Home > Premonstratensians > The nobertin life in Leffe

The oblation of our perpetual profession unites us to the community of our brethren. The project of communal life becomes effective in both the simple and complex reality of daily life. To this end, we draw from the canonical tradition of our Order those elements which most efficaciously facilitate communion or which serve effectively to promote authentically Christian and religious values as well as the ecclesiastic mission of our communities. These means are adapted according to the features and the environment of each local community, but always lead back to communal life and its asceticism.

Charity, the foundation of communal life, does not seek its interest (cf. 1 Cor. 13). It must, according to the Rule of Saint Augustine, be understood in such a way as that “the good of the community passes before individual interest, not individual interest before the common good”. The practice of communal life requires therefore that we place in the service of the common good all that we are and all that we do.

This fraternal life of fellow members finds unceasingly its expression in the relations of mutual esteem, service, trust, edification, pardon and encouragement. The spirit of mortification, inherent in the giving of oneself, expresses itself by recognising and by accepting the diversity of others and in bearing patiently the renunciation and inconveniences which usually accompany communal daily life and work. This mortification enriches the fraternal life and the charity that it entails. It is only a humanly unavoidable complement of the joy of being and living together to which a well established sense of celebration bears witness.

Communal exercises, like communal living, communal prayer, a communal table, communal work as well as recreation, whose value has been proven by centuries of tradition, has as a goal the strengthening of the insertion of the brethren in the community and keeping ever alive the sense of fraternal union between the members of a single family.

It is thus that certain parts of the house are reserved, in the form of an “enclosure” to the life of the community and of each of the brethren. The tranquillity of the house and silence promote work, above all intellectual, the lectio divina, the familiarity with God and the rest necessary for personal life. By submitting to the universal law of work, by our apostolic, manual, scientific, and social activities, we also provide for the maintenance of our community. “Thus, strictly speaking, no one works for himself, on the contrary, all your activities shall be placed in common, you shall take greater care and shall manifest greater ardour than if you had to work only for your own personal profit... Do not say that this or that thing belongs to you, on the contrary, that everything be held in common and that your superior shall distribute to each according to his needs. The common cash-box requires that all put therein all the money that they have earned. Each shall receive a sum of money according to his needs” (Rule of Saint Augustine).

Whatever the shape that each era gives to one’s own life, the “place of truth”, as our Constitutions express it, is the community which, discovering each day its limits in the mirror of the Gospel and the Rule, also rediscovers there its hope and attempts to invent the means thereof.

[updated on the 04.11.05]

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