Fr Abbot Brendan OSB
A Spanish Athlete, Beatriz Flamini, recently emerged from a cave in southern Spain after spending 500 days alone exploring the effects of isolation on the human mind and body. This rather unusual feat was part of a scientific experiment. As she appeared from her cave, Flamini embraced supporters, met with her doctors and spent nearly an hour talking to the media. She spent her days reading, drawing, exercising, knitting woolly hats and recording herself on video. Dokumalia, a Spanish production company, plans to turn her experiences into a movie.
St Benedict, whom we celebrate today, spent three years, 1,095 days, in his cave. He was not conducting a scientific experiment and only left the cave because he was discovered by the outside world and people started visiting him. Benedict went into his cave for one reason only, to search for God, to be alone with God.
There is something special about human beings and caves. Plato, in the Republic, compared the human condition to being imprisoned in a cave where we never see the light, but only shadows. Philosophers are those who make their way out of the cave and see the real world – but they have to be careful how they talk about their experience, because people in the dark don’t like the light. That analogy has rung true with many a seeker of truth down the centuries.
Let’s not forget the two most important caves in history, the cave at Bethlehem and the cave outside Jerusalem. Here, God himself did something very strange: He entered our caves to save us. In the manger and in the empty tomb, the Light of the World shone out from the cave. He reversed Plato’s image and brought the light into the cave. There is definitely something very special about people, caves and God.
It was Pope John Paul II who remarked, “The small, obscure grotto of Subiaco, became the cradle of the Benedictine Order. From it a bright beacon of faith and civilization shone out which, through the example and work of the holy Patriarch’s spiritual sons and daughters flooded the West and East of Europe and the other continents.”
We all need to be rescued from our caves. Like St Benedict, each of us needs to let God enter the darkest corners of our heart and mind. We need to allow God to rescue us from the stagnant airless deeps and lead us out by the hand into the light of the world. From his time alone with God in the cave Benedict demonstrates a profound understanding of human nature, and his Rule looks on human weakness with a compassionate eye while making it clear that life in the school of the Lord’s service is not always easy. Rather than being self-absorbed, putting myself in the centre of everything, I need to seek God at the centre. This is the path leading out of my cave.
Each one of us who have chosen a monastic vocation have been called personally by God to enter this school of the Lord’s service. I need to persevere in this school until my death. And so my final word on today’s feast of St Benedict is to those of us in monastic vows. Keep always within your heart and mind those words we recited on the day of our profession: Receive me, O Lord, according to your word and I shall live; and do not disappoint me in my hope.