Draw from the rule of Saint Augustine to taste happiness!

Brief, simple, practical, can the Rule of Saint Augustine, which is the oldest monastic rule, significantly change everyone's daily life? Certainly. It gives keys to better living together, whether in religious, conjugal, family, social or professional life.

“I am convinced that when he began to write the Rule, Saint Augustine not only thought of religious but also of couples, families, society and so many others,” says François-Marie Humann, the father abbot of the abbey of Mondaye (Calvados) who himself lives according to this rule as a monk of the order of Canons Regular of Prémontré. For the author of the Rule of Saint Augustine: full text and commentary, “religious life like any other Christian life is, each in its own way, the unfolding of a baptism”. Also, for him, “the Rule of Saint Augustine is addressed first of all to the baptized because it is a question of learning to live fully from baptism”.

Clear and precise, this first monastic rule of the West, written in 397 is very practical. Divided into eight chapters, it advocates a model of life inspired by that of the first Christian community of Jerusalem as described in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (4, 32). She insists on fraternal charity inspired by the double commandment of God: that of love of God and love of neighbour, inseparable from each other: "Above all, Live together at home, Have one soul and one heart turned towards God. And then, let no one hear among you of material goods, but on the contrary let everything be common to you” (Rule, chapter I, 2-3).

For Brother Humann, the Rule is ultimately “a way of living the Gospel by paying attention to some of its aspects. It joins all the baptized in its relational dimension because for Saint Augustine, holiness passes through living together where each one watches over the other”, he concludes. Discover the six key pieces of advice from the Rule of Saint Augustine:

See the other as a “temple of God”

For Saint Augustine everything begins with the effort to be in the unity of hearts, necessary in any daily fraternal relationship: between brother monks and their superior, but in the same way between parents and their children, between spouses, friends or colleagues… The unity of hearts requires permanent adjustment to one another. For this to be real, each must see himself and the other as a "temple of God": "Live therefore all in the unity of hearts and souls, and honor in each other this God whose have become the temples”. To listen to others, to be attentive to what they say, to sympathize with their pains or to rejoice with them in their successes, is to practice reciprocal hospitality which leads to unity of hearts.

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Living together in friendship with God

This is precisely what Saint Augustine does when he becomes bishop. Experiencing too much tension between his new life as bishop and that of the community, he made a founding decision to leave the garden monastery to form a monastery at the bishopric with the same spirit, but lived differently on a daily basis. For Saint Augustine, common life can take very different forms. The main thing is to focus on the common good which can only reside in God alone. In The Happy Life, Saint Augustine asks: “Is it enough to have what one wants to be happy? Saint Monica, her mother answers her: “If it is the good that we want and that we have, we are happy; but if it is evil, however bad one may have it, one is unhappy. »

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To live happily is to live together in friendship with God in the mode of free submission to God, the only “valid” common good. It is therefore God that one must possess in order to be happy, says Saint Augustine. In monastic life as, for example, in married life. The hardships, the passing years, the evolution of each one often form increasingly insurmountable obstacles to being united and happy. Unless the spouses entrust their couple directly to Christ and they agree to live daily under his gaze.

Sharing material goods in all humility

According to Saint Augustine, reciprocal hospitality is necessarily experienced through a material dimension. For him, living together means sharing goods that are pooled and redistributed according to need. Inspired by the model of life of the first Christians, this principle requires a double work, both social and spiritual: dispossession and humility: "The rich must get rid of their wealth, but also of the pride that they can to experience having been rich; the poor must get rid of his desire for wealth, but also of the pride of now being in a good situation”. The material tasks and the daily services then become the place of a hospitality exercised in turn: one takes care of the cooking, the other of the prayer, yet another of the laundry... And if the secret for to live better was in this love that accompanies every moment of everyday life, however painful it may be? God reveals himself precisely through all these little things that are lived there on a daily basis.

Forge links so that everyone finds their place

Any daily task helps to check attention to another. The brothers must be attentive to the uniqueness of each of them and to welcome their different needs. According to Saint Augustine, the ideal of community life is embodied in the permanent concern not to overburden the most fragile. Those who cannot stay fasting until the evening, like those who are in fragile health, must be at the center of the monks' concerns. To achieve this, constant discernment in relation to others and to oneself is essential. For it is the correctness of the relationship that is at stake: The fragile brothers "must be treated in a no less appropriate way" like the solid brothers, "not everyone should want to receive what they see granted to someone". Why be jealous of another's good, when we have what we need?

Correct the other fraternally

However, there are situations where attention to another requires the opposite. Shortcomings in living together require fraternal correction. It does not consist in analyzing the behavior of the other, but in remaining attentive to it, always in the spirit of “the unity of hearts”. Not to warn him is to lose interest in him, it is to no longer welcome him as the one with whom unity of heart is sought. Often, it happens that the one who is taken back is grieved at the same time. He resists, he disputes, but then he replays in silence, with himself, what he has just heard, he replays it when there is only God and him… He is no longer afraid of displeasing men by correcting himself, but he fears to displease God by not correcting himself.

Persevere in charity

We could make the Rule only an art of balancing human relations and attention to others. But with Saint Augustine, this attitude is subject to the injunction of love. Love is at the center of his thought. It designates what sets the soul in motion, what gives it strength and life, leading it towards its “natural place”: “My gravity is my love” (Confessions, XIII, 9). He is also the essence of all the virtues and of the perfection to which they tend. Saint Augustine makes them culminate in charity, the supreme form of love since, giving itself without reserve, charity assures itself of the possession of the supreme Good.

Charity is expressed in Christ's command: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). The motor of common life is there: in the gift of the Spirit from whom charity proceeds. Each welcomes God by welcoming the other. This hospitality of God himself is reconciliation, the sign of true unity. The joy of being united is the fruit of charity, of reciprocal love, which is given by God. It is indeed this thirst for true love that the famous formula of Saint Augustine evokes: “I did not love yet, but I loved to love” (Confessions, XIII, 9).