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Whenever I write or speak about religion a certain story of Jesus’ echoes in my mind. It is the one where he points to the Pharisees who ‘love to wear long robes and sit in the best seats in the temple and make long prayers’. This is never more true than when writing about spirituality, and the excruciating crunch of Christ's words has pressed home even more as I have written about the vocation of being a Christian husband and father.

I am only too aware that what I have said about the Christian family is idealistic, and that the reality of our own home is far from the ideal. Gregory the Great said about Benedict, ‘He could not have written what he did not live’. I doubt if someone reviewing my life could be quite so optimistic. My wife is the first to point out that I don't live up to my own good words, but I think she admits that even if I don't succeed, at least I'm making the effort. I hope in our better moments we can have a laugh together and say with the old monk who was asked what they do in the monastery, ‘We fall and get up, fall and get up, fall and get up again’.

So this book is not about my attainments, but my aims. It is written from my own experience of growing up in a Christian family. It is also written from the experience of trying to follow the way of Benedict for about fifteen years, first as an Anglican minister and now as a Catholic layman. It also comes out of my own experience in the ‘thick of things’ with four young children: Benedict, Madeleine, Theodore and Elias. It could not have been written without them and it certainly could not have been considered without my wife, whose example in self-giving teaches me every day. Without them I would be a solitary hermit. With them I am a faltering abbot.

If I have had the courage to attempt fatherhood and to attempt to write on it, then I have my own father to thank. Indeed, if I have any Christian faith at all I have him to thank. He and my mother brought up five children in an evangelical tradition to ‘know and love the Lord’. As a result each one of us has kept the faith and managed to build our own Christian marriages and families the best we know how. In this day and age my parents’ success is a noteworthy accomplishment. My father knew nothing about St Benedict, but his example of fatherhood was close to the Benedictine ideal I set out here. He was strict but understanding. When he said, ‘This hurts me more than it hurts you…’, we believed it. He taught us to respect physical things and one another. He always stressed the need for good stewardship, balance and gentleness of mind. Most of all he was unfailing in his spiritual life. He led the family in prayer and we saw him pray. We knew he gave sacrificially. We saw him get involved in the local church, in the international church and in Christian mission. Because his faith was real and active we have faith today, for children do what their parents do, not necessarily what their parents say.

Finally, if I presume to comment on the sacred Rule of St Benedict I must thank June, a Benedictine oblate, who first encouraged me to visit a monastery over twenty years ago. Among many monastic friends, the late Abbot of Quarr, Dom Leo Avery, was a humble father and spiritual guide. Dom Joseph McNerney gave friendship and proved an intelligent and understanding pastor on our journey into the Catholic Church. The community at Mont St Michel have always given me a warm Gallic welcome, and the monks at Downside Abbey, especially Dom Daniel Rees, have encouraged and helped me with this text. Finally, Dom Laurence Kelly shows me a life full of grace, wisdom and joy. He is the old porter who opens the door for me with a word of thanks and blessing.

Dwight Longenecker

Chippenham

The Feast of St Joseph

19 March 1999