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.
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.
