The keys....

July 8. Chapter 31 of the Rule concerns a particular office in a sixth-century monastery: the cellarer. Yet, as so often happens with Benedict, a few words about an ancient monastic office suddenly open into a question about our own lives.

Benedict says the cellarer is to be “like a parent to the whole community.”

We should not pass too quickly over those words.

The cellarer was the person through whose hands the necessities of life passed. Food. Tools. Supplies. The ordinary things upon which the life of the community depended. Over the centuries the office would grow into one of considerable administrative and economic responsibility. But Benedict begins not with administrative skill. He begins with the soul.

The cellarer must be wise, mature, temperate, humble.

Why?

Because the cellarer has the keys.

And there is a spiritual danger in possessing the keys.

Most of us, at one time or another, have been given control of something another person needs. Perhaps it is money. Knowledge. Food. Transportation. A position in an organization. Access to people. Even our time and attention.

Something another person needs must pass through our hands.

And temptation is real.

We may delay simply because we can. We may subtly remind another person of their dependence upon us. We may use our resources to enhance our standing, gather gratitude, or exercise control. We may even convince ourselves that our importance comes from possessing the keys.

Benedict understands.

“Keep watch over your own soul,” he tells the cellarer.

What an extraordinary warning. Do not merely watch the storeroom. Watch your heart.

Notice what happens within you when someone needs you. Notice whether you give with love or condescension. Notice whether you secretly enjoy the power to say yes or no. Notice whether the gifts entrusted to you have slowly begun to feel as though they belong to you.

The wisdom of the ages returns again and again to this truth. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that human beings were made for one another. Augustine taught that the Christian life finally bends toward love of God and neighbor. Luther said that, because God has freely helped us in Christ, we are freed to help our neighbor—not for praise or gratitude, but simply in love.

Perhaps, then, we are all cellarers. We all carry some keys.

And perhaps we are all called, in Benedict's beautiful phrase, to become parents to the world—not controlling it, not possessing it, but nurturing whatever portion of life has been placed within our reach.

This may also explain Benedict's astonishing instruction that the tools and goods of the monastery are to be treated like the sacred vessels of the altar. Nothing is merely a thing. Nothing entrusted to us is insignificant.

The artist cares for the brush. The carpenter oils the plane. The writer treasures the pen. The cook respects the knife.

And the disciple?

The disciple learns to reverence everything placed into their hands—people, possessions, gifts, time, creation itself—because none of it is finally ours.

We are simply the ones who, for a little while, have been given the keys.