Project Canterbury

A Commentary on the Rule of the Community of the Resurrection

[transcribed by Brother William
Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield]

A The nature of a religious Rule

The Religious Life in its essence is one; but it presents itself in many different forms. It is a life which aims at union with God in Christ by means of certain bonds and detachments, which are not those of ordinary Christian life; they are not indeed different from them in kind, for everywhere and in all circumstances the love of God and man is one, detachment from the world is one, hostility to evil is one; but in the Religious Life such bonds and detachments appear to such a degree in an emphasized form that they must be more rightly regarded as special than as general. It therefore exists for those who are called to seek after the glory of God and the perfection of their life in other surroundings than those which form the usual medium of Christian perfection. It therefore rests upon a special call and is defined by a special Rule.

In these two facts lies the unity of Religious Life. Its diversity is found in the variety of methods by which a response may be made to the call, and in the variety of systems which may be made for the development and perfection of this vocation.

In other words, the religious call and life are common alike to all true communities; but each community may have its own characteristics and a rule of its own.

Our Community has from the first desired to learn from all good precedents in the religious life, but not to be bound to any particular form of them. Convinced of its divine call, it has also been convinced that the call of the living God is new and fresh to each succeeding age, and that therefore its own rule and life will be conditioned by the circumstances of the time.

B A Religious Rule comprises both the statement of an ideal and the enactment of a specific code of regulations. These two are related to one another like soul and body, the one being the inner reality and the other being the outward embodiment of it. There must be a necessary harmony between the two, but the ideal must always transcend the code. A brother is bound by loyalty to the first and by obedience to the second; but loyalty is greater than obedience. He lives therefore under a threefold obligation; - of obedience to his community’s regulations, of loyalty to its idea (both of these being defined by its rule), and further of personal fidelity to Christ.

The ideal, like all ideals, cannot adequately be expressed in words. But apart from the actual phrases of the rule it is expressed also in the life and tradition of the Community. These two forms of expression therefore are complementary, just as the written revelation and the living tradition are complementary to one another in the Church.

Every brother therefore has his share in the upholding of the ideal of the Community and in the handing on of its tradition. This is a sacred task; and let each one often reflect upon his own performance of it, with a great sense of shortcoming but a lively hope of amendment.

C The code of regulations which a community lays down in its rule for the guidance of its members may be of greater or of lesser stringency; it may be a maximum or a minimum. It may aim at bringing all the members up to the highest possible level by positive enactment. In that case it will be, so far as is possible, a restatement of the ideals in terms of actual practice; and there will be as little discrepancy as may be between the ideal set before the members and the actual demands made upon them.

But on the other hand, the code of regulations may be a statements of the minimum requirements, below which it is not tolerable that any member should fall. In this case the difference is a wide one between the ideal and the demands: and much is left to individual effort and aspiration within the community.

Either of these methods may produce the desired result, viz., the attainment of the high ideals: and it is probable that some natures find more help in the one and some in the other. The first method depends upon the bracing effect of external demands; the second upon the inspiring effect of inner aims. Each of the two has its defects; the former may easily degenerate into legalism when the spirit is gone and the mere system remains; the latter may end in slackness, if inspiration fails and the minimum tends to become a maximum.

D Of these two methods our Community has always followed the second. The ideals are pitched high, but the positive requirements are pitched low; much is left to the spiritual ambition of individuals, and to the uncovenanted claims of community life. Thus even that part of the Rule which has most to do with the details of regulation and the formulation of a system is to be a law of liberty and not a law of bondage.

Let no brother then say to himself, Such and such a thing is not required of me by any regulation in the Rule, and therefore rest content without seeking that which is more excellent (t diafXronta). Let such indeed be the standard by which he judges of other brethren’s conduct, in all charity; but let it not be the standard by which he determines his own.

...Let us ... count ... those things which are required of us [as] the least that we can do, or rather that they are to be the starting-point from which we are to aspire and ascend to better things. So by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit there may be among us a spiritual enthusiasm for progress; and even the best that God has taught us in the past, and that which we have learnt so slowly and so painfully, we shall soon leave behind us, as we reach forth to the things that are before and press on untiringly towards the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.

E Stability

The first and last thing to be required of every religious is stability,—so St. Benet phrased it,— or steadfastness to use the Bible term. All specific obligations and vows have this for their end.

As a novice, each man tests the reality of his vocation: when he is professed, he must grow in the steadfast and progressive realization of it.

Permanent vows are a means to that end. For some natures and in some circumstances they are a valuable means. But ever since the Church sanctioned, administered and watched over such vows, history has shewn that vows in themselves, however solemn, are no final guarantee of steadfastness.

They have an initial value and a permanent value. Their initial value lies in the assurance which they give that a definite and irrevocable step is taken at profession: so there comes a sense of finality, and with it a sense of repose.

Thenceforward the vow is a support to the will when it is feeble, and a hold when it is liable to slip. Thus the solemn vow which God has blessed may be, all through, a welcome succour; and it may even avert disaster in the days, that must come, of trial and weakness. It should be also a perpetual consecration of the complete self-surrender, bringing an abiding sense of divine sanction certified by solemn ecclesiastical authority.

On the other hand the fact of the vow may only emphasize disaster. The vow may have been truly taken as a solemn seal upon God’s vocation; and then it increases the disaster to him who falls away. Or it may have been unwisely taken, with good will indeed, but with hastiness, or wilfulness, or lack of wisdom; and should this ever happen, then to abide by the vow is worse than to depart from it. In such a case moreover it is difficult to appraise the exact obligation of the vows towards all the parties concerned, or to say how far there is, or is not, a power to dispense; a difficult situation is created from which there is no escape without loss.

F ...

...

... It is no gain to the common life to keep a brother if his heart and will have gone elsewhere. It is stronger and more wholesome for the Community to take the altered circumstances into account, and to give the brother an affectionate release if it can approve his change of intention. Even if not, it is better that it should stand aside and leave him free to depart upon his own responsibility. Liberty to go in the last resort is essential also to the individual, if he is rightly guided into such a position; for fidelity to God is greater than loyalty or obedience to the Community=s Rule, and takes precedence of all other considerations.

... Some doubts as to his stability in the Community may from time to time arise; but the emergence of them should not mean for him any reopening of the question or any disturbance of the repose and finality of his profession. Rather it should lead to a deepening of his vocation, and a reconsecration of his surrender.

Let every brother then, as years go on, see that each Foundation Day finds him more steadfast. Let him once again settle himself down on the immoveable foundation of God's predestined call, and with increased thankfulness and quickened hope set himself to the realization of it, as life and work still give him opportunity.

G Ideals

The chief ideal of the Community is a renewal of the first fervour of the apostolic church in the primitive era. This is stated in the Rule and echoed in the Collect. ...

That steadfastness which has been noted as the first requirement for the religious life was already the first feature to be noted in that primitive Christian life: and it showed itself in four chief points—steadfastness (i) in faith and discipline, (ii) in worship, (iii) in unity of life, and (iv) in community of goods. These then are to be characteristic of our Community if we are faithful to our ideal.

The basis of the Community is an ideal of life: in this respect it differs from other bodies which are associated together by the bond of a common work .... Life is the whole; and work is but a part of it. Vocation to a particular work claims only part of a man; vocation to a life claims the whole of him. Religious life, as the term implies, deals with the whole, and not merely with the part; and our Community is devoted to the following out of the religious life inasmuch as its ideals and its claims cover the whole area of life.

....

H There has come into the religious life a secondary ideal and a secondary vocation, connected not with life as a whole, but with that special part of life which we call work. A community has its special work or works, which it seeks to carry out on the general basis of the religious life; and similarly there is to be taken into account in the case of the individual, not merely his call to the life in general, but the particular calling or occupation to which he can best devote himself, with that life as his basis and support.

.... The Community will reckon such variety of work as is possible, to be a true gain of width and breadth; its ideal is to combine extensiveness of work with intensiveness of life. It seeks not so much to perform one special function on behalf of the Church at large, as to reinforce the general work of the Church at any points to which it may be led. From the first our Community set out with no other programme than this; and, as it looks back, it may see the justification of this view in the way in which it has been led by God’s loving hand to one fresh point after another.

Let us see in it also an encouragement to have our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, so that we may secure for ourselves that detachment of spirit and circumstances which can leave us ready to go wheresoever God sends, and to work howsoever He wills.

I The Community and the Individual

The statement of ideals is not complete without a further statement as to the ideal relation of the Community and the individual. There is a self in each individual which is inalienable; but it does not become self-possessed except by self-denial. The duty of the Community is to treat this individuality with the utmost reverence. Each brother’s faculty is to be developed; his special gifts are to be taken into account; ... his needs are to be met, for he is bound to make them known and the Community is pledged to satisfy them; his conscience is to be respected in the last resort when it comes into conflict with the decision of the Community. And short of this the Community will be wise if it has much regard to his judgment in assigning to him work and responsibility.

In other words harmony is to be secured by the fullest cooperation between the Community and each of the brethren, in the ordering of life and work; but if ever that harmony should be irretrievably lost, the individual is to have the liberty, and to take the responsibility, of acting upon an independent conscience of his own. For of his three obligations, fidelity to God must be for him of greater moment than either loyalty or obedience to the Community.

On the other hand the individuality of each brother will be distorted rather than developed, if it moves along other lines than those of discipline; and the stronger the individuality is, the more certainly is this the case. This is broadly true in general life, and specially true of a life that admits of so much specialization as ours.

J Let the brethren then, and especially those of strong character and marked individuality, leave to the Community the main anxiety as to the development of their faculties and the exercise of their special gifts, and be themselves chiefly anxious as to the discipline and regulation of them.

Four provisos in the prefatory portion of the Rule lay down lines of guidance in this task:

1. The service of God is the necessary presupposition for the service of men.

This is a self-evident truth to all who have rightly conceived the relation of God and man; for to place man first would be to invert the whole order of things.

It receives also plenty of corroboration from history and practical experience. Philanthropy, working on purely philanthropic lines, has made many marked successes; but still more marked have been its failures. The world is full of the wreckage of unwise efforts. For how shall man have wisdom to deal with the complex problems of human life unless he draws it from God? Again the world is full of philanthropists disappointed and soured, who have lapsed from their ideal into cynicism, indifference and selfishness. For how shall a man have patience to bear with disappointments, have hope to encourage the hopeless, love to infect the unloving, or grace to support the feeble, unless he is continually himself drawing a supply of these gifts from God?

...

Let us then, who are called to the service of men, see that we serve God first of all. The leisure, which means so much to us, affords many golden opportunities of learning recollection, and of consecrating even the small items of the day so that they may be part of an immediate service of God.

K 2. The second proviso calls for discipline of individuality, and for such discipline as not only corrects the faulty but prunes the good. As a member of the Community, many a brother will have more liberty to follow out his bent than he would ever have had otherwise. All the more then it is necessary that he should bear in mind his need of this discipline, and that the Community should demand it of him. The Community must secure him opportunity for this; and he must use his opportunities so as to know himself by the power of the Holy Spirit, to take himself in hand in the spirit of the Passion, and to rise through mortification to newness of life by the grace of the Resurrection.

3. The third proviso reaches yet further and concerns yet more closely the relation of the individual and the Community. ... [W]hile the Community encourages the right self-assertion in the individual, it must demand from him in return the right self-suppression. This it does for his sake as well as for its own. Just as the perfection of family life lies in the merging of the part in the whole, so the harmony and efficiency of community life depends on the real identification of the member with the body. In the case of the family, kinship and association are very powerful means to that end: even so however the true family unity can never depend solely on these, but must be effected ultimately by the working of religion and the power of divine grace. Much more then in community life, where kinship is not in question, and where the power of association is much less marked, must we look to religion and divine grace to effect our corporate unity. It is these that can make us brethren not in blood but in religion, associated not by the force of external circumstances but by sharing a common vocation - brethren because we are in a special sense sons of the Resurrection.

L 4. The fourth proviso calls for the discipline of spiritual ambition: it therefore penetrates deeper into the interior life than the two previous ones which dealt with the brother’s external relations to his work and to his community. High things are to be sought and found; but usually by a lowly path. The first impulse of spiritual ambition is, for many people, towards what is uncommon or even extraordinary. ... A second and truer impulse, that can manifest itself when the first has been disciplined, is towards the perfecting of what is common and ordinary. The first can never lead far or satisfy; it is a short cut that ends in nothing but disappointment. The second has boundless possibilities of spiritual progress and joy, and lies nearer to the road that our Saviour Himself was pleased to tread when on this earth.

A religious community should be a home of true spiritual ambition. The more this is so, the more is the warning needed, in order that the aspirations may move along right lines of simplicity and naturalness; and the more right has the community to give such warning, and to ask of its members such self-discipline.

Let a brother who is called to do what is unusual, do it only after much counsel and with much diffidence. Happier is he who is not so called: along the well-worn lines of every day duties he can move with no less strictness but with greater security, and with a progress which may be both rapid and boundless; and therewith let him, if he may, be amply content.

M Faith and Discipline

The features of primitive church fervour which are also to be characteristic of the Community were partly general and partly special. An ideal of faith and discipline and an ideal of common worship belong to every form of Christian life. On the other hand, to live a common life or to share property in common is unusual, and is in some sense contrary to normal Christian ways. These two latter points therefore are distinctive features of the religious life, while the other two it shares with ordinary Christian life. For those things may be said most properly to be distinctive of religious life, in which it runs counter to the tendencies of the ordinary life of man.

But even in matters which are not distinctive but common, the religious life will have a distinct ideal of its own, - distinct, that is, not so much in kind as in degree.

The Community is pledged to a very vivid realization of the apostolic faith and fellowship. The leisure and other opportunities which we have as members of it make such realization more possible and more necessary in our case than in the case of others.

Leisure for prayer, meditation, and study must deepen our knowledge of Christian principles and tighten our hold upon them and upon God. The Community must equip its members, so far as it can, to speak maturely and wisely on points of difficulty or of controversy, or even to be experts in different directions. What some have learnt by leisure and study, others will share by means of fellowship and conference. Thus by knowledge and by sound judgment the Community may be able to help forward the labours of the parochial clergy and join in bearing their burdens, quite as much as by special assistance in practical work. In no department is divine knowledge and sanctified judgment so much needed as in the holy art of guiding souls: therefore the brethren must continually seek to become more proficient in this, that they may not disappoint the souls who appeal to them for help and counsel, nor the loving call of God that has laid this task especially upon them and has worked so wondrously for them in their own souls in order to enable them to fulfil it the more worthily and fruitfully.

N Similarly, from brethren as preachers men will have a right to expect, not indeed necessarily gifts of oratory or teaching, but a maturity, a solidity, and a freshness such as belong to those who go forth from retirement primed with their best, as the result of meditation upon the great fundamental principles of faith and discipline. Indeed, in all branches of external work that await solution, theological or practical, evangelistic, social, missionary or pastoral alike, are only to be solved on the apostolic principles to which we are pledged.

But these principles must be the rule of the inner life before they can be fully applied to the external work. The Apostolic Rule of Faith and Discipline is first to be mistress of the brother’s own life and actions. He will then be able to act or speak not only with learning but with knowledge and wisdom, not only with confidence but with personal conviction.

But the presupposition is an immense one. The more a man seeks to bring his life into relation with faith and discipline, the more he discovers of inconsistency, and even dislocation, between his practice and his aim. But, as he realizes it, so he becomes more capable, by God’s grace, of remedying it; for God is the centre of all harmony and unity, and His grace is a coordinating and energizing power. Let this give us courage for facing the double task laid upon us by this ideal, the inner coordination of our own ways to the standard of faith and discipline and the outward manifestation of that standard in all work whereunto God sends us.

O Worship

Worship is a common instinct of all mankind, and a duty common to all Christian men. But a religious community must have an ideal of worship which is of special intensity. The Eucharist and prayers that formed so marked a feature of the primitive fervour are to be specially characteristic of our life. In offering the Eucharist, our ideal is primitive rather than medieval; for we regard ourselves as one body uniting in a common act of eucharistic worship, rather than as a number of priests each of whom will aim at saying his mass daily.

In regard to the Hours, our position is neither primitive, nor medieval but modern. .... The offices ... are essentially corporate; and this fact entails a corporate, as well as an individual, care and pains to be spent on their recitation. As a result of this, there is to be a real community of devotion, welding us into one worshipping brotherhood with a spiritual organic unity, and knitting us by the most sacred bonds of penitence, prayer and praise, both singly and corporately, to God.

The Community is bound to care also for the individual devotional life of its members; and, intermediate between the devotions that are public and those that are purely personal and private, there lies the common devotional rule of the Community, compromising meditation, intercession, self-examination, and so forth, to be undertaken alike by all, but to be carried out not jointly but individually. Even in matters purely personal and private the Community has one stipulation to make with each brother, viz., that he shall follow a regular plan, which shall be to him not a bond to hamper but a support upon which to fall back.

Here then is a threefold ideal of worship, corporate, common, and individual. And the fruit of this ideal is to be shewn in our relation both towards God and towards man.

P It is part of the mystery of our vocation to the religious life that we are called to the dread privilege and responsibility of special nearness to God. ... With the privilege of nearness there comes to us, as to the chosen apostles in Gethsemane, the greater urgency of watchfulness and prayer.

Again, it is involved in our dedication to the service of man that we should be in an immediate relation to God, as has been noted above, and that, too, especially in worship. This closeness of relation to God then, which the exigencies of both our inward and our outward life demand, the Community’s ideal of worship is designed to supply and foster.

Similarly it is to supply and foster what is needed of us in devotional matters in our relation to man. Men will rightly expect of us, in view of our special opportunities and advantages, that we should be both skilled in all that belongs to the theory of devotional life and fervent in the actual performance of it. They will look to us for guidance, and also for intercession. God grant to us, that with such ideals and opportunities as are ours, we shall not fail them!

Q If we cannot be the Lord’s Remembrancers in the sense that members of a contemplative community can be so, yet at least we can learn to make more and more of our corporate and individual intercessions. If we cannot attain to the devotional power of the saints, we can at least learn to amend some of our own devotional short-comings. If we cannot become great masters of the spiritual life, we can at least learn so much of the elements as will helps us to guide and encourage other beginners. If we cannot ourselves have a grasp of high things, we may at any rate by perseverance be schooled to convey to other souls as messages from God things which surpass our own slender understanding an knowledge. Nay, if we are but faithful, even we may, by God’s grace and mercy, attain to better things than we dare as yet anticipate. For him who has a little faith and patience God has always better things in store than he knows: and God has given us our common life in order to help each brother to surpass himself.

The spirit of worship is to go with us into all our external doings, just as the influence of the Church is to make itself felt throughout the house. The conversation and trifling incidents of the day are to be hallowed by a subconscious continuance of prayer, and the rooms and passages are to share in the solemn stillness of the sanctuary. In other words, the habitual recollection of the presence of God and of the holy angels must dominate all that we say or do; this will restrain us from noisiness in our demeanour, from untidiness in our habits, and from slovenliness in our personal ways; and will leave its mark upon our abode as a home of religious life.

Thus the devotional life of the Community is to inspire us, while the devotional rule, with its simple demands, supports and encourages us in detail; and we are to be borne along on untiring wings of aspiration Godwards, in the power of the Resurrection and in the fellowship of the Holy [Spirit].

R Community of Goods.

The community of goods which was characteristic of the primitive Christian fervour was an abnormal feature. It has not continued, except in such special circumstances as those of the religious life. It is therefore one of the distinctive marks of that life, one of the points in which it runs counter to ordinary ways of life; it presupposes therefore a special vocation.

As such, this principle of community of goods is far-reaching than the evangelical counsel of Poverty, and indeed includes it. Poverty is very often simply a relative term; and on that account it has its proper place in a statement which is of general application, like our Lord’s first beatitude.

On the other hand, poverty may be a term used for a counsel of perfection, for a special renunciation such as our Lord asked of the young ruler; in this sense it is not a requirement of general application, but an individual vocation. The former use is by far the truer and safer. Poverty is properly a relative term; and as such it is unsuited to set the standard for community life. This is shewn by the failure of the attempt of St. Francis to substitute in his brotherhood a standard of absolute poverty for the old monastic principle of community of goods.

That principle had been reached and formulated directly as the result of experience. In the fifth century hermits and monks, living at the furthest limits of mortification which asceticism can reach, were yet found to treasure their own trifling bits of possessions; they were seen in this way to be falling short of full detachment because they still had something that they could call their own.

So came the reform which abolished private ownership altogether, and, reverting to the primitive line of the apostles’ time, made community of goods and the absence of private ownership the monastic rule, rather than poverty. In following this line then, our Community is in harmony not only with the primitive fervour, but also with the best later ideals of the religious life; and it is profiting by the experience which the Church derived from the failure of the early attempt of the Mendicant Orders after an absolute standard of poverty.

But the ideal of community of goods must include some ideal of poverty or of simplicity of life; otherwise common ownership may degenerate, as indeed it has done before now, into a highly organized sharing of comfort or even luxury. History is full of warnings of this kind: these the Community must continually lay to heart, and they must form one point in the searching self-examination which individually and corporately the brethren must often make as to their ideals.

S The Rule lays down a general standard of poverty or simplicity of life for the brethren both corporately and individually. The corporate standard is necessarily different from the individual standard, for it is the maximum which the Community as a whole can rightly allow itself; while the individual brother is encouraged to allow himself less. Corporately, the Community is bound to provide for the needs of all the brethren; while the individual has only his own needs to consider, and he is to make them as few and simple as possible. Moreover, he is further to apply his own private discipline to his likes and dislikes, his ways and peculiarities.

While thus two forces are continually at work in the matter, the chief burden of responsibility for jealously maintaining the best standard of poverty or simplicity must rest upon the brethren individually rather than on the Community as a whole. The duty of the Community to provide for the brethren naturally tends to the multiplication of wants, and the loss of simplicity. The duty of the brethren to discipline self and to minimize needs tends to the diminution of wants and the maintenance of the spirit of poverty.

Let no brother therefore argue that, because some provision is made by the Community, therefore he will avail himself of it. Let him simply consider his own needs. This provision may be needful for others, but not for him; and if that is so, let him not grudge it to them, nor use it for himself. In the end it may prove to be needful for no one; and then it can be given up, and greater simplicity will have been gained all round. But in any case let each hear in mind that it is only by such procedure on the part of individuals that a real simplicity can be maintained within the Community.

T Far greater still than discipline in details and the maintenance of poverty and simplicity is the mortification of the lust of private ownership; for this strikes at the heart of selfishness and luxury, and develops that detachment from material ties which must go with closer attachment to God.

Daily in the Eucharist at the Offertory, when we have nothing of our own to give, we have one opportunity for an act of renunciation; and others multiply as we seek them in the small events of every day.

Such mortification, if it is real, requires much faith and courage; but our Saviour’s encouragements are explicit. We shall, for each thing resigned, receive an hundred-fold in this present life, with persecutions now and eternal life hereafter.

Here, as elsewhere, the tender compassion of God leads us on by stages in the heavenly way. First He endows us with an instinctive appreciation of this world; then He induces us by a sanctified self-interest to surrender the good things of this world for the better things of the heavenly state; but beyond that, our Blessed Lord teaches us by His own example to love surrender for its own sake and for His sake as being chiefest and best of all.

The same principles which guide us in the renunciation of private ownership must be our guides also in such control of money as is inevitable. Our spending of community money must give us opportunity of renunciation and self-denial rather than the opposite. Our peculium can only be justified, if it is so used as to mortify the sense of property rather than to encourage it. The private use of books, etc., should be strictly limited by what is desirable for the purposes of work and devotion, and should end when the special need ends. In these and all such matters great watchfulness and wisdom is needed, for fear lest our exceptions should invalidate our Rule, and our liberties should prove our downfall.

U Celibacy

The teaching of S. Paul about celibacy shews that it contains an ideal good in itself and that it brings with it in certain circumstances great practical advantages. This is the earliest apostolic formulation of the ideal; for, although our Lord has laid it down as a counsel of perfection, it was not one of the recorded features of the primitive Christian fervour. An ideal however that has such warrants as these was bound to work powerfully in Christian life; and in fact it is probable that the value of celibacy in itself has been over-estimated rather than under-estimated in the system of the Church.

It was the earliest distinctive feature of the religious life; because, without withdrawal from the surroundings of home life, and before any organization of community life, this form of renunciation was the chief one available for men and women who had received their call to a life of special devotion. And it has continued to be one of the principal features of the religious life ever since. It takes its place therefore among the ideals of our Community side by side with those derived from the primitive Christian fervour.

It is not the fact of celibacy which has a religious value; rather it is the motives that lead to it which are to be taken into account. Men and women may live celibate lives without profiting either themselves or others by so doing, and without honouring God thereby. But Christian celibacy is good in itself as an act of renunciation in response to God’s call and for His glory; it is good in its results when it leads to detachment, to concentration, to efficiency in work, to the forcible taking possession of the kingdom of heaven.

V .... But celibacy is not purely personal and individual. The Community, because it demands celibacy on account of the practical advantages that it brings to the common life, must also do much to glorify its self-denials. We are to be fathers indeed, if not of natural, yet at least of spiritual children; and our community life will make this all the more possible and real. We are to be helped by our common life in our continuous effort after Christian piety. We are to have the mutual society, help, and comfort, of our brotherhood; this is to effect the ripening of our affections, the polishing of our courtesy, and the ordering of our habits, and is to keep us from becoming dried up, churlish and selfish.

...

It is further necessary that brethren should be on their guard against the perils of a subtle form of selfishness, to which persons living the celibate life are especially tempted. Deprived of the many opportunities of self-sacrifice which marriage affords, and freed to a large extent from the necessity of fitting in with others in our ordinary ways, it is possible for us to become self-centred in our habits of life, selfish and luxurious in our practices of devotion, and unwilling to yield to any claim which disturbs our normal course, or breaks in upon the customary arrangement of our day. Selfishness is no less selfish when it grows up under the cover of a life of renunciation, or disguises itself under the garb or religion: on the contrary, of all forms of this vice the deadliest is the selfishness which is spiritual.

...

The calling is high, and faithfulness is hard; but those who are called to stand in the company of the Lamb upon the Mount Sion are being marked with the name of God and are being taught to sing the New Song, as they follow the Lamb withersoever He goeth; they shall be the first-fruits of redemption; they shall be found without fault before the throne of God.

W Community of Life

The ideal of Community of Life is in some sense the climax of all. United in faith and discipline, in worship, in the renunciation of private ownership and in the adoption of celibacy, the brethren are to be welded together into a unity of common life. The welding powers that such ideals possess were already shewn in the primitive Christian society, for it was marked by a special unity of heart and soul. These powers have also been proved in the history of the religious life ever since.

A common life that is based upon kinship is a universal characteristic of humanity; for everywhere the family is the basis of society, and kinship in the larger sense is the basis of nationality. But any common life on a large scale that is founded upon some other principle than kinship must be a divine rather than a human institution. In other words, this community ideal must be reckoned among those that are distinctive of the religious life.

X A community has a divine rather than a human unity because it rests, not on natural affinities of character, association in work, or even similarity of aims, but on the divine vocation which all have been brought to share; it is this that becomes the real formative principle of the community and the compacting force of the widely various, and even divergent, elements of which it is composed.

....

... [O]ur unity must be greater and closer than the unity of family life; not only because in some respects, e.g., parity of age or permanence of association, we are more favourably disposed for the attainment of unity than a family as a rule can be, but also because the community ideal demands a more complete merging of the individual in the whole than is demanded in the closest of families. The community of property, already spoken of, is but one instance of this: and there is possible for us a community of >goods= in a larger sense than mere material property. The intellectual gifts which each brother has are to be at the disposal of the rest. The force of character which each possesses is to form part of the common wealth. The spiritual gifts also in a very real sense are to be beneficial to all.

Thus each will be helped by the brotherhood in the times of need that arise from ignorance, weakness of will, or dryness of spirit; and each brother, in proportion as he is penetrated with the community spirit, will, as he goes forth to work, feel his own wisdom fortified, his character strengthened, his spiritual force magnified, by the corporate power of the Community that lies behind him.

Beside the formal bonds by which the Community, through its Rule, attaches the individual to itself, and besides the details by which the attachment is maintained and strengthened ... there is also much tightening of links which must proceed from the brother’s own initiative. ... Let each brother count it a gain to share the common mind of the Community, so far as he can do so consistently with his duty to himself. When he cannot do this, let him oppose with modesty and moderation. When his view is over-ruled, let him submit with courtesy and good-will. Let him be cautious to distinguish between his judgment and his conscience, and be patient if others draw the distinction differently from himself, well knowing how easy it is to be deceived. Let his suspect the purity of his own motives, but assume the purity of other people’s; let him be quick to see the weak points of his own arguments and the strong points of those that are contrary to them. So may he hope to contribute to the right formation of the common mind, and a healthy and loving cooperation with it.

Y The ideal relationship of individuals to one another within the Community is summed up in the term >brother.= The virtues, which are required in the Rule, as composing brotherly intercourse, are simple and homely. ... Of [these] none is more important than openness, for that is essential to brotherhood: in families it should grow up naturally out the close intercourse which common blood and common upbringing involve; but in community life such openness has to be practised and learnt, and probably in all cases with more or less of effort. Men who start as strangers cannot become brethren without a mutual unveiling and the interchange of confidence. This will be easy in the case of congenial spirits, but difficult in the case of uncongenial spirits; yet necessary in all cases. For corporate life cannot be healthy unless all the members are in full harmonious cooperation, nor spiritual unless this is effected not by nature so much as by grace.

Special intimacies between particular brethren are not to be condemned, but to be kept carefully in control. In family life they exist, and a fortiori they must exist outside it in spheres where there is more variety of nature and more play for natural affinities and repulsions. But they must not be allowed to hinder any brother from fulfilling >his whole duty to each of the other members of the fraternity.= In other words, here as in a family, it is only in proportion as that whole duty to each other is fully done that the enjoyment or development of any special intimacy can become justifiable or beneficial.

Let each reflect that the most uncongenial brother is in the deepest matters more to him than the most congenial of friends. If Christian charity is to enable us everywhere in all the divergent elements of the world to love those whom we could never like, a fortiori in community life, where we meet on the basis of kindred aims and a common vocation, it must enable us to >love one another with a pure heart fervently.= This brotherly love must advance concurrently with our own inner spiritual development; and as we learn to love God more truly we shall also be learning at the same time and by the same process to think more for others, to pray more for others and to live more for others.

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Let every brother, therefore, while he values his liberty, and uses it fearlessly, value also the confidence with which the Community looks to him to be restrained and considerate in all his public actions, especially such as may hurt the Community or its work. Let him shew that he is worthy of such confidence by seeking, whether in action or inaction, whether by silence or by speech, to do his full duty both to his own conscience and to the Community. The reconciliation of these two duties will often be difficult, and will still more often be perplexing; but the reconciliation of them is possible to him who is set, not so much on reconciling the two one with another, but rather on reconciling both with his still more fundamental duty to God.

Z The End

The future of the Community need concern as little. It has no reason for existence apart from the reality of its life and work; and it would be far better that it should cease to exist than that these should become unreal.

Of equally little concern is its value or standing in comparison with other communities or other methods of life and work. It is enough for us to rejoice that we have found our own home and calling in it, and to labour that we may not be unworthy of it.

The true end of the Community lies neither in present success nor in future permanence, as the world judges these things; it lies in being enabled itself, and in its enabling all its members, to carry out the will of God, whether for a longer or shorter lifetime, whether in success and esteem or in failure and reproach, as He sees best. All else here is infinitely unimportant. Beyond there lies the Judgment, when, severed for the time from the Community and the brethren, each one must stand, in the loneliness of his own responsibility and in the nakedness of his literal self, before the attendant angels and the throne of Christ our Judge.

May He in his infinite pity look mercifully upon us and our doings in that Day: and renew for us all the fellowship, which here He has so richly blessed, in the full and everlasting community of the Resurrection!

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