Centennial of Dom Delatte's Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict II - St. Benedict, Father of Christendom, under Christ the King "Our business is not to live many years, but to walk to God."

[I - Saint Benedict was above all a man of Tradition]

The Rule of St. Benedict is, as its name indicates, a law, a code of laws - but not any kind of code. Beauty and kindness flow from the heart of the Patriarch as he talks directly to his children.

In his 1913 Commentary, Dom Paul Delatte spends, in the style of his venerable predecessor Dom Prosper Guéranger, what seems like a disproportionate amount of time and energy on every word of the rule's Prologue. That is not the case at all: the only way to explain how this ancient Roman, filled with the best common sense of Antiquity, is about to establish the mode of life that will enable Christian faith to survive, hidden at first, and then flourish in Europe in the long period following the collapse of the Empire in the West is to show how Benedict's words are that of a true Paterfamilias. But not any Paterfamilias, a Christian Father.

And what is the concern of this Christian Father? To make us aware of our true concern, the only true business of our lifetimes. "Our business," says Dom Delatte, "is not to live many years, and to become learned, or to make a name in the world, but to walk to God, to get near to Him, to unite ourselves to Him." This is one of the most profound sentences of the whole book, and a firm rule of life for every Christian - because these beautiful words are not for monks only, but for all Catholics of good will.

"Ausculta, o fili... " [Hearken, o son... ]

Other Rules[, begins Dom Delatte,] have a more impersonal character, a more concise and formal legislative air: St. Benedict in his first words puts himself in intimate contact with his followers, commencing the code of our monastic life with a loving address. He who speaks is a master; for we cannot dispense with a master in the supernatural life, which is at once a science and an art. He gives precepts - that is to say, doctrinal and practical instruction.

Dom Paul Delatte
Third Abbot of
St. Peter's Abbey, Solesmes

St. Benedict here speaks of himself, though many commentators have thought differently. It is no folly to call himself master, since he teaches not in his own name, nor things of his own devising. He wrote near the end of his life and in the fulness of his experience. Why should he not be a loving father, pius pater, as he expresses it?

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He does not dream of imposing them on you, but appeals to your good will, to your delicacy of perception; there is no question of constraint, but of a loving and glad acceptance, of supernatural docility.

This docility St. Benedict requires of every beginner; this same docility, under the forms of humility and obedience, gives our monastic life its authentic character; and, finally, by it is sanctity won: "Who so are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom. viii. 14) The sovereign importance of this simple, unaffected disposition comes from the fact that it comprises in itself all virtue. To begin with, docility means prudence, and in prudence are united all the moral virtues. We cannot in our own persons have all experiences; but others have had them, and we reap the benefit of these by our docility.

We make our own the wisdom of humanity supernaturalized, the wisdom of St. Benedict, and faith makes us share the very wisdom of God. Docility, and docility alone, establishes us in that state whence all self-seeking has been driven, a state which is the condition and the prelude of a living union with Our Lord. Its name then is charity.

We should note how St. Benedict analyzes and details the successive stages of supernatural docility. "Hearken": for we must listen; if there be too much noise in the soul and the attention be scattered over a multitude of objects, the voice of God which is generally quiet as " the whistling of a gentle air " (3 Kings xix. 12) is not heard. That silence which of itself is perfect praise, "To thee silence is praise," is rare among beings so fickle and impressionable as we are.

But to hearken is not enough, and St. Benedict invites us in the pretty phrase of the Book of Proverbs 2 and Psalm xliv to, "incline the ear of our heart." We must have a receptive understanding, a trustful attitude towards the truth that is proposed to us. If we begin by putting obstacles, by establishing at the entry of our souls a strict barrier, or still more, if we be filled with our own views to the point of saying, "He cannot teach me anything new; I know all that and better than he does!" then we are in the worst possible mental state, not only for supernatural teaching, but even for purely human instruction.

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"Et efficaciter comple" And faithfully fulfill. It is the property of truth to move us to action. We cannot "hold it captive in injustice" (Rom. i, 18). We shall have to answer to God for all the good we have seen and have not done. But therein too lies the difficulty; for sin has upset the balance of our being: seeing, willing, loving, performing, these are far from being one single operation.

So lest the work should frighten us, and to make clear at once its character and plan, our Holy Father, with the insight of genius, yet in the quiet classical style, sets down that which is the prize of our life, that which should be its single object, that which gives it its dignity, charm, and power, its merit and simplicity, that in which is contained the whole Rule: "that you may return to Him by the labour of obedience."

For our business is not to live many years, and to become learned, or to make a name in the world, but to walk to God, to get near to Him, to unite ourselves to Him. This manner of conceiving the spiritual life as a fearless walking to God is a favourite one with St. Benedict; we shall meet it many times in the Rule. Our life is on an inclined plane: we may ascend or descend, and the latter is very easy.

Since the Fall, man has only one way in which to separate himself from God, and that is the way of the old Adam, disobedience; and he has, too, but one way to return and that is by obedience, with the new Adam.

Centennial of Dom Delatte's Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict I - Saint Benedict was above all a man of Tradition

Solesmes Abbey, France

Dom Paul Delatte, a diocesan priest who, later in life, joined St. Peter's Abbey, in Solesmes (historically, on the border between the Maine and the Anjou, now at Sarthe, Pays de la Loire, France), and, not long after his perpetual vows, was elected third Abbot of Solesmes in 1890, wrote many of the fundamental works on Benedictine life in the modern age. He suffered greatly in his years as successor to Dom Guéranger, certainly due to the intense persecution unleashed by the government of the Third French Republic, that forced the religious of France from outside their own houses (the monks of Solesmes had lived in various houses in the city outside their abbey since 1880) and finally into exile for not adapting to atrocious anticlerical association rules established in 1901.

But, and this is less well-known, Dom Delatte suffered even more from the intense internal persecution by some of his monks, who again and again denounced him (and also his great friend Mother Cécile Bruyère, first Abbess of St. Cecilia's, Solesmes) to the Apostolic See, causing him all kinds of trials, until his request for resignation (not his first) was finally accepted by the Holy See in 1921. Much of this is detailed in the French edition of a selection of his letters, "Lettres", published by Solesmes

Among his many great writings, probably none is as influential as his Commentary to the Rule of Saint Benedict, first published 100 years ago, in September 1913. The full text is available in its French text here, and in English here (translated by Dom Justin McCann, of Ampleforth Abbey). Various reasons prevented us from celebrating its publication in the exact centennial date, but since we are still in its centennial year, we are quite happy to post excerpts of the English translation for the edification of our readers. If you wish to help the work of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, you may also buy a print version from their website here.

INTRODUCTION

"THE man of God, Benedict, among the many wonderful works that made him famous in this world, was also conspicuous for his teaching: for he wrote a Rule for monks, remarkable for discretion and rich in instruction. If anyone desires to know more deeply the life and character of the man, he may find in the ordinances of that Rule the exact image of his whole government: for the holy man cannot possibly have taught otherwise than as he lived." To this judgement of St. Gregory the Great, so complete for all its grace of form and sobriety of language, we may yet add two observations: first that the moral beauty of St. Benedict, his temperament and almost his characteristics, are reflected also in the pages, at once candid and profound, of his biographer; secondly, that the Rule itself came, in the middle of the sixth century, as the ripe fruit of a considerable monastic past and of the spiritual teaching of the Fathers.

St. Benedict was above all else a man of tradition. He was not the enthusiastic creator of an entirely new form of the religious life: neither nature nor grace disposed him to such a course. As may be seen from the last chapter of his Rule, he cared nothing for a reputation of originality, or for the glory of being a pioneer. He did not write till late, till he was on the threshold of eternity, after study and perhaps after experience of the principal monastic codes. Nearly every sentence reveals almost a fixed determination to base his ideas on those of the ancients, or at least to use their language and appropriate their terms.

But even though the Rule were nothing but an intelligent compilation, even though it were merely put together with the study and spiritual insight of St. Benedict, with the spirit of orderliness, moderation, and lucidity of this Roman of old patrician stock, it would not for all that be a commonplace work: in actual fact, it stands as the complete and finished expression of the monastic ideal. Who can measure the extraordinary influence that these few pages have exercised, during fourteen centuries, over the general development of the Western world? Yet St. Benedict thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God; in the tranquil simplicity of his faith he purposed only to establish a school of the Lord s service: Dominici schola servitii. But, just because of this singleminded pursuit of the one thing necessary, God has blessed the Rule of Monks with singular fruitfulness, and St. Benedict has taken his place in the line of the great patriarchs.

We may almost say of the Benedictine Rule what is certainly true of the Law of God that it bears in itself its own justification, that it is self-sufficient; "the judgements of the Lord are true, justified in themselves," and that it only needs to be read and loved and lived. ... Perhaps the publication of these notes will satisfy, in some measure, the interest of the many Christian souls who ask us every day for enlightenment on the mode of life, spirituality, and real usefulness of monks.

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The primary purpose of these studies is neither curiosity nor historical knowledge: our concern is with the soul and with the supernatural life. By constant communing with the master thought of St. Benedict and with the minds of his best disciples, will the sons of D. Guéranger be able to keep alive among them the true spirit of monasticism.