Here’s my Spiritual Direction Formation program reflection for February.
He takes for them the form of a begetting father and a bearing mother, that they might take the form of the self-emptying Christ, who himself took our form.
This quotation, and the thought that Christ is manifested in the spiritual director and as the spiritual director, together with thoughts about the Rule of Benedict, provoked much thought in me during the days of the formation program, and since that time.
I have lived as a ‘son of Benedict’ for quite a long time, as I have walked the path as a Benedictine oblate. I understand that vocation to be to live as a monk in a monastery without walls. One of the major conceptual tasks for me has been to consider how to take a part of the Rule that looms so large – the role of the Abbot, and the right response of the monk to the Abbot – when for me the Abbot is a person who far remote geographically. I suspect that whilst it is not easy to be obedient to an Abbot who is present (Thomas Merton, for example, found it difficult to be obedient in deed and spirit), it is even more difficult to be obedient to an Abbot who is not present. Similarly, it is difficult to live in stability, not blown around by the winds of the world, when I do not live in a ‘place’ where I am supported by brothers. To live a life of poverty – using only what I need and not accumulating more than I need – is somewhat easier for me as I grow older.
I have lived with a rule of life, first my own, and since then the Rule of Benedict, for a long time and have found it to be an invaluable aid in stability, and preventing my tendency to both laziness and over-enthusiasm. There is something freeing in living with the Rule of Benedict, reading it day by day, and seeking God’s leading in living it out. I come, perhaps, to ‘working with the Rule’ without too many of the normal prejudices about ‘rules’, as I have experienced them as liberation, by and large.
My life in the Anglican church has involved a commitment to the rhythms and liturgies of the church, which Hale and Pauley note are strongly influenced by the monastic and Benedictine. I feel at home with the Office, and with the Eucharist, with silence and the Bible. I admit to feeling much less at home with less structured liturgy, or modern forms of worship which seem to me to often lack depth, attempting rather to entertain.
The offering of the idea that the Abbot can be a model for the spiritual director is one that is very freeing – but I have never imagined myself to be someone who would be called to serve as an Abbot. To digress slightly – this is probably because of the tendency within the Western church (at least) to project episcopal ‘dignity’ onto the Abbot, which is something I suspect is at odds with the charism of the Abbot (and perhaps, indeed, of the bishop!). I can, however, see how the spiritual director and the Abbot may have vocations that are very similar, and may find that their call to that life comes from the same place – those who seek ‘a word’ coming to them for leading.
An Abbess who is worthy to be over a monastery should always remember what she is called, and live up to the name of Superior. For she is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery, being called by a name of His, which is taken from the words of the Apostle: “You have received a Spirit of adoption …, by virtue of which we cry, ‘Abba — Father’” (Rom. 8:15)!
The spiritual director is both a begetting father and a bearing mother for the directee. As the monastic life is geared towards theosis (cf RB, prologue), so too is the directee’s journey – and it is bringing this to birth that is the spiritual director’s gift. That the spiritual director is Christ in this moment leads me to reflect on the thoughts of John Zizioulas, who asserts that full humanity is achieved only as person participating in the perichoresis of the Holy Trinity:
Since God moved to meet the other — His creation — by emptying Himself and subjecting his Son to the kenosis(self-emptying) of the Incarnation, the “kenotic” way is the only one that befits the Christian in his or her communion with the other, be it God or neighbour.
The spiritual director’s charism as a begetting father suggests a role as one who creates, gives essence, life, as well as one who protects and corrects. The spiritual director is not just called to passively interact with the directee, but in God, to bring something to life – perhaps fanning an ember planted by God, in order to bring the directee into the intimate fellowship of the persons of the Trinity.
Both the directee and the director are called to live and relate to one-another in a kenotic manner. The director is called to constantly and consistently pour out himself in service of the directee, who calls the charism of direction out of the director. God’s gift, in this calling out, is to both of them. The directee’s gift is to be ministered to, and the director’s to serve by giving glory to God through bringing new life and birth about in the directee. This kenotic ministry might have the following character, taken from Benedict’s instructions to the abbot:
In her teaching the Abbess should always follow the Apostle’s formula: “Reprove, entreat, rebuke” (2 Tim. 4:2); threatening at one time and coaxing at another as the occasion may require, showing now the stern countenance of a mistress, now the loving affection of a mother. That is to say, it is the undisciplined and restless whom she must reprove rather sharply; it is the obedient, meek and patient whom she must entreat to advance in virtue; while as for the negligent and disdainful, these we charge her to rebuke and correct.
This loving affection, as of a mother, brings to mind characteristics such as sustaining, nurturing, supporting, enfolding, succouring, protecting, drawing out.
The manifestation of Christ in the director, and as the director also has a kenotic character. It is for the good of the directee that Christ is thus manifested and honoured. Christian leadership has a paradoxical quality – the leader is simultaneously servant and leader, just as Christ is – his glory comes through his freely chosen servanthood of and filial relationship with the Father. The choice to stand with Christ, to stand as Christ, and allow one’s life to be poured out in the service of many, is a hard choice. The choice to allow others to see Christ in one, is also a hard choice. It seems to me that accepting the call to be a spiritual director means accepting the call to be identified with Christ, which necessarily involves accepting servanthood, even if it might also involve accepting a sort of acclamation.
So, what might all of this mean for me? Christina’s suggestion that “… our very disabilities, the poverty of teacher and taught, become wounds that stream with glory, filled with utter and unutterable purity” resonates deeply with me. I know myself to be filled with many disabilities and mired in much poverty. That God can, when I allow him to, use these very wounds to his glory, and for the service of those he calls to give me as directees, is a marvellous thing.
That God might call me to be as an abbot to those he offers to me as directees is a challenging thought, not least because of the responsibility it brings. Benedict writes of this:
Above all let her not neglect or undervalue the welfare of the souls committed to her, in a greater concern for fleeting, earthly, perishable things; but let her always bear in mind that she has undertaken the government of souls and that she will have to give an account of them.
He does, however, offer the poor abbot some consolation, which I also take:
Thus the constant apprehension about her coming examination as shepherd (Ezech. 34) concerning the sheep entrusted to her, and her anxiety over the account that must be given for others, make her careful of her own record. And while by her admonitions she is helping others to amend, she herself is cleansed of her faults.
More and more my thoughts are captured by the vision of theosis, that the way on which I am to lead is this path, which leads to the self-emptying of the false self, and unity and fellowship with God in the Holy Trinity. The vision of the abbot as spiritual director, and spiritual director as abbot (from this year), and also as icon of Christ (from year one) become integrated in this thought, I believe, when the director dies and is buried with Christ via the purgative and apophatic way (year two). As I write this it suddenly sounds trite and pietistic, but I believe that there are great connections here (as no doubt there are intended to be!), which I begin to see and appreciate.
As I allow God to lead me deeper into him, and the mystery of his call for me and my life, I surrender more and more, and exert less control over both it and myself. This is a scary and yet liberating thing. As I am offered this conception – the director as abbot – I am also liberated from attempting to find a ‘novel’ way of being a director. I can trust in the tradition, which the abbot and the director are called to carry, teach and maintain, and take the model from the Rule of Benedict, without attempting to create new paradigms for the spiritual director from elsewhere.
