Benedict's teaching on personal ownership within the monastery is uncompromising. Nothing is to be considered exclusively one's own. At first reading, this seems a severe demand, perhaps even an unreasonable one. But beneath this prohibition lies a profound understanding of human nature and an equally profound vision of what it means to live in community.
Benedict understood that possessions have a way of possessing us. What begins as a legitimate need can quietly become an attachment, an expectation, even a demand. The more we acquire, the more we feel compelled to protect. The more we seek to control, the more difficult it becomes to surrender ourselves to the living God.
Sister Joan Chittister captures the spiritual consequences of our attachments with striking clarity: "They clutter our space; they crimp our hearts; they sour our souls."
Perhaps the great lesson here is the notion of enoughness. How much is enough? When does the desire for security become the desire for control? When does our attachment to the things of this world begin to diminish our freedom to love?
After all, we are just passing through.
Everything I possess, everything I enjoy, everything I have accumulated over a lifetime is mine for only a little while. None of it will accompany me beyond this life. What will endure is the love I have given, the relationships I have nurtured, the burdens I have helped another carry, and the ways in which I have contributed to the lives of others.
Benedict's concern, however, extends well beyond the individual soul. His instructions about ownership are inseparable from his understanding of community. A monastery cannot become a genuine community if its members are preoccupied with protecting their individual interests. The common life requires a willingness to recognize that the needs of others are also our concern.
Benedictine simplicity is not merely freedom from possessions. It is freedom for material relationships. It creates the space in which community can flourish.
Sister Joan reminds us that in community life we genuinely need one another. We rely on one another. Community is sustained by mutual giving. There is something wonderfully humbling in this recognition: I am not entirely self-sufficient, nor am I intended to be. There are things I can offer that another needs, and things another can offer that I cannot provide for myself.
We belong to one another, not as possessions, but as persons entrusted to one another's care.
This raises an especially meaningful question for those of us living in a retirement community.
How do we make Benedict's vision of a shared monastic world our own?
We are not monks living under vows of poverty. We have our own homes, our own possessions, our own resources, and our own histories. Yet we have also chosen to live together. We share common spaces, common concerns, and, increasingly as we age, a common vulnerability.
Surely that choice carries with it responsibilities beyond simply residing at the same address.
Our community should be more than a collection of individuals living in proximity. It can be a place where we recognize that another person's loneliness is our concern, another's suffering deserves our attention, and another's happiness gives us reason to rejoice.
It can be a place where we offer our abilities freely, where we give without expecting repayment, and where we learn to receive help without embarrassment or resentment. Indeed, accepting the kindness of another may itself be an act of humility and a gift to the giver.
And we must be especially attentive to those who are becoming less visible among us: those whose health has declined, whose mobility has diminished, whose memories are fading, or whose capacity to participate in our shared life is growing smaller. The strength of a community is revealed not simply in how it celebrates its most active members, but in how faithfully it cares for those who can no longer contribute as they once did.
Preserving the human community requires intentional effort. It requires patience, generosity, forgiveness, restraint, and the willingness to place the common good alongside our personal preferences. It requires that we resist the temptation to measure everything by what we receive rather than by what we can give.
Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of Benedict's teaching on ownership. The things we hold most tightly may be the very things that prevent us from opening our hearts fully to God and to one another.
We need not surrender our personal possessions to embrace Benedict's wisdom. But we may need to surrender something far more difficult: our insistence on always having our own way, our attachment to privilege, our demand for control, and our illusion of complete independence.
In their place, we can cultivate something infinitely more valuable: a genuine sense of belonging, a willingness to care and be cared for, and an understanding that the life of the community is, in some measure, our personal responsibility.
We make this shared life our own by accepting responsibility for making it a place where others can truly belong.
And perhaps, when all is said and done, enoughness means discovering that what we most need in this life is not more of what we can possess, but more of what we can share.
For we are all just passing through.
And what a grace it is that, for this part of the journey, we have one another.
No comments:
Post a Comment