Confession When Everybody Already Knows What You’ve Done

A weekly commentary on the Rule of Benedict: The Fifth Step of Humility (RB 7:44-48)

“The fifth step of humility is that we do not conceal from the prioress/abbot any sinful thoughts entering our hearts, or any wrongs committed in secret, but rather confess them humbly.”

In Benedict’s fifth step on the ladder of humility he says that we have to disclose our sinful thoughts and wrongs we have done to the abbot or prioress. My gut reaction whenever I read this is always “no way!” But my second reaction is to remember a quote I read from an abbot of a Trappist monastery who described community life by saying “we walk around naked.” Obviously no one was physically naked but when people live together in close proximity year after year, there are no secrets. This reality changes what it means to confess thoughts or actions to the abbot or prioress.

My first reaction may be that I don’t want to tell the prioress all the thoughts that are going through my head or the various actions that I’m not proud of but if I am honest I have to admit it isn’t likely I can tell her anything that she (and the whole community!) doesn’t already know. I tend to imagine the prioress responding: “yeah, what else you got?” when I think I am telling her some deep, dark secret. The point and purpose of this disclosure is much deeper.

Several things happen in this process of speaking out loud things that come from within. When I come before the prioress I am consciously stripped of my illusion that I have it together, my illusion that no one is going to notice my short-comings. I am also stripped of my illusion that I am alone on this journey and that everything is up to me. To say out loud what is deep in my heart, especially when it involves things that I don’t like about myself, is to create a new, transformed reality. This stripping of illusions is the basis for humility, creating room for God in my heart.

It is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that we have it together, that since everyone else has the same issues mine don’t really matter. I can get caught in a trap of saying that all my faults are just peccadilloes and the prioress really has better things to listen to. The reality is that one of the most profound things we can experience is to be vulnerable before someone and experience the reality that we are still loved despite what we may have done, said or thought. Without the action of actually saying what is going on in our head and having someone hear it with love, we don’t change, we simply re-run the same thoughts, actions, patterns on our mental hamster wheel without ever changing. To come before someone and say out loud what we would rather not face is the beginning of change.

This disclosure of thoughts is also a correction to the feeling that many of us have that somehow our spiritual growth is entirely up to us. Our culture tends to reinforce the idea that each of us is autonomous and responsible for our own fate. Benedict’s ladder of humility is a reminder that while we are responsible for ourselves we are also responsible for one another. This in turn means that I have support on the journey. The prioress listens not to chastise or punish but to remind each sister that she does not walk this path alone but is supported by an entire community. Benedict has his monks talk to the abbot, we talk to the prioress, to be reminded that we are not alone. When we walk this path together we all share each others burdens and the joys.

Perhaps the most profound lesson for humility in this step is how things change when we say them out loud. Reality changes when words are spoken out loud. Our deepest fears, joys, feelings of guilt or happiness, change when we express them. Joy that is shared expands in the telling. Shame that is exposed to the light of day in the telling begins to dissipate. Thoughts and actions that are shared with the prioress in love take on a new shape. They begin to form the soil of humility, the soil of transformation.

Benedict’s admonitions have an application far beyond any monastic community. We are called to share deeply of our thoughts and actions with someone we trust. It is in risking, trusting, speaking and listening that we open our hearts and cultivate the soil of humility in our lives.

Humility in Everyday Life: Bells

Our monastic life is circumscribed by bells. We have chimes that are heard over the intercom ten minutes before time for prayer or Mass. The large bells are then tolled to remind anyone outside that it is time for prayer. After Mass or Mid-Day Prayer one of the bells is rung for the Angelus prayer. After a sister dies we toll the bell as a way of announcing her passing. During a funeral we begin to ring the bells as everyone moves up to the cemetery and we continue to ring them until people begin to come down.

For us the bells are part of a function of monastic humility, they remind us to come back to our center who is God. There seems to be something in the human condition that our default mode is to be self-centered. When we aren’t thinking, aren’t aware, we automatically act as if we are the center of the universe. Our own personal concerns and desires become the most important thing going on.

The bells are a wake-up call, sometimes they are a rude awakening, giving us a rough push off of our throne at the center of our lives. The bells remind us that this life is about God. The bells call us to be mindful, to be present, to listen, to come into the presence of God. Benedict calls on his monks to drop everything when they hear the signal for prayer. It isn’t easy to do. Each of us is the star actor in the drama of our lives and we don’t like to be interrupted. The bell always rings just when we are in the middle of an important project, just when we are finally inspired in a piece of writing, just when we are in the middle of something important. It is at that moment we have to drop everything to go and pray. This isn’t praying when we feel like it or when we decide that the Spirit has moved, it is praying according to someone else's schedule.

The bells remind us that time is not our own. Every moment is a gift, not an entitlement. Hearing the bells interrupts us. They say: listen, pay attention, what are you doing with your one and only life? Time will not be repeated. The moments are one time gifts, will you let them slip away or stop and give thanks in an attitude of stunned amazement?

The bells themselves are a gift. Bells are unique to a monastery, most people don’t have anyone to ring a bell to remind them to come to prayer, to stop and pay attention to God in the gift of the moment. This is why Benedict says that his Rule is a little rule for beginners. Monastics are in the remedial course of spirituality, they have external bells and reminders to bring them back to the presence of God. The bells are a luxury of the monastery.

But for everyone, monastics or not, it is not the bell itself that is important. You can live in a monastery and ignore the bells and continue with your self-important busyness rather than respond to their call. Outside a monastery you can create your own bell, your own reminder and call to stop, to listen, to pay attention and come back to the gift of God in the present moment. It is harder outside the monastery but we all have a choice. Will we listen to the bell, will we stop and give thanks, will we return to our center who is God? Listen says the bell. Listen, it is the call to humility, the call to come back to the center, the call to be present to God.

Humility in Everyday Life: Yogurt Cups

Every time Sr. Carol Ann sees a plastic yogurt cup she starts to twitch. OK, that isn’t fair, it isn’t like her mother was scared by a carton of yogurt when she was pregnant with Carol Ann and that has caused a life long fear of yogurt, the problem is recycling. We recycle almost everything here, from bottles to cardboard to foil to little plastic yogurt cups. The problem is that there is someone who eats yogurt and then just throws the container in the trash, leaving it for Carol Ann to fish it out, rinse it and put it with the rest of the recycling.

It isn’t a big issue, it is just one person and one little plastic container, but in some ways it symbolizes what humility is all about. Humility is central to Benedictine life. In Benedict’s Rule he sets forth the idea that we grow into humility. We progress in humility slowly, step by step. We gradually move from fear to love, from being consumed with ourselves to being filled with God. This growth is the work of a life time and it is appropriate that the work of becoming humble consists not of great, grand gestures and ostentatious accomplishments but little actions and incremental progress.

Humility is a lot like recycling yogurt cups. It is a little thing. It seems hard to believe that it will really make any difference whether I throw this container away or take some extra time to clean it and put it in the recycling bin. It requires a different way of seeing the universe. It takes humility to realize that humility itself is the sum of many, many little actions that flow from a new way of looking at the world. Recycling is a small act of reverence for the universe, a tiny way to make a difference, to make sure one less piece of trash winds up in a landfill.

Humility is a way of giving thanks for all that we have been given by God. In humility we give up the some of the room that is taken by our self-centeredness and give ourselves the room to be thankful. The opposite of humility is arrogance, the arrogance that takes gifts for granted. We are arrogant when we see a sunset and are too preoccupied to not let it take our breath away. We are humble when give thanks that we have so much food that we have the privilege of worrying about containers rather than where our next meal will come from. It is arrogance that assumes nothing I do will make a difference. Humility allows us to give thanks for little actions, gestures and gifts. In humility we give thanks for those who put their heart into making a difference for our planet.

In Benedict’s ladder of humility, the last step describes humility as a state in which perfect love casts out fear. That is the key to humility and to recycling yogurt cups. When we do all the right things, when we carefully wash our yogurt cups and put them in recycling, but we do it out of duty, or guilt or because we are afraid Sr. Carol Ann will discover that we are the ones who have been throwing them away, we aren’t acting from humility. Our actions may be good, the right thing is done, but neither our selves nor our earth has been transformed in the process. When we come to a place of humility we are able to do the smallest things out of love. In this transformed place we come to see that the love of God, love of God’s gift of creation, love of our brothers and sisters, is manifested in all we do. In this place even the smallest actions, the smallest yogurt containers in the recycle bin, are expressions of reverence, thanks and care.

Humility in Everyday Life: Applesauce

At first humility and apple sauce don’t look like they have much in common, but I think they do. A couple of days ago I helped pick apples that we will use for apple sauce. The apples were from an old apple tree and we mostly picked them up off the ground. The next day I realized, or my legs told me in no uncertain terms, that I don’t usually do so much bending. So as I walk around rather tenderly I am reminded of what goes into our homemade applesauce. Normally when we eat apple sauce or any other processed food we simply open a can, jar or package without thinking how it got to our plate except to remember our trip through the grocery store.

On the other hand when we eat apple sauce here at the monastery we know where it comes from and that is part of humility. Anyone who has ever read the Rule or any Benedictine spirituality knows that humility is a big topic. Benedict delineates 12 separate steps on the “ladder” of humility. It is a leit motif in the Rule, in the background as the unifying thread throughout the many practical provisions of everyday life.

Humility is often explained in abstract terms, as a goal or ideal, a personal quality. But it may be helpful to explore what humility may look like in the everyday life of a monastery or anyone’s everyday life. For most of us humility is the very steep ladder that we don’t often feel we are ascending either quickly or well, but humility is also a characteristic that permeates our way of life. Humility is what reminds us we are not in control, that we are vulnerable and dependent. Humility is what allows us to be open, grateful, to receive everything as gift.

Humility comes from the root word humus, or earth. When we are humble we are reminded not of our exalted status but of our lowliness, our rootedness, that we were created from the earth. Making apple sauce helps bring us to that state of gratitude, not clinging and entitled to everything we can grasp, but standing with hands open to the gifts of God and the earth.

The humility of apple sauce connects us with the reality that our food does not magically appear in a package from an antiseptic grocery store. We don’t automatically get apple sauce just because we want it, we will get apple sauce if the gifts of God and our hard work come together in a serendipitous union. If the rains don’t come, if the bugs and the blight do come, there won’t be apples. If people aren’t willing to risk sore legs to pick the apples, if others don’t take time out of their busy lives to sort, cut, cook and prepare the apples, if others don’t give of themselves in service to set it out at the meal, then there will be no apple sauce.

There is no entitlement, there is presumption that there will always be homemade apple sauce on the table, it is a gift. It is a gift of many peoples labor, a gift of God who holds the harvest, it is a gift that we can never take for granted. For Benedict humility is about being filled with God rather than ourselves. The final summit of humility is coming to a place where love casts out the fear. At this summit of humility love will banish the fear that has fed our illusion that we are the center of the universe. At the top of the ladder of humility we will no longer be caught in our sense of arrogant entitlement. When we are humble we will be thankful for all the gifts that fill and sustain our every moment. In humility we can give thanks for the smallest gifts, for homemade applesauce, because we know that the smallest gifts are very great indeed.

Humility

62 The twelfth step of humility is that a monk always manifests humility in his bearing no less than in his heart...65 and constantly say in his heart what the publican in the Gospel said with downcast eyes: Lord, I am a sinner, not worthy to look up to heaven (Luke 18:13).

67 Now, therefore, after ascending all these steps of humility, the monk will quickly arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear (1 John 4:18). 68 Through this love, all that he once performed with dread, he will now begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, from habit, 69 no longer out of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue.
RB 7:62-69


I want to skip over the twelfth step of humility and go right to the top of the ladder. All the talk of judgment is off-putting, feeling guilty, beating my breast, saying I am a sinner. I want to say “I’ve worked way too hard to give up my self-esteem, let’s skip to the nice part.” But of course as soon as I say that I have to admit that frankly I’m lazy, I want all the wonderful feelings and benefits without any work. I want what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” I want God to do all the work in me and I just stand back and bask.

The earliest monastics knew on a deep level what it meant to rely on God’s grace. They knew they couldn’t earn salvation or humility or grace. But they also knew that they had to take responsibility for how they lived their lives and their faith. God is the cause and the source of our humility, but how do we show that God is working in our lives?

Benedict uses the story of the Publican and the Pharisee as an example of humility. The story of the Publican who cannot raise his eyes to heaven always hits me like a blow to the chest. What must it feel like, to have a great yawning chasm of emptiness in your deepest soul? To know you are so far from God that you can’t even look up, to be so far from holiness that you are afraid that you will be swallowed up in the ocean that is God.

And yet he is the one whose emptiness is filled with God. He had no ego, no complacency, no self-satisfaction to cover up the deep hunger and longing for God. The publican had looked into the abyss and not turned away.

This looking, honest acknowledgment of emptiness will allow him to be filled by God. It is like the story about the man who goes to see the guru. He excitedly tells the spiritual master everything that he is doing to meditate, fast, read Scripture, visit monasteries, and on and on. The guru asks the man if he wants some tea. The man says yes while continuing to talk about all he is doing. The guru pours tea into the cup and keeps pouring even after it overflows. The man finally notices and is alarmed, “what are you doing?” The guru tells him that he is like the cup, as long as he is so full of himself there will be no room for God.

Humility is the emptiness of the cup, the emptiness of the publican. Stripped down, bare and empty. To be humble is to be shed of the warm, comfortable, protective garments of self-control, entitlement, complacency, and knowledge. In humility we come to our absolute nakedness. When we are stripped, open, poor and exposed we can finally open our eyes. Then, for the first time, our eyes are opened and we find that we are back in the garden, walking with God in the cool of the evening.