On Saturday, 13 March 2010, our friends Madeleine and Alan brought us a relic of Saint Robert of Molesmes in a beautiful reliquary shaped like a lantern with porthole glass on all four sides. There is a story behind this event: in 2008 the Christian community of Molesmes, on the occasion of the transfer of the relics of Saint Robert, wanted to offer a relic to Cîteaux. The Father Abbot thought immediately that this relic was to be for Munkeby. Thus, members of our small community receive it in connection ith the celebration of the translation at Molesmes.
The cult of relics has lost its place in a Lutheran country. Don’t forget that one of the fruits of the Reformation in this region was to make the exact location of the grave of Saint Olav at Nidaros disappear forever. Even so, our neighbors, as we have so often experienced here, show curiosity, respect and openness to a different tradition, when unexpected events like this happen.
How to explain the meaning of relics in the context of faith? The prophet Ezechiel may help us here: the dry bones that he contemplates in a valley, begin to come to life again, to be covered in flesh. The flesh is animated by the divine breath: the holiness of the Spirit sanctifies it to such an extent that it is called to rise again. That is what popular devotion understands instinctively when it venerates the relics of the saints, without any magic attached. Each one of us is called to let our body be sanctified by the spirit so that it becomes the temple, for God himself has become “flesh of our flesh”, “bone of our bone”, according to the words of the Bible.
Robert is not just anybody; he belongs to the origins of Cîteaux by the fact that he lays all his authority behind the foundation of the New Monastery, and takes part in it with the small group of monk-founders. But history is never easy: a year after his arrival, he returns to Molesmes with some of the monks. The “Exordium parvum”, the primitive text of Cîteaux, leaves a certain ambiguity toward him. It speaks of his “habitual inconstancy”: is there a trace of a feeling of abandonment there?
What can we, at Munkeby, deduct from his experience? In the representation of the founders of Cîteaux, he keeps the Rule of Saint Benedict alongside Alberic and Stephen. Robert’s intuition was that once the Rule were restored, that would be sufficient to preserve an authentic monastic life. That is still true for us today. Robert’s instability may be interpreted as a weakness, but also as a gift, a disposition to let oneself be guided along unexpected ways, renouncing his plans and visions. The adventure of Munkeby invites us to that as well. In our oratory, the discrete presence of Saint Robert grounds us in this place and ties our adventure to that other one that led Robert to Cîteaux at the end of the eleventh century. The monks of Munkeby, whose remains are buried in the soil of Trondelag, knew, like us what they owed to Robert; thus we feel closer to them.
