Fr. Gregory Havill, O.S.B.

We resume our “Love of Learning” series on the curriculum that shapes the novitiate at Portsmouth with Father Gregory Havill’s course. Fr. Gregory, for many years a teacher in the School, and before that a college professor of art and a professional artist, integrates much of his distinctive and diverse experience into his course on “Monastic Theory and Practice.” The syllabus for the overall novitiate summarizes: “The course will cover the major themes of the Rule of Saint Benedict, with special focus given to the Evangelical Counsels, the vows and religious profession.” For Fr. Gregory, the course is about an approach to theology that is “Monastic” rather than “Scholastic.” In this sense, practice must accompany theory, and experience must accompany study.

The format of the course is simple and intentional. The plan is for the novice to meet with Fr. Gregory once per week, receiving 1-5 sheets intended to be added to the course binder. There is a repetitive movement from the part the whole, the moment to its place in history, as it were: the history of the course gathered into one, tangible archive, a living and accessible memory for the student. As the sheets are entered into the binder, they are numbered and indexed, producing ongoing accessibility to themes and ideas that have been elicited. Each sheet similarly is tailored to mnemonic access, particularly with the incorporation of an image. Father Gregory, as an artist with an acute aesthetic sensibility, acknowledges that with the image and the layout, he “tries to make them attractive.” But, pedagogically he sees a mnemonic benefit in the image, situated beneath a thematic title, and above a more extended subtitle. These help the novice remember the ideas elicited on that sheet and within discussion of it.

 

“Monastic Theology” page from Fr. Gregory’s course

These detailed mechanics of the course are meant to illuminate something about “monastic theory and practice” itself. Fr. Gregory makes an important distinction between “monastic theology” and “scholastic theology.” Historically, he sees the latter as have developed after Aquinas, with the ascension of theology in the university, a more intellectual project with less of an essential connection to the lived practice of faith. Can one speak meaningfully of holiness, he offers as example, “unless one is working on it”? The monastic context adds the crucial element of praxis. It resonates more fully in the long traditions of the church fathers, whose approach is more readily linked to virtue, to formation, to the faith as a lived reality. Fr. Gregory points to Saint Anselm in this respect: “Whoever does not believe will experience nothing, and whoever has not experienced anything will also perceive nothing.” (from Epistles of the Incarnate Word) The type of “perceiving” the course seeks to foster entails an encounter of significance, an intellectual act much deeper than what the senses alone provide. Each sheet thus does not require extended text, written essays, tests and the like. Fr. Gregory looks for a meditative engagement, and the seemingly limited textual requirements provide “a massive amount of material for meditation.”

This meditative approach is crucial, in Fr. Gregory’s eyes. It is not an academic adventure, nor a seminary education. Such efforts have their distinctive value and place: “Studies have a proper place within monastic formation,” the “Benedictine Study” sheet states simply. “A place!” Fr. Gregory notes – “not the totality! Studies do not make the monk!” The formation of the monastic novitiate calls for a more directed method, one that encompasses the meaning of all that is discussed to the student’s own life and experience. This “more existential” aspect is more than just the confrontation or examination of material, but involves a process of change. Fr. Gregory holds fast the memory of various transformational moments in his own journey, such as an encounter with Fr. John Eudes Bamberger, Trappist of the Abbey of the Genesee, whose statement, “Never outgrow the attitude of a novice,” still resonates.

A lesson on “Benedictine Learning”

“It is not theology class per se – it is more of a monastic class, with theological elements.” Those elements have thus far into the year generated a binder of about 300 pages – and climbing. The substance of the discussion flows from the reading of “sentences,” each sheet packed, “not with a lot of text, but with a lot to talk about.” And each “class” is thus highly dialogical. Fr. Gregory qualifies this, noting that he is not a fan of “student-driven” courses, finding a role for the teacher, a time “for the master to speak” and the student to listen and learn. Still, the desire to connect the discussion to praxis, to the novice’s own lived experience, necessitates a vibrant incorporation of that experience and of student questions and struggles into the reflection on the topics themselves.

The themes that Fr. Gregory outlines in his table of contents themselves elicit the monastic heritage: “Contemplative Prayer”; “Labora”; “Opus Dei”; “Ladder of Humility”; “The Monastic Fast” – over twenty such themes (and counting) guide the reflection. The sheet on fasting highlights the launching point for discussion, underlining that fasting is undertaken “for the sake of increased attention to God.” This singularity of intention in fact summarizes the monastic vocation in toto, as one finds emphasized in Columba Marmion, one of Fr. Gregory’s favorite monastic writers. The very first topics that open the course are, appropriately, the three Benedictine vows. In effect, the entire process of working through the course allows the novice to return to those, to consider how all of his learning expands and develops his understanding of those three structural aspects of the monastic journey.