By Mother Irene Dabalus, OSB
A Lectio "Regula" on PROFESSION - "Conversatio Morum"
What the word “conversatio morum” evokes in us today?
“Conversatio morum” appears in our formula of profession. It is the proud title of our spirituality magazine. We bandy it around in our renewal sessions and literature.
However, it eludes our simple understanding (During our formation before Vatican II, it was almost like an exotic word,) not easily to be grasped at first hearing. Indeed, it would need some linguistic research, because it is not easy to grasp at first hearing, not even for our formandees. Though it was common usage during the time of St. Benedict, it went out of use after him. Benedict, however, preferred the term “conversatio”, although it does not appear at all in the Rule of the Master, his prime source material.
Thus, we have to always explain what it is not. It is not merely a vow. It is not just “conversion” as a one-time event which changes the course of our life.
It is not one of the medieval classical “trio” of vows. Embedded in the Latin of the Rule, it is much older, wider, broader, and, in fact, encompasses the whole life of a monastic. So what is it?
Puzzling as it sounds, we kept it as “conversatio morum” in our Constitutions, because we are convinced that it holds the driving force behind our Benedictine commitment seen as a journey from our entrance, through our whole life and until our death in the monastery.
Incarnating the Rule in Real Life
How do we incarnate a term, an ideal, a way of life that goes back to a little book of Rules in the sixth century?
Can we bridge the gap of 15 centuries to enflesh a way of life that seems so remote an ideal for our days?
Yes, we can, if we look back a little later than the 6th century, a century earlier than our own, to the beginnings of the mission of the sisters of our Congregation.
It was in 1905 when our annals chronicle the story of the early missionaries in Ndanda /East Africa and come across one name that shines in our annals.
This is the name of Sr. Walburga Diepolder. We celebrated the centenary of her death on August 29, 2005.
Of course, we know the story and are touched by its heroism. The question is: is this something for us to imitate?
Well, an alternative question would be: can we commit ourselves to the Holy Rule with real seriousness enough to pay for it with the sacrifice of our life?
For the night they were safe but at daybreak the destruction of the mission station took place and everything was set ablaze… The rebels… discovered their hiding place and surrounded them from all sides.
What followed can be read in Sr. Bernardine’s account:
“We 4 sisters, 2 confreres and 7 girls who had fled together with us, prayed from the depths of our hearts…
We tried to escape in the opposite direction, towards the Lukeledi valley.
Thus we ran for 2 hours, barefoot in order not to be betrayed by our footprints… We fled into high grass and lay flat on the ground… We stayed for 5 hours in this hiding place until the darkness of night came.
To our heretofore sufferings was to be added the greatest pain, when we remarked that our dear Sister Walburga was missing. She had remained behind without anyone of us noticing it.
We could not explain it because she had been the most courageous among us and now she was surely lost. We could only recommend her to the dear God in our deeply sorrowing hearts and leave her to her fate…
Having arrived in Lindi, the refugees reported that Sr. Walburga was lost, and the District Office sent out inquiries to search for her.
However, the only information they got was that she had suffered a shot into the hip and could no longer go on, and that the warriors had discovered and killed her…
It was several weeks later that we learned more about her from a missionary who reported: ‘After the attack two of them (Christian boys) had found the wounded sister in the bush.
She had said to the boys: ‘I can still live a while, but I am almost dying of thirst and heat’. Two Christians, Maurus Kunde and Wilhelm Mkube, went to bring her water and ugali, but they were surprised by the rebels and had to flee for their lives… Thus the poor dying sister fell for a second time into the hands of the revengeful rebels.’
It was on August 29, 1905… Later they found only her bloody girdle.
The confrere who had visited the site of the murder with the boys, found only the little booklet of the Rule of St. Benedict which the sister must have carried in her pocket.”
The account continued: “After the last Holy Mass in her mission station, on the day of the flight, she remarked to her Sister Superior that after Holy Communion she had offered herself completely to the Lord and had asked Him most ardently that, if He wanted a sacrifice, He should save the others and take her as a victim for all.”
It is clear that a missionary Benedictine life which finds its climax in dying for others is not formed in a day. No one can rise to the occasion with just a one-shot deal. There must have been previous dyings and risings which preceded her supreme sacrifice.
This chronicle of a death is also the chronicle of a life that spells a daily fidelity to God’s call at every moment.
Such a faithful life – “conversatio morum” – begins with the zeal to the Opus Dei the first thing in the morning.
It accepts the day with its hidden charities and stresses.
It submits to the imposition of a Rule and a superior in everything. Such a life practices extreme patience in relating to brothers and sisters who are different.
Such a life bears death and the signs of death in ill-health and weakness.
Did Sr. Walburga carry the Rule in her pocket everyday to remind her of the commitment she made for life?
A “lectio regula” on “conversatio morum”
Let us now go back to the Holy Rule itself to capture the quintessence of “conversatio” through a “lectio regula.”
This is a test for the seeker, because “conversatio morum” is not given a thematic treatment there. Whereas “silence,” “humility”, “obedience”, the “good zeal”, and the “Work of God”, feature prominently in a special chapter of their own we have to plow throughout the Rule for nuggets of “conversatio”.
The gold is there, but it has to be panned from the text of the Rule. It is there where the Rule regulates the common life, work, exercises and customs of the monks in their myriad life situations in community and monastery.
Indeed, it shines through their entire reality like spun gold in the fabric of their relationships with God, persons, and the material world.
We shall bridge the gap of 15 centuries by engaging the Rule, fingering its text and plowing through its pages to mine the treasure of “conversatio morum”.
Before going to commentaries, we dialogue with the Rule itself and attend to it with the ear of our heart. We hope to catch its luminosity in the common life and prayer of monastics in Benedict’s time and let it light up our own monastic experience today.
Digging the treasure
What does the Holy Rule say about a life of “conversatio morum”?
What are the fields which hide this treasure.
Here I propose specifically the Prologue (49)
- the chapter on the kinds of monks (1:3;12)
- the chapter on the deans of the monastery (21:1)
- the chapter on how the monks are to sleep (22.2)
- the chapter on the admission of monks (58:1;17)
- the chapter on the rank of the community (63:1)
- the chapter on the Rule as only for beginners (73:1;2)
- From these sparse texts emerges the whole content of what we profess as “conversatio morum
The Prologue:
We first meet “conversatio morum suorum” in Prologue 49, there where monastic life takes off – conceived as a journey.
It is, however, already the conclusion to the whole Prologue. In this verse it says that this way of life gives a direction, a goal and a radicality of love that is so intense, it can only be carried through by faith. “But when we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.” (Processu vero conversationis et fidei, dilatato corde inennarabile dilectionis dulcedine curritur via mandatorum Dei.)
Since this is the conclusion of a long Prologue, we can only understand it if we take pains to dig and plow through the body of the Prologue Vv. 1-48 elucidate this direction, goal and radicality of love.
Sr. Aquinata gives us a beautiful approach to the whole of the Prologue as a dialogue between God and the seeker of life. This dialogue is a spiral of calls from the God of life who invites his son and daughter to listen to him with the ear of their heart.
This dialogue is not an imposition but a gentle summons from the God of life and all good to return to Him by the path of obedience from which they had veered away through disobedience.
Every call is an invitation to life and to the good things of life – true life – which ends in delight, a delight of love. And every invitation has an inherent demand to turn to this God of life – in openness, humility, good deeds, obedience, penance, conversion, love, and faith.
A map of life emerges from this Prologue which then becomes the way of life of a monastic = the “conversatio morum suorum”. And when the Rule speaks of a progress or a “processu”, then it shows a journey which is committed to pursue its life-giving draughts. On the road there is no turning back, except when one rejects the God of life.
Panning the Gold
Digging the Prologue for this treasure, we now collect the gold nuggets which make the life of a monastic luminous, shedding light on the reality of “a conversatio”, for this is what the word means – “way of life” for monastics.
God’s calls come as life-giving words nine times in the text:
- First, God the kind father calls us to listen and to fulfill his Word in contra-position to our own will. (Prol 1-4)
- Second, he calls us as his children to obey with the good gifts he has given us. (Prol 5-7)
- Third, he calls us in Holy Scripture to arise, open our eyes and listen and thence, to run
- (Prol 8-13)
- Fourth, he seeks us … to listen… and do good.
- (Prol 14-20)
- Fifth, he calls us –girded – to go his ways and run with good deeds. (Prol 21-22)
- Sixth, he calls once again … to listen… and do justice and do good and respond
- (Prol 23-35)
- Seventh, as a patient and loving Lord he calls us yet one more time to listen… respond…and live. (Prol 36-39)
- Eighth, then once more he calls us to prepare to fight…in obedience, to run and act.
- (Prol 40-44)
- And finally, ninth, he invites us to the school of the Lord’s service… …and to progress in charity and persevere. (Prol 45-50)
- The beauty of these repeated calls from God lies in their inspiration. They spring, emerge, gush forth and issue out of the living words of Scripture.
- So what is the way of of life – the conversatio morum – mapped out for the monastic in the presentation of the Prologue?
- “Conversatio morum” is preeminently a path whose initiator is God. God is the caller and stands at the beginning of such a life.
- “Conversatio” is an event of freedom where the caller invites a response to his invitation from the monastic in gentle but firm terms, to take the path that leads back to him.
- “Conversatio” is certainly focused on obedience as the path of this return and can only be undertaken in faith – a freedom-based and a faith-based life of obedience.
- Here is where the gold is tested in the furnace and refined in the fire as the life in common under a Rule and an abbot will show in the subsequent demands of the Rule.
- “Conversatio” ends in God where the monastic together with the community arrive at last after a faithful adherence to the will of Him who was faithful to them in their quest and in their journey
- Conversatio morum appears in Let us continue to sift through the passages of the Rule and define more gold nuggets in its fields:
Then we take leave of it in Ch. 73, at the end of the Rule, where we find God together as a community.
However, in Ch. 53 we find it embodied in its true light as a “conversatio morum in processu”, a force for good and towards good which drives the monastic on his onward quest for God with the others in his community.)
– its proper context in RB 53
on admitting brethren/sisters into the community
– the real life situations described in the RB where “conversatio morum” governs the life of the monastic
Gold in the furnace
Where the commitment to “conversatio morum” challenges us today?
Conversatio is gold in the furnace when we look at our life and its day to day challenges.
- The story of Sr. Walburga of Nyangao
- The story of M. Clodesindes
- The story of Sr. Amada
QUESTIONS:
What would be the focus of your heart and feelings in a life of conversatio morum?
Where would your treasures be?