Creative Commons: Monastic life serves God, fires imagination

IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Carol Glatz

VATICAN
CITY (CNS) — Though generally renown for Gregorian chant, curating libraries
and offering quiet retreats, some Benedictine monks also brew beer, run farms
or play electric guitar, like Abbot Primate Nokter Wolf.

Ending
his third and final term as leader of the confederation of Benedictine
monasteries, the 76-year-old German monk also plays in a rock group, named
Feedback, in his spare time, and performs classical and sacred music on
flute.

A
best-selling author, too, Abbot Wolf said he had seen his volume, “What
Are We Waiting For? Heretical Thoughts on Germany,” piled high next to a
stack of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” at the Munich airport’s
newsstands.

It’s
not unusual to find monks pursuing such aesthetic or eclectic endeavors because
they embrace creativity, he told Catholic News Service.

Having
people from different backgrounds living, talking, working and praying together
means “you are rather creative, I would say, in a monastery,” he
said.

But
it also “shows that Christianity is at the roots of human culture,”
which means “it’s so normal, so natural” that the Benedictine order’s
excellence in education, music, historical preservation or agriculture goes
hand in hand with trying to live out the Gospel.

Committed
to serving God and his creation, “Benedictines are close to nature,”
Abbot Wolf said.

For
example, St. Ottilien Archabbey — his home monastery in Bavaria where he will
return after living in Rome since 2000 as abbot primate and head of St. Anselm
College — turns the manure from its 180 dairy cows into biogas, which they
then sell to the local power company.

“We
get more from selling energy than from selling our milk,” he said.

There
are some 250 monasteries of Benedictine men throughout the world, each one with
its own culture, traditions and activities. The important thing, he said, is
that whatever the communities are doing, “we are doing it out of love for
Christ.”

At
the Congress of Abbots Sept. 3-16, abbots and conventual priors from each of
those monasteries were meeting at St. Anselm Abbey in Rome to elect a new abbot
primate.

The
abbot primate lives in Rome to serve as a liaison between the pope and the
Benedictine monasteries, as well as directing St. Anselm Abbey, serving as
chancellor of the Pontifical University of St. Anselm and running the residence
where 120 monks from 40 nations live.

The
abbot primate, he said, has no jurisdiction over other monasteries, which are
all independent and follow their own traditions and cultures.

“I
can’t tell superiors, abbots what they can do,” he said, but he attends
their national meetings to help build unity and collaboration among the order’s
far-flung communities.

Abbot
Wolf said the Rule of St. Benedict helps bring balance to one’s life. While
much of his work required lots of meetings and extensive traveling, “I
know where I am rooted.” Common prayer with his brothers, the Eucharist
and the liturgy are “my anchor,” he said.

The
strong contemplative nature of the Benedictine life doesn’t mean the monks shut
their eyes to the world’s needs, he said.

“I
think just to praise the Lord in church and see people dying” without
being moved to respond is not following the Gospel, he said. “We have to
do something.”

For
today’s Benedictine monks and nuns, St. Benedict’s sixth-century rule means
living out the Gospel together. It’s a communal and constant team effort, he
said, like a soccer or baseball squad would require, only here “you are
training mutual love, training charity.”

Community
life is not easy, he said, but it is there “you can show you are a real
Christian, to stand back and give the other the chance to live” in a
generous, give and take of communal living.

Over
the decades, he said he has seen a positive “change of mentality” in Benedictine
communities, which suffered from what he called an “interpersonal
crisis.”

Monastic
living was thought to entail fulfilling rules and regulations without taking
care “of how the other person, your neighbor, is feeling,” he said.

“But
now they are taking care of themselves and the community” so they can
still have “a sober community, but also a heartfelt living together.”

This
heartfelt hospitality also extends to everyone, he said.

When
guests visit a monastery, he said, “they are also there looking for people
with whom they can talk to about their life. They
have a quiet place where they may discover again the sense of their life, come
back to their roots and to eventually find their roots in God.”


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Glatz on Twitter: @CarolGlatz

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