Today’s Chapter: Transparent to the Father

Chapter 7: Of Humility (vv. 44-48)

The fifth degree of humility is, not to hide from one’s Abbot any of the evil thoughts that beset one’s heart, or the sins committed in secret, but humbly to confess them. Concerning which the Scripture exhorteth us, saying: “Make known thy way unto the Lord, and hope in Him.” And again: “Confess to the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endureth for ever.” So also the prophet saith: “I have made known to Thee mine offence, and mine iniquities I have not hidden. I will confess against myself my iniquities to the Lord: and Thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my heart.”

It has been fairly easy to see in the first four degrees a certain logical progression: the fear of God (1^st Degree) implies imitating Christ in not coming to do our own will (2^nd Degree); imitating Christ in not doing our own will means submitting ourselves to our superior like Him, obedient even unto death (3^rd Degree); obedience even unto death means embracing patience amidst contrary things and injuries (4^th Degree). With today’s 5^th Degree, it may seem that Saint Benedict changes topics, to address the rather specific question of monastic spiritual direction and the manifesting of one’s thoughts and sins. Yet there is more of a connection than might appear at first glance. The subject of spiritual direction and the manifesting of conscience is mentioned elsewhere in the Holy Rule: in the 51^st Instrument of Good Works (Chapter 4), and in Chapter 46 on how one should confess secret faults. In the former place, reference is made generally to ‘laying open’ one’s evil thoughts to ‘a spiritual senior’ (seniori spiritali patefacere), and in the latter, to confessing sins hidden in one’s heart to the Abbot or to a spiritual senior (abbati aut spiritalibus senioribus patefaciat). Commentators have rightly noted that in the provision for such ‘spiritual seniors’ who, at least in Chapter 46, include others besides the Abbot, Saint Benedict seems to anticipate the concern in the contemporary Church to guarantee the freedom of the religious in matters of the internal forum.

Here in the 5^th Degree of Humility, however, it is only the Abbot who is mentioned. Perhaps one reason for this is that we are to see the 5^th Degree in continuity with the 3^rd and 4^th. Saint Benedict has been speaking of obedience, and the hard things that must be embraced for love of God in obedience. The monk who practices the 4^th Degree of Humility will inevitably have evil thoughts come to his heart, and will at times commit faults, albeit secretly, against the obedience that he seeks to practice. Perhaps it is because these mala are particularly those encountered in obedience that Saint Benedict wants the monk humbly to confess them to his Abbot. In the 4^th Degree, the monk imitates Christ in obeying the Father’s will, however costly; in the 5^th Degree, He imitates Christ in crying out from the depths of His human sensibility, ‘Father, let this cup pass from Me’, and ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?’ Our Lord of course could not sin, as His will was ever united to the Father’s; yet the lower faculties of His Humanity naturally recoiled from death and from all the mental sufferings of His Passion. The monk who makes known to his superior the difficulties encountered in obedience is thus imitating Our Lord in His complete transparency to His Father.

In this, the 5^th Degree of Humility not only serves as a commentary on Chapter 46 about the confession of faults, but on Chapter 68, about obedience to impossible commands. There, Saint Benedict explicitly allows and even encourages the monk who sees that the burden exceeds his strength to make this known humbly to the superior. Our Lord did no differently. And the same is true of His Mother, who made known to the Archangel Gabriel the troubling thought that beset her heart: ‘How shall this be, since I know not man?’ Nor did she hide her anguish at the loss of her Son in the Temple: ‘Son, why hast thou done so to us?’ In their honest questions and prayers to God, Our Lord and His Mother teach us that to make known the difficulties obedience involves can indeed be a truer act of humility than simply gritting our teeth and assuming a stoic attitude of resignation. The key, of course, is that having humbly admitted our weakness and incapacity, we then accept just as humbly whatever obedience will ask of us, as both Mary and Jesus followed their ‘How?’ and ‘If it be possible’, with ‘Let it be done.’ Even so are we taught today by the great and little doctor Saint Thérèse to recognise our own littleness and incapacity, in order then to abandon ourselves completely to the merciful yet often crucifying love of God.