(10) Opportunities

[A Benedictine community] "is not envisoned as a complete
counter-society, but rather as a fellowship united by divine
love in monastic observance. But it is also not simply an
apostolic community, existing for a specific purpose in the
world or in the Church...The monastic life is to be lived for
the present and the future, and makes the community
able to work and plan for the unknown...

[However, we] must remember that a Religious Order has
to be ready for new and unexpected opportunities of service
at a time when human enterprise at home and abroad presses
on to new fields of effort, while the Church often lags behind
in the race."
[Adam Dunbar McCoy, HOLY CROSS: A CENTURY OF ANGLICAN
MONASTICISM, Morehouse-Barlow, 1987, p.90.]

Comment: There are Benedictine houses within the Anglican
Communion. As for the Order of the Holy Cross, also an
Anglican monastic order, I remain unclear exactly how it
relates to the Benedictine Tradition--but somehow it does.
And according to its precepts, it has considered the
"unexpected opportunities" that may call forth monastics
in future.

Being wise monks, the Holy Cross does not delve too deeply as to
what these unexpected opportunities might be. They will show
themselves in due course.

It could be that future--even present--monastics are beginning to
prepare themselves academically and vocationally to enter fields
of endeavor wherein they can better respond to these unexpected
opportunities. Today's world is changing fast, due to not only
events but also to advanced communications that drop loads of
information on a mostly unprepared humanity.

Consequently, much of our response has been knee-jerking rather
than strategic. These days we can hardly manage intelligible
immediate reactions much less a long-term strategic response.
Strategic thinking involves over-arching well-thought-out aims
that ultimately involve concrete results. So how might monastics
involve themselves in such a situation?

I can only guess, but Benedictine-oriented monastics do have a long-
standing Tradition upon which to draw. The major elements within the
Benedictine infrastructure can be translated not only in modern terms,
but it could be applied to modern concerns that face us today.