LIFE AS A TRAPPIST MONK
“It is customary,” Merton says in The Silent Life, “to begin discussions of Cistercian spirituality with a historical flourish”1 – and so I will begin as custom dictates.
On Palm Sunday in 1098 Robert of Molesmes and a group of monks left their Benedictine monastery and traveled to the woods of Citeaux, there to follow The Rule of St Benedict “to the letter.” As most reform movements tend to be viewed, this one was looked upon with some suspicion and accusations of, among other things, pharisaism, literalism, and fanaticism. Robert of Molesmes and his monks believed that St Benedict had successfully set into rule the simplicity, intentional poverty, and sacrificial love of Christ and the early Christians.
This group of monks came to be known as the Cistercians. “The Cistercian reform aimed,” says Merton, “to restore the pure charity of the early Christians by means of a simple and austere common life.”2 Simplicity and austerity – these two words characterize the life Merton lived as a monk.
In time, the practices within this reform movement became too lax for some, and another reform movement arose at the Abbey of Notre Dame de la Grande Trappe in 1664. This group came to be known as the Trappists.3
The Cistercian family is divided into three groups: the Common Observance, the Middle Observance, and the Strict Observance, also known as the Trappists.4 This last Monastic order is the one to which Merton belonged and is, as the name implies, the strictest of the three. All branches of Benedictine monasticism have a common founder in St Benedict, a sixth-century monk, and a common rule: The Rule of St. Benedict.
The Rule of St Benedict
The Rule of St Benedict is the owner’s manual for the Benedictine life. It is a strict and detailed set of rules and requirements for those who desire to belong to any Benedictine order. “The purpose of the Rule,” according to Merton, “is to form Christ in the soul of a monk in much the same way He was formed in the soul of St. Benedict.”5 The Rule is, in essence, St Benedict’s autobiography, the experiences of his life codified and unadorned; it is his revealing of the outworking of the Gospel of Christ in his life for the benefit of those who would later seek to follow him.
It was not, however, meant to be followed in a manner of pharisaic legalism. “On the contrary,” Merton says, “it is meant to remind us of our human frailty and keep us humble. We are sanctified not merely by those precepts we keep, but by those which we inadvertently break, provided that we make use of the remedies the Rule provides.”6 The Rule serves not as a tool of isolation or punishment, but as a reminder of the inherent weakness and helplessness of man. It is a tool of humility, meant to orient the adherent toward an ever-increasing recognition and reliance on the mercy of God.
Silence, Labor, and Poverty
The discipline of silence is the center of Trappist life. “For it belongeth to the master,” says The Rule of St Benedict, “to speak and to teach; it becometh the disciple to be silent and to listen… coarse jests, and idle words or speech provoking laughter, we condemn everywhere to eternal exclusion; and for such speech we do not permit the disciple to open his lips.” The rule goes on to say, “Therefore, because of the importance of silence, let permission to speak be seldom given to perfect disciples even for good and holy and edifying discourse.” 7
Manual labor is also a staple of Trappist life. “The charity of a life of labor and poverty lived in common,” Merton says, “is meant to prepare the monk for contemplative union with God.”8 To labor and not profit, to rely on God for everything was to Merton identification with the poor whom Christ called blessed.9 Merton sought to establish a mystical unity with Christ by intentionally associating with the poor. “This concept,” says Merton, “is the key to the whole Cistercian theology of labor.”10
“Poverty is the door to freedom,” Merton says in Thoughts In Solitude, “not because we remain imprisoned in the anxiety and constraint which poverty itself implies, but because, finding nothing in ourselves that is a source of hope, we know there is nothing in ourselves worth defending. There is nothing special in ourselves to love.”11
Above all, Trappist life is a life of community, but the community as a whole seeks separation and solitude from the world. The value of poverty is that it causes us to rely on something other than ourselves, and rightly ordered it should drive us toward God and His mercy. It should also compel us toward others with whom we share genuine community.
Daily Schedule
Cistercians rise very early in the morning, between 2:00 and 2:15 AM, to chant. This is followed by half an hour of meditation, and then a stretch near dawn of one and a half to two hours for mass, communion, and Lectio Divina (meditative reading). Prior to another session of chant around 6:15 AM, a meager breakfast of coffee and bread is served. This is followed with a talk given by the Father Abbot and an opportunity for the monks to confess their faults against the Rule. Next this there is another time of Lectio Divina and a mass. The work-day ends when monks return to their reading and chanting before retiring around 7:00 PM.
Each day there are two hours of manual labor in the morning, and another two to two and a half hours in the afternoon. The Trappist diet is quite restricted; no meat, fish, or eggs are served unless one is sick. The regular meal consists of milk, cheese, and vegetables.
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1 Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York, USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 95.
2 Ibid., 96.
3 Wikipedia, “Trappist,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trappist, (accessed November 8, 2007)
4 Wikipedia, “Cistercians,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cistercians, (accessed November 7, 2007)
5 Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York, USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 61.
6 Ibid., 109.
7 Kansas Monks, “Chapter VI, Of Silence,” The Rule of St Benedict, http://www.kansasmonks.org/RuleOfStBenedict.html (accessed November 7, 2007)
8 Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York, USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 97.
9 Matt. 5:2 (ESV).
10 Thomas Merton, The Silent Life (New York, USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 99.
11 Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude (New York, USA: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1980), 53.
