Fr. Charles Cummings, OCSO

 

Baldwin (1125–90) was an English Cistercian abbot of Forde for seven years before being chosen bishop of Worcester.  In 1184 he became archbishop of Canterbury.  He promoted the Third Crusade and went to the Holy Land himself after crowning Richard I, the Lionheart, as King of England in 1189.  Baldwin died during the siege of Acre. 

 

Baldwin’s Tractate XV on the Cenobitic or Common Life dates from the monastic period of his life when he was abbot at Forde.  Baldwin was educated in law and theology at Bologna before becoming a monk.  He writes with the precision of a theologian. His subject is the soul seeking God in the common life of the monastery.  He teaches that the monastic community at its best is an overflowing of the fountain of Trinitarian life and love. 

 

The triune God is “incomprehensible charity,” (p 159) a generosity that wants to love and be loved infinitely, to share all and to receive all in return.  Since divine charity has been “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5), we too, like the Holy Trinity, may know the “love of sharing and the sharing of love” in our common life in the monastery (p. 160).  Baldwin delights in talking about the inner life of the three divine persons (pp 162–4).

 

Did you know that the angels also share a common life?  Baldwin has much to say about the angels (pp 164–5), a topic with which we may need to become more familiar.  Apparently the monks of Baldwin’s own monastery were not perfectly angelic (pp 164–5).

 

Another model of the common life is the primitive Christian community whose members held everything in common (Acts 4:32).  Baldwin is strongly rejects private possessions by monks and nuns.  “What makes the common life, therefore, is one heart, one soul, and having everything in common” (p. 171).  

 

Baldwin’s treatise is dotted with splendid aphorisms that deserve to be noted and pondered, such as “Love, after all, is a fire, and to love, therefore, is to burn” (p. 159), “Everything good is worthy of praise simply because it is good” (p. 162), “People who love themselves and serve their own desires are dead while they are still alive” (p. 172), “No one loves his neighbor well unless he hates him well” (p. 173), and others.  Also to be noted are occasional outbursts of prayer, sometimes lengthy, that flow from the writer’s heart.  

 

Baldwin reaches his conclusion when he describes the ideal monastic community: “unity of spirit in the charity of God, the bond of peace in the mutual and unfailing charity of all the brethren, the sharing of all the goods which should be shared, and the total rejection of any idea of personal ownership in the way of life of holy religion” (p. 177). 

 

 

Sr Maria Gonzalo, OCSO

 

The first time I read Baldwin of Forde´s Tractate on the Common Life I was disappointed. It was at the very beginning of my monastic life, but the “honeymoon” had already passed. Questions about our cenobitic life had started to pile up, and I wanted practical answers. The common life of the Trinity or the sharing of the angels did not sound too practical to me. Yes, yes, yes, all that was fine, but it was like trying to fix a faucet with a wrench in one hand and a book of poetry in the other.

 

Years have passed, and I have realized that the “how to” manual I was looking for will not do as I expected. This time I was able to sit down with Baldwin for a nice conversation, very much like John Cassian and Germanus spent their time in dialogue with Abba Moses. During our time together, I not only received advice, but I was questioned about my own desires and basic notions of the foundations of our common life. What was in real need of “repair”?

 

Baldwin affirms with all the strength of the Scriptures that God is Charity and that this charity is in us by grace and reveals to us in a certain way the nature of that incomprehensible charity which is God himself (…); and by a sort of inward feeling of charity itself, it indicates to our innermost being that the nature of charity is to love and to wish to be loved. (…) Love, by a certain instinctive movement, longs to pour itself forth and transfer the good it possesses to someone it loves with all its love. (p. 159)

 

I could recognize this instinctive movement, this longing within me, but why many times does it seem not to reach its goal?  Baldwin pointed out to me my own blindness – neither in yourself nor through yourself can you discern either God or yourself (p. 161) - and my need of a guide. 

 

OK, I would not give up. Never give up loving. Never settle for less. The commandment of love will enlighten my eyes, and I will see God (p.161); his image will be reformed in me (p. 162). Through this love, that is mutual service and mutual patience, the bond of peace will be kept (pp 176-177). But, tell me: What is love? 

 

- The charity which is in us is characterized by two factors which are inseparably connected: the love of sharing and the sharing of love. And if one or the other is absent, then charity is not blessed, for charity seeks its joy and blessedness only in the sharing of the good it possesses and the sharing of its own self. (p. 160)

Baldwin also gave me some practical advices after all:

 

1. Begin by loving your common nature: Love your nature, love what you are by birth, for if you do not love in others the nature which is in you, you will not love yourself either. (p. 167)

 

2. Go further: The communion of grace proper to all Christians is essential but wholly inadequate for the common life of a religious community (p. 170).

 

3. Have everything in common: whoever has any other gift, whether greater or lesser, should possess it as having been given it by God for the sake of others (p. 185)

 

4. Find your balance, temper your feelings: To love well and to hate well are both good (pp 172-173)

 

5. Consent to the will of God (p. 171) and undergo the deconstruction of our own plans and ideas. Thus, they are not permitted to want what they want, nor able to (to do) what they are able (to do), nor to feel what they feel, nor to be what they are, nor to live by their own spirit, but by the Spirit of God (p. 172)

 

Sharing, not only a space, a horarium, a discipline of life, but ourselves, because we are one life, as the Trinity is one life (p. 157). Only love, charity, can teach us what this really means; only in our common life, -just as it is, just as we are- the power of love will reveal it to us. There I will give you my love (Song 7, 12), says the bride to the Bridegroom; the Bridegroom to the bride.

 

If it be granted me from above to love you and to love my neighbor, then even though my merits are poor and meager, I have a hope which is above and beyond all my merits: I am sure that through the communion of charity the merits of the saints can make good my own imperfection and insufficiency. (…) It is then that God will wipe away all the tears from the eyes of the saints. It is then that all the saints will be as one heart and one soul, and they will have all things in common when God will be all in all. (pp 190-191)