We live in a time of tectonic changes in international society, in politics and in the Catholic Church. We are also too close to them to be able to assess their strength and where they will take us. This uncertainty creates leads easily to anxiety, reflected in the popularity of disaster, horror and zombie movies.
St Benedict whose feast we celebrate on 11 July is a man for such times. We know little about him except that he was well educated, became a hermit and subsequently joined a monastery at Subiaco, near Rome, founded a number of monasteries in the area, wrote a Monastic Rule, and then founded another monastery in nearby Cassino.
The only record of him, apart from his Rule, is a devotional book written by Pope Gregory three generations after his death, which focuses entirely on the many miracles he is said to have worked.
We do know something, however, about his times. Like ours they were turbulent and uncertain. At the time of his birth the last Emperor based in Italy was killed, and the single centre of the Roman Empire was in Constantinople. Later, the effective ruler in the West was an Ostrogoth, who would earlier have been considered a barbarian. The Papacy, too, was in disarray, with charges made of rigged elections and simony. To those brought up on stories of the greatness of Rome it seemed to be an age of terminal decline.
The same pattern of disorder and rivalry also colours the stories of Benedict’s relationship to his fellow Catholics. One story tells of a fellow monk trying to poison him, and another of the local priest attempting to do the same. When he became a monk he entered into a world with its own conflict and disorder. He went to find God, not to escape from God’s world. His experience of monastic life and of his times surely flowed into the writing of his Monastic Rule.
The interest of his Rule for modern readers lies in the encouragement it gives for navigating calmly through turbulent waters. It allows for human weakness and discouragement, for war and civil collapse, and also for building community out of inadequate materials.
In the Rule the key to monastic life in his Rule is moderation. It is for people who feel attracted to something more, beginners who have a lot to learn, not for heroes or for people who have attained wisdom. And it allows for doing things badly, for making mistakes.
It sees decisions as something to be made carefully and freely, not in panic or out of the desire to be decisive. That vision was written into the structures of regular prayer and work. They were not things that demanded spectacular holiness. They had the capacity, however, to allow everyday holiness to creep up on monks. Benedict would have agreed with the proverb that the best is sometimes the enemy of the good.
In the Monastery the key figure is the Abbot who above all is a wise guide and a reference point in shaping order in the monastery and the relationships between the monks. The heart of the Rule is to be found in trust. That paternal, not to mention patriarchal, construction of community has little appeal in a society that is secular and lacking in a shared faith. But the spirit of the Rule with its emphasis on trust and trustworthiness, on moderation, on confidence on building a society that cares for all its members, and on social friendship does speak powerfully to our day.
It responds deeply to the anxieties, the sense of abandonment and the uncertainties of our day.
St Benedict of Nursia
2 March 480-21 March 547 CE
Feast day: 11 July
Patron saint: Farmers, agricultural workers, civil engineers, Monks, people in religious orders
Image: St Benedict medal – depositphotos.com