The privilege of listening – 30 November 2012

The one thing most people vaguely know about Cranmer’s 1552 Prayer Book of the Church of England (if indeed they have heard of it) is that the marriage vows ask the bride to promise to obey, along with serve, love, honour and keep.  All through the years I officiated at marriage ceremonies this was a source of scorn, not to say ribaldry, and hell would freeze over before most brides would remotely consider promising obedience to the light of their life.  The word obey is not expected unless you’re in the army or under arrest.  To any modern western ear the premium is on individual autonomy, freedom of choice.  And it sounds strange when we read how Thomas Merton described his entrance into the strict monastic life as a postulant:  So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom.

Obedience is an English word which comes from the Latin oboedientia.  And it is of interest that the same Latin word means also to give ear, to listen.  It seems to me no accident whatever that two outcomes of our busy, active, self-centred culture, are that what people call blind obedience is routinely scorned, and also that real listening is a dying art, an increasingly scarce commodity.  The art of listening, and hence understanding, such a gift for anyone, is often not present at all.

But oboedientia in this sense is utterly basic to contemplative prayer.  Obeying in the best and widest sense is what we are doing.  Our prayer is still, and silent and patient listening – and it goes with the inner willingness, the deep inner consent, to be obedient to God’s word in our hearts.

I have never forgotten an occasion years ago when a contemplative monk came to our church to lead an evening on Christian Meditation.  At the end of the evening people were milling around, and I watched as one woman went to this monk wanting to talk with him about something.  He gave her his total attention, to the exclusion of everything else.  And while I watched, one of the very busy organizing women came bustling up, needing to interrupt with something she thought was urgent.  The monk never budged an inch.  He was listening completely to what the first woman was telling him or asking him.  What a gift, I thought.  This contemplative man knows the gift he has received and the gift he can pass on.  His prayer is listening, and his life becomes one of… well, not only listening, but hearing.  That is obedience, I think, and it flows from God’s total loving attention to us. 

The obedience the monks promise is not blind obedience, and the abbot is not a policeman or a sergeant-major.  Benedict insists that the abbot, most of all, must be a listener.  It is a mutual thing.  Without this dynamic our parishes eventually run into trouble.  Contemplative prayer constantly reminds us about attention, mindfulness, listening and understanding.  It is what we do in prayer, and it is what we do in life – ideally.  We may be very shaky on this, but each time we return to silence and stillness and the mantra, we are reminded.