Abbot President Christopher Jamison with community superiors and representatives

From July 11 to July 21, Brother Sixtus and I attended the 99th General Chapter of the English Benedictine Congregation (EBC) at Buckfast Abbey, Devon, in the United Kingdom. You may well ask: what is a “General Chapter”? It is a meeting of superiors and delegates from all the English Benedictine houses, along with the officials of the congregation. It occurs every four years - except when there’s a pandemic, so this Chapter was delayed by a year. At a General Chapter, we take care of business, receive reports from commissions and establish new ones as needed. We determine congregational policies and procedures. I am not a big fan of meetings and so I will not tell you what I did not like about this very long meeting. Instead, I will tell you what I did like about it. First and foremost, it was an opportunity to meet and get to know people from the other houses. One of the abbots present said that it was like a family reunion in which you meet many distant cousins not previously known to you. This was my first General Chapter. In fact, 18 of the 22 superiors and delegates were newly elected and had never attended a General Chapter before.  

It was unfortunate that no one could attend from our houses in Zimbabwe and Peru, but we did talk about them a lot. The family definitely missed them. Our English congregation is becoming much more international, so one of the topics we discussed was inclusivity. The most significant decision and event of the Chapter was the aggregation of three new women’s monasteries to the EBC, and all of these are from outside England and the US. Newly joining us are Kylemore Abbey in Ireland, Mariavall Abbey in Sweden, and Jamberoo Abbey in Australia. Our congregation is unusual in that its membership consists of both men’s and women’s monasteries. Recently the only women’s abbey in our congregation was Stanbrook in Yorkshire. It comes as no surprise that men and women are rather different, and so the presence of six more women in the Chapter made a refreshing difference in the meetings and discussions.  

Monastic and human formation was another topic that received a lot of time and attention. That means how to form, educate and continue educating good monks throughout life. While monastic formation comes rather easily to us, forming good human beings is a challenge both in and out of the monastery, especially given the inclinations of our culture and society. We are making this a priority. There’s an old adage that says the family that prays together stays together. At this General Chapter, all of us prayed together the liturgy of the hours and Mass, every day. Each abbot took a turn as principal celebrant and homilist. Buckfast Abbey, which celebrated its 1000th anniversary in 2018, has a particularly beautiful liturgy. The beauty is enhanced by the church, made even more remarkable by the fact that it was built stone-by-stone by six monks from 1907 to 1938, upon the foundation of the medieval church that was destroyed after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII.  

In my homily on the second day of the Chapter, I reflected on the Alleluia verse that day and Jesus’ Gospel warning to the towns that knew him best. The Alleluia verse that day comes from the Psalms and the Letter to the Hebrews: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.“ In the spring of 1994, I was staying at St Louis Abbey on a long visit, wondering whether I should ask to enter. The cantor that week was the now Abbot Gregory Mohrman. The Invitatory verse, he sang each morning was those words: If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. The Holy Spirit used him to convince me. So I like to think those are good words to live by. The towns around the Sea of Galilee where Jesus preached were too proud and sure of themselves to accept that they needed to repent and change their ways. We, of course, are in their place today, part of the religious establishment. We are called to understand better the demands the Gospel makes upon us. Human beings of all stripes - religious, atheist, agnostic, spiritual, secular, introverted, extroverted - are loathe to change their ways and lives. But here we are and we have God’s word proclaimed to us every day. If today we really hear his voice, may we not harden our hearts. If actions have consequences, inaction has consequences too.  

 

 

Abbot Michael and Brother Sixtus at Buckfast Abbey

My last word on the Chapter is about birds and nature. Of course, I missed my parrot flock while I was away. But I took great delight in the very vocal seagulls, especially one who perched all day on the chimney right above where we ate breakfast and dinner. Among other antics, he managed to fly off with our main facilitator’s breakfast pastry and with the Abbot President’s steak. God uses nature to keep us humble. We also must listen to God’s voice mediated through nature. England suffered through a drastic heatwave with unprecedented temperatures while we were there. It shut down air and rail transport and precipitated destructive fires. It’s an illustrative lesson: inaction has consequences.  
 

Note from the editor: The English Benedictine Congregation provided the following press release on July 22, 2022 after the General Chapter:

Photo Credit: The two photographs are courtesy of Michael Luke Davies who has been handling all of the Buckfast Abbey media for 20 years.