10 MAY 2025, 12th Annual STUDY DAY for community, oblates and friends: Fr AUGUSTINE BAKER, an ENDURING LEGACY? DR ROWAN WILLIAMS

On a glorious May Day about 40 participants gathered in the Conference Room for the second Jubilee Study Day on our Cambrai heritage (the first was on Dame Gertrude More with Dr Jacob Riyeff in October 2024).
As well as a clutch of Stanbrook oblates, there were five monks from Mirfield, including their Junior and Novice and four Ampleforth brethren.
Mother Abbess welcomed back Dr Rowan Williams, reminding us of his previous talks on Creation in 2019 – pre Covid.
D. Laurentia opened the session with Fr Baker’s prayer and handed over to our speaker who gave a masterful overview of Baker’s life and teaching.

Rowan Williams portrayed Abergavenny-born  Augustine Baker as an inhabitant of borderlands: physical (Monmouth/Gwent/Hereford), cultural (Welsh/English) and religio-political (Roman Catholicism/Anglican State Religion). As the day progressed, this theme of Baker’s facility in inhabiting and crossing borders came up in several contexts and was one example of how our speaker brought new insights to bear on the community’s spiritual inheritance.

RW brought to life with humour and empathy the relationship between Baker and his young charges and the wise common sense approach of Baker in trying to guide these fervent neophytes in the ways of prayer, steering them away from rigid systems to find personal liberty (of course with discernment and personal responsibility) under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Baker tells us he had no guide himself on the journey of prayer but took sign posts from the Church’s treasury of spiritual literature on prayer.
Here again Baker’s ability to navigate and negotiate borders came to the fore. Far from being wedded to one tradition or spirituality, he had, through such assiduous and wide reading, developed a fluency in the language and literature of prayer from the Desert Fathers, through the Medieval Mystics to contemporary authors and so was enabled to pass this on, filtered through his own experience.

A rich question session, chaired by oblate, Fr Chris Jackson, followed.
After Midday Prayer and a delicious lunch, which many took al fresco in the community’s garth, the assembly re-convened for the afternoon session. This time Dr Rowan homed in on some practicalities. His explanation of the classic three stages of contemplative prayer in Baker’s teaching: meditation, immediate forced acts and aspirations linked with pure active contemplative prayer, revealed his nuanced and, thinks RW, unique insight, around the way these stages are on a spectrum and how one crosses the border – another reference to that concept – from one to the other.
What begins as a forced immediate act, say in repeating a psalm verse, can become so deeply embedded in one’s inner self that it wells up another time spontaneously as an unforced aspiration which in turn can open the door for God to visit the soul in passive union. RW made a helpful analogy here with the Orthodox use of the Jesus Prayer. In essence this is the transition from head to heart.

Again, there was a rich question and answer session before Oblate, Bev Hallam, gave a vote of thanks on behalf of the group and Fr Chris offered the closing prayer. Informal discussion continued over tea in the Front Hall.

In conclusion, an attempt an answer the question in our title: is Fr Baker’s legacy enduring?

Dr Williams referred to the current community at Stanbrook as the legacy – this was heartening – and a challenge! Enduring? We cannot tell how long the community may last…

More enduring, surely, is that deeply embedded God-given longing and instinct in the human heart for our heavenly home of which our speaker spoke and which will always well up, as long as there are human hearts. And as long as this longing endures Fr Baker will continue to be a trusty guide for that journey.

For a contemporary audience, however, his legacy does need ‘translators’ as skilful as Rowan Williams and we are most grateful for this day which has helped deepen our appreciation of the legacy we’ve been given, a legacy which is no more – and no less – than the gift and promise all God’s people are given in Christ of sharing the divine life. Please God we shall have the grace to be good stewards of the gift.

From the House Chronicle