Solitary or Cenobite

The Rule of St. Benedict assumes that people living under the Rule will live in a community.  The community's common life of prayer, meals, work, hospitality, mutual service and obedience, mutual vision of God's way for the community, under the leadership of an Abbot or Abbess differentiates the monastic community from a group of hermits. 
A case has been made that some of the main proponents of the monastic vision such as St. Bernard and Thomas Merton focus the monastic experience in the individual's encounter with God by their highlighting the mystical dimension of the monastic life.  The question becomes for new monastics how does the community function in the living out of the monastic life.
One of the signs of the new monasticism is a community who live in close proximity to one another.  In the Episcopal Church, however, many forms of the new monasticism assume dispersed communities.  The members of the community maintain regular relationships with one another by email and telephone calls however these relationship lack the depth dimensions of actually sharing life with one another.  The individual lives in the communities of their household, their parish church and the community in which they live.  All these communities lack the common bond of life under the rule which a monastic community provides.  While the communities gather once or twice a year for a convocation, these convocations afford little substitute for rubbing elbows with one another.  A case can even be made that this form of the Benedictine life allows people who might not be able to live in a community with a form of Benedictine life which allows for the individual personalities who aspire to a common life but without the burden of the common life.
On the other hand, the new monasticism, by situating itself in the world and without the discipline and support of a local community does present to the individual members, to the church and to the world an experience of God which relies on the community in which one finds oneself and bringing to those communities a heart formed by the Benedictine disciplines and sharing those values with the monastic person's various other communities. 
The new monastic will engage in a deep ascetical and spiritual discipline of prayer, lectio divina, the inner transformation from a person motivated by self will to a person motivated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and work in a spirit of continual prayer.  These practices and disciplines, motivated by love of God, effect an inner transformation in the person.  The monastic formation process, in its initial formation and ongoing formation, challenges the monastic to enter ever more deeply into the grace of the Paschal Mystery given in Baptism and the Holy Eucharist and the gift of monastic profession. 
The new monastic lives out this Benedictine way of life in the world and in the secular and ecclesial communities of their lives bringing to those communities a uniquely Benedictine spirituality. 

Celibacy and the New Monasticism Part Two Trinitarian Dimensions of Ecstatic Sexual Love

     If two of the purposes of the practice of celibacy in traditional monasticism involve the creation of an empty interior place into which God comes to fill that emptiness as well as to bear eschatological witness in the present age of the age to come, then the new monasticism can also function to further these purposes within the context of committed relationships.  By the practice of celibacy as a new monastic, the person then bears witness to the broader Christian community, who also practice a form of committed love, that they too can access these depth dimensions within their respective relationships with their spouse and with God.
     Traditionally, the teaching of St. Augustine on the function of interior longing formed a part of the practice of traditional celibacy:  You made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.  The inner resting of the heart in God, the development of a bridal relationship with Christ, the consummation of divine union in the Holy Spirit bring a Trinitarian dimension to the practice of celibacy and open the heart of the celibate to union with God in that place of inner emptiness which is filled by God.  However all persons experience this inner longing and emptiness.  Every person experiences solitude, even in chaste relationships.  The new monastic needs to negotiate with family to carve out those periods of time when they retreat into solitude for the daily office, lectio divina and sacred study.  The cultivation of this interior life of prayer deepens the dimension of solitude and creates that place where the deep transformation of the person through the monastic disciplines of silence, humility, mutual service, unceasing prayer, obedience and renunciation of self will.  For the new monastic, the commitment to the renunciation of self will leads two persons committed to the monastic journey and to one another to discover and renounce those dimensions of self will which erode the depth of mutual self giving.  This intense discipline of living in the truth leads persons to understand themselves as selves in relation not only to one another but also to God.  Living in the truth opens them to the realities of both sin and grace in their lives.  As they mutually walk this path of living in the truth, which is living in humility, they not only discover how their self will destroys their relationship but also how grace heals brokenness and leads to wholeness.  Such a deep living out of their mutual transformation leads to purity of heart, the goal of the monastic journey.  In discovering their graced selves, in their continued journey to move deeper into the purification of the heart and the transformation of the heart through grace, they discover in their mutual journey that they travel deeper not only into mutual self knowledge and transformation but also into the Trinitarian dimensions of their relationship with God. 
     The purpose of the monastic transformation lies in the discovery of the self in God and God in the self.  This state of mutual indwelling deepens as the monastic enters ever more deeply into the Paschal mystery of Christ discovering that the more self is surrendered, the more the true self is discovered.  (Thomas Merton develops this theme of the discovery of the true self as one of the purposes of the monastic journey.)  If the heart of the Trinitarian mystery happens in the total gift of self by God the Source to God the Word and the return of that gift by the Word and their mutual love in their gift to each other who is the Holy Spirit and the mutual indwelling of the three persons in one another, then the relationship of the mystery of marriage as a sacramental sign of the mutual gift of one person to another and their dwelling with each other becomes a sacramental sign of the indwelling of the Holy Trinity.  The sanctification of sexual love becomes a means of entering into this ecstatic love of the Trinity and a sign of the fulfillment of human love in the love of the Trinity.