Reflections of a WCCM Benedictine Oblate volunteering at Bonnevaux
Dear sisters and brothers, if you are thinking about offering service by volunteering at Bonnevaux, I hope my reflections help you decide to say “yes, I want to come please.” There is no charge for your time of volunteering. All you have to pay for is your travel costs to get there. ‘Here I am Lord! Is it I Lord?”
John Main said: ‘This is why the Christian life is inseparable from prayer and the degrees of silence and solitude to which prayer calls us – why the monastery and the marketplace are so dynamically related’ and Father Laurence in his letter which went out with the Annual Appeal said that whatever we could give would be precious. He quoted from The Rule of St Benedict: “Let us open our eyes to the divinising light and our ears to the voice from heaven….What dear brothers and sisters is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us…………”.
What a blessing Bonnevaux is – in so many ways – it is beautiful.. To pray with others, in person, 4 times a day, every day, that foundational work of prayer which enlivens and focuses us in the present moment and enables us to see Christ in those whom we are living with in community. That is something mysterious. Just like living in a family situation, there were differences of personality, nationality, ways of speaking and doing which became whole in the enriching silence of meditation, eating breakfast and lunch and working for the benefit of each other. I hope that my service to them revealed the love of Christ for them, uniquely.
I knew soon after I arrived why I had been called by the Spirit to volunteer during Lent and I was there for the Holy Week Retreat. I had a personal spiritual journey to make. It wasn’t an easy journey and the prayerful work was a great help. I have a tendency to over reflect on things I’m hearing in Lectio divina, to become self-absorbed.
The natural world also conveyed that same love of Christ for me. Coming out of the Abbey about 6.55 a.m. to walk up the shale path to the barn for the first meditation of the day (optional!) and see the mist rising from the grass with an ethereal beauty. On days when there was a light breeze, or a stronger wind, the ripples on part of the lake sparkled like diamonds. The conkers from the horse chestnut tree behind the Abbey, shed last Autumn and some had split and taken root in the soil, little green shoots peeping out at the world, the new life of Easter.
When there isn’t a retreat taking place, at 9.30 a.m. we gathered in the Abbey library reading a section of The Holy Rule, followed by a time of sharing our thoughts on the passage. All those who were volunteering at the same time as myself were not on the oblate path except Fr. Peter and Henriette who are 2 of the 3 ‘core’ Community at Bonnevaux, the third being Fr. Laurence. These sharing times were very fruitful for me, to hear how other volunteers understood the passages which were from Chapter 7, the 12 steps of humility.
The night before I was leaving Bonnevaux at the end of my time there, after our evening meal and the clearing away of plates etc. into the dishwasher, we sat together in the library for a social time together, chatting over mugs of tea or coffee. I was happy to join in. We would each other a question which I could choose not to answer and then I could ask that person a question back. It was a lovely way to get to know each other a bit more, some very thoughtful questions and one of the volunteers had written a little poem about her experience of living with me! I have it in my prayer space here at home so she, and all the new friends there, are in my thoughts and prayers. I find myself thinking, I wonder where they are now and what they are doing. Three I know were volunteering for a longer period of time.
I am very eager to return and volunteer again and hope to do so in October at the time of the 2026 International Oblate Retreat to. In fact, I left some of my clothes etc. which would have been too warm to be wearing on the way home with the forecast temperatures. They are there for when I do return.
Laurence’s letter for the Feast day of St. Benedict – ‘Our commitment to obedience, stability and conversion, to Lectio and the pure prayer of the heart is what makes our own community of love a truly Benedictine monastery without walls but with interior doors leading to the room filled with divinising light.’
Angela Gregson, UK Oblate