The Augustinian Rule and some aspects of Augustinian spirituality

(The following summarises a session held in two sections for the Presentation Sisters, Queensland, 17 October 2002. Since most active religious congregations, both women and men, have constitutions based on the Augustinian Rule the following transcript has proved to be of wide interest.)

I. Why do we say that the Presentation Sisters have the Rule of St Augustine?

- Early religious life in Western Europe was monastic from ca. C.7, chiefly Benedictine.

- By C.12, a new more mobile society was emerging ... many new religious movements, some of which were extreme ... the age of Sts Francis and Dominic.

- Lateran Council IV (1215) decrees no new religious orders to be founded: any new community was to adopt one of the approved Rules. These not named, but understood to be those of Sts Basil (Eastern Church), Benedict and Augustine.

- While Benedictinism was spreading in Western Europe, what do we hear of the Augustinian Rule? The only version we have is a letter - Letter 211 of Augustine's edited works - written to a community of religious women outlining the spirit in which they should live their daily lifestyle.

- As we know, the city of Hippo as Augustine lay dying was ravaged by the Vandals. Later invasions saw all North Africa become Islamic. No direct trace was left of communities dating from Augustine's monastery.

- However, a memory was kept alive.

- Some small communities of men took Augustine's letter, expressed it in the masculine and added more specific rules for their daily living. This pattern of community life was not monastic in the sense of the Benedictine Rule - it could be applied to mobile communites involved in day-to-day business.

- By C.11, many chapters of canons attached to cathedrals and larger churches had adopted the Augustinian Rule and begun to live a community life while carrying out their pastoral work. St Dominic, e.g., was an Augustinian canon before founding his own order.

- From Lateran IV, new foundations, if they were involved in active work, gained approbation under the Rule of Augustine. To this Rule, they added Constitutions (as was also done with the Rule of Benedict), hence the long-standing term, 'Rule and Constitutions'. In 1216, e.g., Dominic's Order of Preachers gained papal approbation under the Rule of Augustine, to which Dominic added his own carefully thought-out Constitutions.

St Francis, his great contemporary, insisted that the pope had given verbal approval to his simple rule of life before the Council and, in time, the Franciscan Rule, more fully developed, was added to the Great Rules, as they were known. When the Carmelites began to appear in Europe after the final loss of the Crusader states in Palestine, their Rule was also accepted as approved by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem before the Council.

- The Franciscan Rule had its own spirit of radicality, distinctive from either the monastic Rule of Benedict or the more socially involved spirit of the Augustinian tradition.Similarly, the Carmelites preserved the unique touch of the first hermits of Mt Carmel.

- Until C.19, papal approbation involved solemn (public) vows, which were historically upheld in both canon and civil law.Simple-vow groups, whose vows were regarded as private, until this time finctioned on the approbation of the local bishops who approved them.

- Nano Nagle's small Sisterhood, whose vows were simple, received approbation as Presentation Sisters from Bishop Moylan of Cork in 1791.

- However, for greater stability in uncertain times, they sought solemn vows. Bishop Moylan was at first strongly opposed as this meant for women acceptance of enclosure. Nevertheless, he bowed to the wishes of the Sisters and obtained for them papal approbation. This was granted in 1805 under the Rule of St Augustine, to which were added the Constitutions drawn up by Laurence Callanan OFM for the 1791 aprobation.

- All older books of Rules and Constitutions, such as those of the Paris Ursulines (which Fr Callanan used as a model), had the Rule (or Letter) of Augustine printed at the front of the added constitutions. By 1800, Rome was no longer inclined to grant solemn vows - in fact, the Presentations seem to have been the last women's institute to obtain solemn vows. The Rule of Augustine was not prefaced to their Constitutions, but the fact remained that they canonically became a religious order under the Augustinian Rule.

- in 1910, as part of a growing clarification of canon law for religious, the vows of the Presentations were declared simple, in view of their, by then, widely branched activities in several continents.

II. Some Aspects of Augustinian Spirituality

- Augustinian spirituality stems from the great figure of Augustine himself. While, as an old man, he saw his city destroyed, his library containing so many of his own writings was preserved. Besides his Confessions, where he tells us so much about himself, we have the first life of Augustine written by his friend and community member, Possidius.

- Augustine was drawn to friendship - he loved his friends and was deeply loved by them. All Augustine's reflections bear the spirit of communio. He was drawn to Christianity in Milan and, to prepare for baptism, he withdrew to a country villa at Cassiciacum for a time of reflection. With him went his mother, the widowed Monica, his brother Navigius, his teenage son Adeodatus and a group of close friends - a community of expatriate North Africans!

- The spirit of Cassiciacum was expressed in deeply shared conversations, delight in the beautiful natural surroundings and, for Augustine, some very fruitful writing. They were there for some six months before returning to Milan and later to Rome. Following Monica's death, Augustine returned to North Africa where he gathered a devoted community in his father's fouse. This was his first religious community and one, for Augustine, beset with busyness as he drew further friends and those seeking advice around him.

- On a protracted visit to nearby Hippo, he was called to priesthood by the local people and ordained. Here he formed his second community. As priest and later bishop of Hippo, he led a very active life, concerned in the affairs of the region and producing many writings. All these had a pastoral intention in the various situations and conflicts that developed in the area. Always, Augustine drew strength from his deepening spirituality and his ability to share this with his own community and his wider congregation. Augustine's spirituality was centred on the Totus Christus, the whole Christ, in whose life we share. This impelling sense of communio led to his spiritual outreach. He once said, 'Nothing human is alien to me.' Hence, his is a spirituality of insertion in the world which was strongly echoed in the great foundational document of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, on the Church in the Modern World.

- In the fairly short document which represents the Rule of Augustine, he begins with the basic message of the gospel: love of God and love of our neighbour, saying 'these are the chief commandments given to us'. He then stresses the importance of community life, basing his concept of this on the account of the early Christian community given in the Acts of the Apostles. 'Honnour God in each other', he writes, whose temples you have become.'

- From the earliest references to monasticism, we know that the psalms, together with hymns, formed the basis of community prayer - so too for Augustine's community as he exhorts them 'ponder in your hearts what your lips are saying.' Charity, he says, 'prefers the common good to the good of the individual' ... the superior of the community is to 'serve with love' and to be served in turn by love and not a servile fear. (Words repeated in many later constitutions.)

- Finally, he prays, 'The Lord grant that you observe all these things as lovers of spiritual beauty, giving forth the spirit of Christ in the holiness of your conduct, not as slaves under the law but as free people firmly established in grace'.

- A great literature has grown around the Augustinian spiritual heritage. It is the heritage within which the Presentation constitutions were written and received their ecclesial approbation. It remains a tradition marked by flexibility, moderation and interaction with the surrounding world, whose motive force is love, a word so often used by Augustine. Many today are seeking spiritual roots in a world that seems fragmenting around them. There is a present search for the great spiritual traditions of the Church and a wish to link into them. For us as Presentations, as for many other religious families, our heritage lies in the Augustinian spiritual tradition.

Rosa MacGinley pbvm

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