This week we begin a new monthly feature: “Love of Learning.” The theme expresses a fundamental dimension of Benedictine life, both in the spiritual formation of each monk and each monastic community, as well as in the historical significance of Benedictines to human culture. While this monthly feature’s predecessor, “Wisdom,” took a more general approach to the intellectual life, we hope now to “go local,” and explore more how the love of learning shapes our own monastic life. A means for this presented itself as ready-to-hand with the reconstruction recently of an in-house novitiate curriculum. The content of this curriculum provides a vivid picture of the material the monastic community prioritizes in the formation of a monk and in the character of monastic life.

It is indeed with gratitude that the community has rediscovered the necessity for such a program, being blessed with the addition of two novices. Blessed further with a kind of renaissance with the transferal of stability of three monks from St. Louis, as well as with the preparation for solemn vows of Br. Benedict, the community also now has the resources available to provide in-house this instruction for its novices. Br. Benedict, while from the start a monk of Portsmouth, was required to complete his novitiate in St. Louis. Now, Portsmouth not only has the monks to receive the instruction of the novitiate, but the resources to provide it for them itself. We hope in the series to take a closer look at these efforts, and to ourselves learn more about the intellectual interests and the knowledge each monk brings to the instruction he is offering. For the novices, this structured intellectual journey supplements a more comprehensive novitiate experience that includes such elements as the two hours of manual labor Br. Sixtus provides for them each weekday, the daily practice of the Divine Office and Mass, as well as their spiritual direction and personal prayer, to produce the fabric of the new cloak they take on in the novitiate. 

Fr. Edward Mazuski and Fr. Gregory Havill have jointly been assigned the roles of directing the novitiate program. In doing so, they are in fact completing the community’s obligation not only to the English Benedictine Congregation (EBC), but to the Roman Catholic Church. The church requires universally of religious orders the creation of a novitiate year for anyone entering religious life, with houses providing the specific content for their programs. Canon law describes the aim of the novitiate as the way in which “life in an institute is begun, is arranged so that the novices better understand their divine vocation, and indeed one which is proper to the institute, experience the manner of living of the institute, and form their mind and heart in its spirit, and so that their intention and suitability are tested” (Canon 646). While the church sees this process as involving much more than a merely academic exercise, addressing broadly the “way of perfection” inspiring each religious institute, canon law does specify that novices “are to be instructed regarding the character and spirit, the purpose and discipline, the history and life of the institute” (Canon 652). Our own website notes that novitiate is to address, “formal instruction on the meaning of the vows, Benedictine spirituality, performing the Divine Office in choir, history of monasticism and the doctrines of the Church. St. Benedict’s Rule says that during the novitiate, the candidate is tested to see whether it is really God that he is seeking. Is the Novice eager to do the Work of God, obey, and patiently endure the difficulties involved in monastic community life?” We see in such prescriptions the outlines of the course curriculum now in place for the novices. 

Given the solid academic background of the novices, the courses offered are substantial. Fr. Gregory Havill is teaching the novices “Monastic Theory and Practice”; Prior Michael Brunner is instructing them on “Monastic Prayer.” Resident published historian Fr. Paschal Scotti is offering a course in “Monastic History.” A study of “Monastic Literature” will cycle through the monks of the monastery, starting with Prior Michael. Abbot Matthew Stark returns to one of the courses he first taught in the School, with a study of Latin. Brother Sixtus Roslevich, our Director of Liturgy, appropriately is offering a course in “Liturgy.” This is supplemented by the study of “Gregorian Chant” with Fr. Edward Mazuski. Fr. Edward notes that the novices have also joined shared conferences run by the English Benedictine Congregation on the theme the “Living Rule,” which they have been able to join remotely during some of their class periods. 

This series will delve further each month into these course offerings, one at a time, vicariously learning in part with the novices something of the monastery’s “character and spirit,” “purpose and discipline,” “history and life” - as the novitiate is outlined by canon law. In this series, we look forward to hearing more of how this requirement of “law” is developed and expressed, in the “love” of learning so vibrant in the Benedictine heritage.