seen only in the context of Lenten reading.

When the idea of vocation is so often used in a specialized and limited way to apply to those responding to the call to enter the religious life, the ordained ministry or some special office in the Church, it is good to remind ourselves that baptism remains the essential foundation on which all Christian life is built.²

Baptism is the vocation that we all share as Christians. This book is written for all of us who have been baptized and for whom our baptismal promises are a lifelong commitment. Yet, although we have the chance to renew the covenant of baptism time and again throughout our lives, I do not find a great deal of attention being paid to the preparation for that renewal. But for those of us baptized as infants, when we come to think about baptism in adulthood many of us may find that we can now enter into that experience much more fully and are able to appreciate its riches. Above all it presents us with a world of imagery and symbolism that fuels the imagination. It brings us a feast of glorious teaching from the early Fathers which feeds the mind. It is liturgy at its most magnificent with language that rejoices the heart. It can become a source of strength for our continuing Christian discipleship, and remind us of the many others whom we join to form the body of Christ and for whom this has been the crossing of a threshold opening up into a new and fuller life.

Baptism is given once (frequently in infancy), but we also have the chance to renew it time and again throughout our lives. Although it is increasingly popular for this to be at the Easter Vigil there are many other opportunities as well. I can think of three very different times in my own life, in circumstances which cross boundaries of place and denomination. In May 1982 I was present in Canterbury Cathedral on the historic occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul. In his address he spoke of how we were about to renew our baptismal vows together: ‘Anglicans and Catholics and other Christians, as a clear testimony to the one sacrament of baptism by which we have been joined in Christ … In this way the renewal of our baptismal vows will become a pledge to do all in our power to co-operate with the grace of the Holy Spirit, who alone can lead us to the day when we will profess the fullness