Benedict on Benedict

Saint Benedict
Detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico.

Benedict! The man who saved European civilization! The man who invented western monasticism!

I‘ve often written of him, and of his sister Saint Scholastica.

The very foundation of this blog was the monastic movement that Benedict began 1500 years ago.

Frankly, you’re probably sick of hearing my blatherings. What we need is somebody way smarter than me to sum him up.

Fortunately, I’ve got just the thing. He even uses the word “cyclopean”.

Born in Norcia about 480, Benedict’s first studies were in Rome but, disappointed with city life, he retired to Subiaco, where he stayed for about three years in a cave — the famous sacro speco — dedicating himself wholly to God. In Subiaco, making use of the ruins of a cyclopean villa of the emperor Nero, he built some monasteries, together with his first disciples, giving life to a fraternal community founded on the primacy of the love of Christ, in which prayer and work were alternated harmoniously in praise of God.

Years later, he completed this project in Monte Cassino, and put it in writing in his Rule, the only work of his that has come down to us. Amid the ashes of the Roman Empire, Benedict, seeking first of all the kingdom of God, sowed, perhaps even without realizing it, the seed of a new civilization which would develop, integrating Christian values with classical heritage, on one hand, and the Germanic and Slav cultures on the other.

There is a particular aspect of his spirituality, which today I would particularly like to underline. Benedict did not found a monastic institution oriented primarily to the evangelization of barbarian peoples, as other great missionary monks of the time, but indicated to his followers that the fundamental, and even more, the sole objective of existence is the search for God: “Quaerere Deum.”

He knew, however, that when the believer enters into a profound relationship with God he cannot be content with living in a mediocre way, with a minimalist ethic and superficial religiosity. In this light, one understands better the expression that Benedict took from St. Cyprian and that is summarized in his Rule (IV, 21) — the monks’ program of life: Nihil amori Christi præponere. Prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

Holiness consists in this valid proposal for every Christian that has become a true pastoral imperative in our time, in which one perceives the need to anchor life and history in solid spiritual references.

(Excerpted from Pope Benedict XIV’s Angelus address of July 10, 2005)

On today’s Feast of Saint Benedict, won’t you spend some time in prayer, asking this great saint to intercede for an increase to vocations to the religious life all over the world?

Raise up, O Lord, in your Church the spirit,
with which our Holy Father St. Benedict was animated,
that, being filled with the same spirit,
we may learn to love what he loved
and put into practice what he taught.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen.