CAMALDOLESE CONGREGATION OF THE ORDER OF SAINT BENEDICT

PASTORAL DIRECTIVES AND DELIBERATIONS

of the 1999 General Chapter

 
Held at Camaldoli and Fonte Avellana 27 September through 20 October 1999

Note: The following selections were assembled by Fr. Michael Fish, the oblate chaplain, as being most relevant to oblates before being retyped by an oblate in the spring of 2000.
 
 

Letter from the Prior General

I:   Our Identity

II:    Formation

IV:   Monastic Presence

V:   Elected Simplicity
 

Holy Hermitage of Camaldoli

All Saints, November 1, 1999
 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Here are the Pastoral Directives and Deliberations of the 1999 general chapter.  I place in your hands what each one of you contributed as individuals and as communities during the past year, preparing the chapter of the Camaldolese family. We spent three weeks in the general assembly at Camaldoli (Sept. 27 to Oct. 2) and in the capitular assembly at Fonte Avellana (Oct. 3-20).  These assemblies were the focal point of the new energies generated by our sharing in the rich heritage of reflection and experience on the “building site” of the various communities.

The traditional expression used by monastics – to “celebrate” a chapter – gives us an insight into the event as a work of the Holy Spirit.  The experience of sharing in what we have been living and seeking has given us a sign and has led us into newness of life, over and beyond the dynamic and the logic of our human relationships.

This fall’s two assemblies have “recapitulated” the work already done, and now, with the Pastoral Directives in our hands, we are to begin working as a “synod” in the original sense of the Greek roots: “to travel together.”  Now is the “favorable time” to take further steps on the road already traveled, and to extend the “network” of communication that makes us a monastic congregation.  This is the phase of receptio, that is, a time for interiorization, in-depth study, inculturation, and concrete application of the guidelines regarding general themes and the various Camaldolese communities, which the general chapter has expressed in these directives and deliberations.  In the course of the next few months, in order to foster these objectives, we shall publish an organic collection of the material that stimulated our research and that resulted from it: extracts from the “Working Paper,” the reports given to the two assemblies, and general pastoral directives.
 

1. At the center of our search was the theme: “Camaldolese Identity in the Coming Millennium.”  The communities and the chapter took up the challenge implied by this title.  Now we can see how fruitful, stimulating, and enriching was this search.  We found the deep roots and saw the concrete forms in which the monastic charism of Saint Romuald and Camaldoli has been expressed in history and can today be expressed with consistency and creativity.  The chapter offers us sound reference points and ample room for development, creativity, and responsibility.  Our shared memory and common future teach us that the present, for all its poverty and brokenness, is a “favorable time” for receiving and owning the grace of our monastic life and for collaborating with God’s Spirit, who surprises us with the new story he is writing in our life.
 

The hope within us, made stronger by what we have experienced in the last few months, is not the fruit of easy optimism.  We have also learned to see our shadow side for what it is, the contradictions that slow our steps on the monastic path.  But our hope teaches us to recognize the precious spiritual treasure handed down to us during these thousand years, as well as the other treasure, no less meaningful, that our monks and nuns have gathered during the last decades of this century.  These brothers and sisters spared themselves nothing in their commitment to monastic life within the constantly changing reality of today.  They have entrusted the heritage to our generation, that we in turn may keep the flame lit and foster further evolution.  Camaldolese identity, permanent formation, initiation of new generations into the mystery that dwells with and in us, evolve consistently into presence and witness, the sharing of our treasures.  These were the themes before the general chapter, and you will find them hear.

 
The Camaldolese identity, now more than ever, is clearly a dynamic balance among various spiritual and structural elements united in fruitful tension; it is the awareness of the value of our own experience, linked with the cordial acceptance of others’ experience; it is a search for an inner disposition and an outward style that joins together men and women in an exceptional charism uniting solitude and communion, rootedness and universality, historical memory and openness to the present and the future, an essential spirit with a rich embodiment.

 

By reflecting on Camaldoli’s thousand year tradition and on the last few decades, on the inner structure of our spiritual path as symbolically expressed in the “threefold good” of Saint Bruno Boniface (Constitutions art. 3; see below I: 4, II: 4), we discover an important fact: the tension between different poles, the search for a delicate and mutable balance among them, is a structural fact of the monastic identity of Romuald and Camaldoli.  We have to learn to live consciously with this fact, since it is part of our genetic code.  If we accept it mindfully, it has great potential.  If we endure it passively, it is a continual torment.  The underlying dynamic of the pastoral directive on Formation (see below, II) revolves around this central nucleus and around the need to progressively introduce candidates to this awareness, making it the ground of their experience and of the style of relating interpersonally and as communities.

 

2. This is the horizon within which we are to rethink the meaning and expression of our relationship as monks and nuns within the one Camaldolese family (see below, III: 3).  The same applies to our Monastic Presence (IV), with its diverse expressions in the church and civil society, as well as to our networking and collaborating with lay persons, oblates, and friends of our communities, whose inner life shares affinities with our monastic experience (see III: 3; IV: 3; IV).

 

The general chapter reaffirmed, in accordance with the structure established by our Constitutions, the twofold role of the Prior general as local Prior of the community of Camaldoli (Holy Hermitage, Monastery of Camaldoli, and Monastery of Saint Gregory in Rome) and as Prior general of the Congregation; he thus remains as a visible symbol of this dynamic unity and of a communion that is nourished by differences (Const. art. 233).  The various organizational structures will then foster his organic animation of the community of Camaldoli and of the other communities within the new historical context of our Congregation, as it expands and diversifies.  To facilitate his task as local Prior, a stronger role will be attributed to the three vicepriors within each house; to facilitate that of Prior general, the functions of the three assistants and the master of the general studentate will be more precisely organized (see III: 1-2; VI).

 

At the end of a lengthy process of experimentation and evaluation, the community of Camaldoli requested that the general chapter render definitive the tri-polar structure of Camaldoli, granted by the 1993 general chapter for a six-year period of experimentation (Const. 233-240; Pastoral Directives 1993, 2.3).  This general chapter definitively confirmed the new structure (see VII: 1).  This is an important reality for Camaldoli and a meaningful symbol for the Congregation.

 

Our growth as a Congregation and the ongoing consolidation of our communities is reflected in the strengthening of their juridical condition.  The Venerable Hermitage of Fonte Avellana , reinforced by the presence of several brothers beginning in 1993, has received from this chapter the restoration of its original condition as an autonomous (sui juris) community (see VIII: 1).  Saccidananda Ashram, Shantivanam (India) has been elevated to the status of semi-dependent house subject to the Prior general and the general council (Const. 21; see below X: 1).

 

3. The general chapter has called the following brothers to serve in the animation of our Congregation:

Prior general: Dom Emanuelle Bargellini (confirmed).
Ordinary general council: Brother Gianni Dal Piaz, first assistant (confirmed); Brother Ivan Nicoletto, second assistant; Dom Thomas Matus, third assistant.
Extraordinary general council: Dom Joseph Wong, first visitator, Dom Franco Mosconi, second visitator.
Master of the general studentate: Dom Innocenzo Gargano.
In my own name and in that of the brothers called to serve with me, I renew our thanks for all the monks and nuns who have contributed so much energy to the preparation of this last general chapter of the millennium; they have given it a quality of wisdom and insight, of gratitude for what preceding generations have experienced, and of trusting openness to what the future will bring.
 
We are particularly grateful to the community of Fonte Avellana for offering the members of the capitular assembly an ideal spiritual and material environment for their work.  With them, the brothers at the Monastery of Saints Blaise and Romuald in Fabriano, in spite of the earthquake damage there, made it possible to celebrate our pilgrimage to the tomb of holy father Romuald together with the whole family of his sons and daughters.  There we each renewed our monastic profession in his presence, committing ourselves solemnly to a journey of fellowship in the Lord’s service and entrusting ourselves to God as we meet the challenges and opportunities before us.
 

With love, your brother

 

Dom Emanuele Bargellini

 

Prior General

I: OUR IDENTITY

1 - Today’s history, guided by God’s mysterious plan no less than was the history of times past, is adding details to the outline of our identity.  As we let ourselves be “wounded by the sword of history,” we turn to Jesus and the Gospel, seeking the roots and the criteria of our life as Christian monastics, in relation to both past and present.

1.1 - With all humankind we are involved in a paradigm shift, the passage from a static to a dynamic vision of reality as a grand process of energy exchange and a system of interacting phenomena.  Humanity itself is part of this process, aware of, and responsible for, its own becoming.  We can either hold back the further development of this process, or we can actively promote it.  Humankind that is bringing a new life to birth urgently needs to foster its own spiritual growth, so that it may see history in a new light and invent new human qualities.  New attitudes of the heart, new spaces for creating, welcoming, dialoguing, and reconciling must be invented, exercised, and shared.  We make ourselves available to life’s discoveries, so that history may continue to unfold.  Monastics themselves are caught up in this flow, which extends beyond the dimensions of their life.

2 - The identity of the Camaldolese Benedictine monk/nun has its beginning and its end in the subsistent relations of God, which by faith we call Father, Word, and Holy Spirit [cf. Jn 1:1 ff].

2.1 - We are sharers in the divine nature [cf. 1 Pt 1:4] thanks to the incarnate Word, the one mediator Jesus Christ [cf. 1 Tm 2:5], a human being like us in all things but sin [cf. Hb 4:15].  In him and in his body we contemplate the fullness of the Godhead [cf. Col 2:9] and we find our full identity as God’s sons and daughters.

2.2 - By the gift of the Holy Spirit we have been called to the monastic life in the Church, with whom we journey as pilgrims in the company of the women and men of this last year of the millennium, whose joys, hopes, anguish, and pain we share [cf. Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World].

3 - In the Church we rejoice in the fellowship of the holy men and women who have lived according to the Rule of Saint Benedict and according to the example of his life [see Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues, book two].

3.1 - Among the saints of the Benedictine Order shines Master Romuald, father of the Camaldolese monks and nuns.  Letting ourselves dream, we saw our general chapter as a workshop, a building site, an artist’s studio, where we let our Teacher, the Holy Spirit, guide our hand, as we work on painting the icon of Saint Romuald.

3.2 - We were all looking at this icon as it slowly took form under our contemplative gaze, filled with wonder.  We did not view the image possessively or in opposition to anyone, but seeing it as a grace we gave thanks.  While the work continues, we can already make out the features of Romuald’s face, showing the gentleness and strength that were his own and reflecting the face of today’s monks and nuns.  The shape of his and our identity is clearer now, with lines drawn from our memory and our future.

3.3 - We have come to Romuald’s cell, trusting him like so many sick and needy persons of his day.  Those who wrote his story – Peter Damian and Bruno Boniface – described him for us: a person filled with the Holy Spirit, his warm and serene face lit by a gentle smile.

3.4 - When the time of our toil comes to an end, other hands and other awestruck and contemplative gazes will gather around this unfinished icon of Saint Romuald.  The final brushstrokes will be applied to the golden background by the last monk and nun who will be at work together in the iconographer’s studio…

4 - Together with the image of Master Romuald, his first disciples also outlined his global vision of the monastic vocation, one in its source and manifold in its ramifications.  The reference to the “threefold good” (triplex bonum, tripla commoda, tria maxima bona), taken up into the text of our Constitutions from chapter four of The Life of the Five Brothers by Saint Bruno Boniface, is understood in a more dynamic sense today, as an efficacious symbol of a deep and rich mystery:

“…a threefold advantage: the life of the monastery, which is what novices want; golden solitude, for those who are mature and thirst for the living God; and the preaching of the Gospel to the pagans, for those who long to be set free and to be with Christ” [in: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers, p. 95].

4.1 - The distinction between a spiritual value (fellowship, solitude, martyrdom of love) and a place (cenobium, hermitage, mission) should be kept in mind.  A value is not to be identified with a place, nor do they exactly overlap; yet they are related, and the one evokes and expresses the other.  The three terms are not structured as a scale of values, nor do they follow one after the other in the monastic’s inner journey, which can begin and end with any one of the three.

4.2 - The three terms are equal in dignity, in the sense that each one is able to lead the monastic to the fulfillment of his or her spiritual journey.  Bruno Boniface reminds us of this in chapter seven of The Life of the Five Brothers:

“…the three highest goods, any one of which is sufficient unto salvation: the monastic habit, the solitary life, and martyrdom” [in: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers, p. 95]

4.2.1 - However, the three terms differ among themselves in ways that must be kept in mind, in order to give each of them its full value.  The common life and the solitary life have taken on, in the past and still today, institutional forms as monastery and hermitage.  The third element, that is, witnessing to love for Christ to the point of shedding one’s blood in the service of the Gospel, is a pure grace.  As an expression of unconditional love for him, it underlies and profoundly animates the other two elements.  It can find an exceptional expression, in the personal vocation of an individual monastic, even outside monastic institutions.

4.2.2 - The three goods thus relate to, and interact with one another, and they cannot be reduced to a rigid institutional scheme.  Nonetheless, the age-old pedagogical wisdom of monastic tradition has shown us that solitude can become “golden,” that is, it can be lived as the expression and source of authentic vitality, only if the monastic has experienced life together for a long period and thus has been formed and trained for the single-handed spiritual combat that is the challenge, more demanding than any other, of the solitary life.

4.3 - Saint Romuald’s charism is characterized by an intrinsic dynamism:

4.3.1 - We should distinguish between Romuald’s personal charism, its evolution in subsequent history, and the institutions derived there from, which the Camaldolese have created in order to give the charism a concrete form.  Romuald’s charismatic experience never could be totally translated into an institutional structure.  Every time it has been so translated, in so far as the structure is unable to convey its entire meaning, the charism has in some way been betrayed.  Thus the institution must continually return to, and draw from, the source out of which it sprang.

4.3.2 - Within this horizon, the identity that comes to us from Romuald and the origins of Camaldoli remains relative, dynamic, and open.  In the light of its origins and its possibilities of future development, our identity is always broader and deeper than anything we can express within a given historical moment and a particular cultural context.  Its ramifications extend back into the remembered past, sink deep into the present, and reach far into a future waiting to be lived, explored, and known.  A faithfulness both dynamic and creative is the only way we can respond to the One who says, “Behold! I am making the whole creation new” [Rev 21:5].  We can live faithfully only if we acknowledge our roots, our temporality, and our limitations, with humility and with a grateful joy.  Here there is no room for arrogance or for competition with brothers and sisters who acknowledge the same father, although they have made different journeys in history (Monte Corona, Camaldolese nuns, etc.).  The horizon before us is one of reconciled and complementary diversities.

II: FORMATION

1 - The initiation into monastic life is a process of heartfelt acceptance and joyful celebration of the divine grace that precedes us and in which the Lord makes us sharers by faith.  Every monk and nun, touched by the Gospel of the unconditional love of the Father in Jesus, consents in the Spirit to the opening of the heart, a process of lifelong transfiguration that embraces the whole experience of the person.

1.1 - In the prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict (RB prol. 45), the monastic community is called “a school for God’s service.”  Thus the whole community forms its own members and at the same time has continual need of formation.  To this end the community is committed to preparing a ratio for initiation into monastic life and a program for ongoing formation according to a yearly or several-year cycle.  The prior will nominate those responsible for the formation programs.  Within the forming community, the prior and those charged with monastic initiation share the more direct responsibility for forming candidates.

1.2 - The general chapter reminds all the members of our Congregation, and especially the formators, to read attentively chapter 7 of our Constitutions together with the pastoral directives and deliberations of the 1993 general chapter and the 1996 consulta.  We reaffirm the importance of lectio divina, the centrality of the person, and openness to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue as fundamental elements of Camaldolese formation.

1.3 - During initiation into Camaldolese monastic life, it is necessary to insist on the candidates putting down roots in the community, so as to strengthen their sense of belonging.  The community offers candidates the vital environment and the natural support for their journey, which must first form in them a sound personal conscience, for only thus can they acquire a sense of community.

1.4 - Masters of postulants, novices, and junior monks are called to play the role of “mystagogues” who introduce the candidates into the grace of monastic living and into the life-style of the community.  They are to unite the application of fixed programs with attention to the gifts the Holy Spirit places in every heart and to the seeds the Spirit scatters in the new realities that are emerging.

2 - A useful instrument both for initial and ongoing formation can be Saint Romuald’s “little rule” transmitted by his disciples, which sums up his spirit and his teaching method:

“Sit in your cell as in paradise.  Forget the world and cast it all behind you.  Keep watch over your thoughts like a good fisher watching for fish.  The one way for you is in the Psalms – never stray from it.  If you have just come to the monastic life, and in spite of your first fervor you do not succeed in praying as you would like, keep trying, now here, now there, to sing the Psalms in your heart to understand them with your mind.  If some thought distracts you, do not stop reading; hurry back to the page and apply your mind to it again.  Above all place yourself in God’s presence and stand there with the humble mien of one who stands before the emperor.  Empty yourself completely and sit like a little chick, content with God’s grace; for if God, like a mother, does not feed you, you will have nothing to taste, nothing to eat.” [The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers, p. 158]

2.1 - Since Saint Romuald’s charism has its roots in the age-old Benedictine monastic tradition, we need to deepen our understanding of it by reading the Fathers of the Church and by renewing our spiritual and theological understanding of monastic sources.  In this context, the general chapter invites every community and above all those responsible for formation to introduce the younger generations to the spiritual heritage and the thousand-year history of the Camaldolese, while keeping an openness to the challenges of contemporary history and the changes taking place in today’s culture.

3 - To be a Camaldolese Benedictine, one must first of all “become a monk.”  In Christian monastic tradition the term “monk” means especially the person who is simplified and united, that is, without duplicity and division.  “To have an undivided heart” is the chief characteristic of a monastic person.  In harmony with this understanding, the general chapter delineates the monk as a person who is “unified in oneself and centered on Christ in the Spirit.”  This description implies a global formation.  To become a unified person, psychological and human maturity is necessary.  But by itself this is insufficient.  To be truly united in oneself, the monastic must be centered on Christ, who is the center of gravitation for our personal integration.  In this process, the action of the Holy Spirit is indispensable, for the Spirit is the one who unites us to Christ.  When Saint Benedict exhorts us to “prefer nothing to the love of Christ” (RB 4:21), he brings to light the relationship that defines monastic formation.

4 - In view of the close link between identity and formation, the triplex bonum that underlines a characteristic of the Camaldolese charism must also be the pattern for our formation program.  In fact the 1996 consulta presents the triplex bonum as a spiritual journey every monastic is called to make: “Regarding the theme of the triplex bonum, the prior and the formators are to present it as a journey that every Camaldolese is called to live, in the koinonia of life together, in the experience of solitude, until full maturity is achieved in total self-giving” (Consulta 1996, Pastoral Directives and Deliberations 2.3).

4.1 - Living together as brothers and sisters is the first good.  It is founded on personal relationships, through understanding, mutual acceptance, dialogue, and service.  This fellowship culminates in the community’s celebration of the sacred liturgy.

4.2 - Solitude, the second good, indicates both an external environment and an inner disposition.  The monastic seeks to cultivate a spirit of silence and attention aimed at quies, that is, hesychia, which must accompany the monastic’s entire existence.  The solitude of the cell offers the favorable context for listening to God’s Word and uniting intimately with God through personal prayer.  In turn the practice of lectio divina and personal prayer enrich the monastic’s silence (cf. Constitutions of Bd. Rudolph 44).

4.3 - Finally, the third good, which is called evangelium paganorum or martyrium (The Life of the Five Brothers, chapters 4 and 7), expresses the radicality of monastic dedication and the fullness of Romuald’s charism.  The chief characteristic of the third good consists in unconditional love or total self-giving.  This is manifested in different ways, such as reclusion and the martyrium amoris that takes on the many forms of everyday living.  Every monastic is called to live the three goods in a particular place – a monastery or a hermitage- but the third good can go beyond institutional structures and find new expression under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

4.4 - A synthesis of the triplex bonum can be seen also in the life of Jesus: his fellowship with the disciples based on the law of love and mutual friendship, his frequent withdrawing into lonely places for prayer and silent listening, his total dedication to the proclamation of God’s reign to the point of giving his life on the cross.  The life of Jesus, guided by the Holy Spirit, thus presents us an excellent example of the triplex bonum.

5 - Both the idea of the monastery as a school and the understanding of the triplex bonum as a spiritual journey require that the Camaldolese monastic formation be an open-ended process.  Rather than marking an end of a journey, solemn profession is a new starting point for a spiritual itinerary that a monastic follows until death.  To keep on this path, one must be committed to re-reading the monastic sources, especially those of the Camaldolese tradition, and to deepening a lived experience of our charism.  The chapter recommends that each community organize courses and conferences on monastic and human themes, encouraging the participation of all members, including seniors.  All should have the opportunity to attend other courses, even outside the community.

6 - Today the monastic communities that make up our Congregation are facing a growing complexity in areas of culture, social life, and the church.  In setting up its formation program, each community should consider its concrete context.  Its formation program must be focused on the common Camaldolese monastic charism within its own peculiar social, cultural, and religious situation.  Furthermore, those charged with the delicate task of monastic initiation to adapt the formative process to each person’s needs and capacities, giving particular attention to the time they need in order to reach maturity as monastics, while respecting the canonical phases of the formation program.

 

IV: MONASTIC PRESENCE

1 - One aspect of our Camaldolese identity that makes it open and dynamic is our relationship with the world in which we live, so different in each epoch, country, and culture.

1.1 - The one Spirit disseminates the endless variety of gifts in the church, in the hearts of men and women of every time and place, and in the whole created universe.  We are all inwardly driven by this effusion of love, that we might learn to live no longer centered on ourselves, but eccentrically, open to the trinitarian life, to the Christ who lives in us.  The monastic community, a fragment of that immense life, is intent on incarnating and communicating, by its very presence, the good news of the hospitable and trustworthy love of God [cf. Constitutions 122-126].

1.2 - We acknowledge that hospitality and witness are exercised chiefly through the celebration of God’s mystery and the great and humble power of the human heart.  Free and heartfelt closeness to our brothers and sisters, cordial hospitality to our joys and our brokenness, simply, everyday service, sober delight in celebrating the liturgy, divine presence in silent prayer, ever–new wonder of faith, passionate retelling of the stories of Jesus, of his dying and rising – these are the threads that weave our fragile history

1.3 - Monastic hospitality is the trait that typifies our being in the world.  Especially today, with the changes that affect our consciousness and our history, we are called and challenged from all sides to make room for hospitality and dialogue.  In this way, and with humble courage, we can become seeds of prophecy in the various countries and cultures where we live.  We are convinced that it is not a matter of “doing” many things, but of fostering sensitivity, a qualitatively new attitude of receptivity, discernment, and understanding of the forms of human living that are emerging, new forms that the Spirit is bringing forth from within the deeds, the hearts, and the language of human beings.

2 - Great are the speed and complexity of the changes taking place, with all the ambivalence, lights and shadows, creative thrust and resistance to the Good that flow through the human body.  In the light of these changes, each monastic community, in its own way, is called to become:

2.1 - A place of contemplation that enables contemporary humanity to feel that all life, pulsating, growing, and transforming itself, channels the inexhaustible flow of a greater mystery that wells up in the fountain of our adoration.  Guests will find in our monasteries a reminder that the closer we are to the Presence, the deeper our silent adoration.  Like Elijah at Horeb, we experience God in a still, small breath.

2.2 - An environment of friendship and fellowship, where we listen openly to each other.  While human exchange is often no more than a means of individual advantage, utility, competition, possessiveness, indifference, and conformism, a monastery can be a sacramental symbol of another way of being together, a climate where friends have much to give each other, and much to receive.

2.3 - A space for creativity, wisdom, and beauty, a space that fosters, discreetly, passionately, and intensely the dynamics of research, experimentation, and elaboration of new languages in the arts, in music, in poetry, or in science that best expresses contemporary humanity’s consciousness.

2.4 - A place on the margin of society, where we can draw back from the haste and complexity of processes that threaten to overwhelm us, where we can refine our senses and acquire a better and broader view of the underlying movement of change.  A way of belonging to the world that gives us the viewpoint of the stranger, the pilgrim with no fixed abode.

2.5 - A space of reconciliation, where God works through our gestures of welcome and forgiveness, where we make ready to share the burden of evil, sin, resistance, and violence, the wounds of this broken world.  Thus we let the compassionate God work through us the reconciliation and healing of our past and present, our collective history as individuals and as a community.

2.6 - An environment for new forms of holiness.  Simone Weil saw that ours is an epoch without precedent, which today calls for an explicit language of universality – a universality in the face of human wisdom, religions, and culture that must permeate our existence.  “Today it is not enough to be a saint; a saint today must be holy in a way that the present moment demands, a new and unprecedented form of holiness…a new kind of sanctity that springs forth suddenly, a discovery.  The new holiness strips away the thick pall of dust that has up to now covered large areas of truth.”

3 - The members of this general chapter encourage all the current forms of monastic presence, and expressly:

V: ELECTED SIMPLICITY

1 - In a climate of renewed sensitivity and awareness of our being an integral part of the immense web of life, inseparably linked with our natural environment, we are all summoned to promote life attitudes inspired by simplicity [sobrietas].

2 - We realize that today more than ever, humankind is challenged by a savage exploitation of natural and human resources, by the risk of a destructive relationship with nature, by the neuroses of daily life.

3 - The Jewish-Christian tradition teaches that we all share in the creative work of God by fostering life in all its many forms.  Monastic tradition admonishes us to simplify our lives and to use resources and tools with reverence (see Rule of Saint Benedict 31:10).  The story of Saint Romuald (Life of Blessed Romuald, chapter nine) also suggests a way of daily living inspired by elected simplicity.

4 - A special summons goes out to our monks and nuns living in countries that enjoy greater material prosperity, that they may assume a life style of elected simplicity as individuals and as communities, thereby bearing witness to their authentic search for God above all else and their concrete love of neighbor.

4.1 - The natural environment of our houses is a gift of God that invites our commitment to respecting and safeguarding life as manifested in the little corner of the cosmos where we live.  Hence it is appropriate that monks and nuns collaborate to this end with other individuals and groups both locally and globally.

4.2 - The physical plant and furnishings of our monasteries and hermitages, both those of recent date and those inherited from past eras, are often of considerable artistic and cultural value.  They should be seen as an opportunity for service to individuals and society, and hence they must be maintained with the care and taste for beauty that also bear witness to the elected simplicity of monastics.