Abbot Columba McCann: I like the honest, self-interested question of Peter in our gospel story: what about us? We have left everything and followed you. What are we to have, then? It’s good to be honest and straightforward in our conversation with the Lord! I like even more the generous promise of Jesus: for all that we leave behind to follow him, we will get a hundredfold return and eternal life into the bargain.
The promise of a hundredfold return is not an empty promise. Look even at the generosity of nature itself: how living organisms increase and multiply with amazing speed and abundance. Two weeks ago we put out an empty beehive in the hope that it might attract some new inhabitants. Before we knew it, forty thousand bees turned up and settled in.
The bees go from flower to flower. Even the humblest flower, even a buttercup or a dandelion has a perfection of beauty that outshines the expensive kingly robes of any king or queen. God-given beauty.
Look up then at the night sky: they say there are about a hundred billion stars in the average galaxy. And they estimate that there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth.
It gives us an inkling, perhaps, of the kind of God we are invited to share our lives with. A God of infinite abundance.
Look also at some of the other moments in the gospels. Peter and his co-workers went fishing all night and caught nothing. But then he stepped out of his usual pattern. More precisely, he allowed Jesus to step into his boat. He left behind his professional competence as a fisherman, and fished where nothing should have been found. The nets filled to breaking point. Without Jesus: nothing; with Jesus, abundance. But that was only the beginning. It was the sign that, if he continued with Jesus he would fish people out of deep water when they were in trouble. That certainly happened a hundredfold. The decision to be with Jesus, to let him in, to follow him, to be in the same boat, makes all the difference between narrowness and abundance. When Peter let Jesus into his boat he didn’t realise that the outcome would eventually affect millions of people. Not just a hundred fold, many millionfold!
On another occasion, when everyone was hungry, a young boy gave up his few loaves and fish that would have been just right for his family, thank you very much. He handed up, gave up, what he had to Jesus. The result fed, not hundreds, but thousands. Being with Jesus, handing over to Jesus, brings abundance.
Then there is the amazing story of Peter walking on water. There are moments when we may feel we are walking on water, for example in the middle of a family crisis where we are only able to take one step at a time, wondering how it will all end. When Peter tries to do it on his own, he starts to go under, looking at the waves. When he keeps his gaze on the Lord, all is well and miracles happen.
The huge catch of fish, the feeding of five thousand, the walking on the water all speak of an abundance, a source of life and stability that hides gently under the appearances of things, once we remain with the Lord. But there are other miracles that happen all the time, more gently, perhaps without our even realising it.
Think of the wedding feast of Cana: almost no-one realised even where the wine had come from. It was just there, it was good. It was there because a need was brought to Jesus, and people did what he told them to do.
Being in the same boat as Jesus, handing over what we have to him, looking constantly to him for stability, voicing our needs to him. This is the formula for abundant living. It’s the Christian life. But St Benedict set up a special environment for those who really need help to make this happen: a monastery. Everything necessary to help us turn our gaze constantly in one direction: a timetable, spaces for communal and personal prayer, space and time for listening to his word, the right kind of work that harmonises with this. The gift and task of community life.
And again the hundredfold happens: St Benedict didn’t set out to form a worldwide movement. He just knit together some traditional guidelines, adjusted them as he thought best, and proposed them to those who wanted to leave everything and follow Jesus as monks. In the process, almost by accident, he set in train a chain reaction that produced oases of learning, culture, stability and human community that helped the rebuilding of Europe in the ashes of the dying Roman Empire. That’s why he is a patron saint of Europe. But all he wanted to was to help his companions find a way to prefer nothing to Christ. If we support one another in our life with Christ, then we too will reap the hundredfold. In the end we are given God.