Abbot Brendan OSB
“St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it… quietly, patiently, gradually… There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, … a school of learning and a city.” The words of St John Henry Newman. Benedictine monasteries turned Europe into a Christian civilisation and so St Benedict was named patron of Europe. Today, Europe titters on a knife edge. We would do well to reflect on our beginnings, because if we do not know from where we have come, we are destined to repeat the terrible mistakes of the past.
However, the relevance of Benedict and his Rule is not confined to Europe or even to monasteries, because his aim was simply to be a better disciple of Christ. This is what we all need so that our baptism and being Christian becomes a way of life, a culture, and not just something tacked on to our ‘real life’. Today, Fr Philip celebrates his platinum jubilee of ordination, seventy years of priesthood and as we keep him in prayer we offer him our thanks for his life and service. Over those seventy years, life has changed so much.
So how is our culture today? We can see signs all around us. The way we speak, the things we do, the way we dress, the amount of time we spend in virtual reality on our phones, the way we drive our cars. How do we treat the weak, the lonely, those who are ill, the elderly, the stranger? What ever happened to the admonition in the Acts of the Apostles, “Distribution was made as each had need”. Benedict reminds us that in this multitude the voice of God is crying out, “Is there anyone here who longs for life and desires to see good days?” We live in this multitude, but we see each person and there is nothing more astonishing than a human face; it has something to do with the incarnation.
Rather than the world influencing and changing us, Benedict’s way was to be interiorly conformed to Christ and so transform the world. Benedict learnt that being conformed to Christ is not normally reached by total solitude, nor by austerity, but by living in a community, with its necessary conditions of obedience and work; and that neither the body nor the mind can safely be overstrained in the effort to avoid evil.
And so it was that at Subiaco and Montecasino we find no solitaries, or great hardships, but monks living together in community, doing such work as came to hand, clearing the ground, teaching children, preaching to the local people, reading and studying, receiving guests and strangers, accepting and training new-comers, attending the Office, reciting and chanting the Psalter.
We all have our fantasies about the perfect monastery, or community, or monk – of who we want to be. Benedict will have none of it. Stick with the truth of who you are and who you are becoming. Stick with the truth of your brothers and sisters and who they are and who they are becoming. Stick with the truth of your situation as it changes from day to day, week to week, year to year. The Church is not a circle of the likeminded. As St Paul counsels: ‘Come to a sober estimate of yourselves’: no false humility, we are to accept our giftedness as well as our weaknesses, no trying to impress others by appearing to be better than we are, whatever the expectations of others. This is how to begin; the path to God leads on from here.