A Life… A Call: Duane W.H. Arnold. PhD

A Life… A Call

My dear friend, Sr. Mary Owen, was an enclosed Benedictine nun at St. Mary’s Abbey, West Malling, England, for almost 30 years. She was an American, with a responsible job and a fine academic background, who gave it all up to move overseas to fulfill her calling.

She died this last Spring after battling cancer.  It is a loss that is still hard to bear.

Through all those years at the Abbey we stayed in touch and wrote to each other about things that were important. Now, knowing that St. Benedict called the monastic life “a school of the Lord’s service” and St. Bernard calls it “a school of love”, I once asked her in a letter how she could live out that call in a small community of 16 sisters, enclosed and separated from the world.  Her reply, which I think is worth sharing, was as follows:

What better place to learn what I desire to learn above all else! It has been said that the monastic life is simply the Christian life, lived in response to a particular call which is one among many. Let me tell you a little about how I see this particular call lived out at Malling Abbey. I remember hearing about a nun in a contemplative community who was asked, “Why do you have to get up so early when you have nothing to do all day?”

It’s true that the nuns at Malling get up at 4:00 a.m., but it’s not true that they have nothing to do. Their day is well filled; the time, “divided between work, reading and prayer.”

(1) St. Benedict’s Rule (“a little rule for beginners” as he calls it) begins with the verb “ausculta” – listen. 4:00 a.m. is a very good time to listen! This is what the nuns have to say about the night office. “There is a solemnity about the night office, when we are called straight out of the void of unconsciousness into the knowledge of God. It has an affinity with the moment at which Adam awoke out of non-being into consciousness and life, to find himself face to face with God. And the response to that encounter is worship. ” 

(2) The heart and core of the life is prayer. 

(3) “Seven times a day do I praise Thee” the Psalmist sings. The Eucharist is celebrated daily. In addition to the night office, the nuns say the daily offices of Lauds, Vespers and Compline and the little hours of Terce, Sext and None in the abbey church. Three hours a day are devoted to private prayer and reading, and between five and six hours are spent working in the garden or the kitchen or doing the sorts of tasks that need doing in any home and family. Someone once compared the order of monastic life to choreography. It is a good analogy. There is a balance and a rhythm to it, but to a newcomer, ignorant of the steps, it can be very bewildering! When first here the novice mistress had written out a daily timetable for me which I kept in my pocket. During the first week, I consulted it frequently because I could not remember at any given time whether I was supposed to be praying or reading or working. Yet, in the monastery, “there is no division between sacred and secular, between prayer and work.” The whole life of the community is “consecrated and offered.” 

4) For Benedictines, prayer is “the whole life of a man.” The call that I heard was to my “whole life;” yet, I doubted if I could give that much. During one period of recreation (when silence is not maintained,) I spoke to the sister who had been appointed as my guardian angel. “I’m not big enough for this type of life,” I said. 

“None of us is,” she said.

Well, I thought, if God is calling me to this, He’ll have to do it, because I can’t. I was right.

Reading this I remembered St. Paul writing to the Thessalonians: “The One Who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”

Moreover, we miss the point if we think that this is only true of the monastic life. It is true for each of us in each of our separate callings. It is practicing the presence of God in our whole life, and not merely in one aspect of our life, or in one allocated time. Like Mary, Owen, we may not be big enough for this type of life, but that is our calling. You see, we each have a life… and a call.

Duane W.H. Arnold. PhD

The Project