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On Wednesday, 9 April [2008], at the General Audience
in St Peter's Square, the Holy Father commented on St Benedict, the
Father of Western Monasticism. The following is a translation of the
Pope's Catechesis, given in Italian.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today, I would like to speak about Benedict, the
Founder of Western Monasticism and also the Patron of my Pontificate. I
begin with words that St Gregory the Great wrote about St Benedict: "The
man of God who shone on this earth among so many miracles was just as
brilliant in the eloquent exposition of his teaching" (cf. Dialogues
II, 36). The great Pope wrote these words in 592 A.D. The holy monk,
who had died barely 50 years earlier, lived on in people's memories and
especially in the flourishing religious Order he had founded. St
Benedict of Norcia, with his life and his work, had a fundamental
influence on the development of European civilization and culture.
The most important source on Benedict's life is the
second book of St Gregory the Great's Dialogues. It is not a
biography in the classical sense. In accordance with the ideas of his
time, by giving the example of a real man St Benedict, in this case
Gregory wished to illustrate the ascent to the peak of contemplation
which can be achieved by those who abandon themselves to God.
He therefore gives us a model for human life in the
climb towards the summit of perfection. St Gregory the Great also tells
in this book of the Dialogues of many miracles worked by the
Saint, and here too he does not merely wish to recount something curious
but rather to show how God, by admonishing, helping and even punishing,
intervenes in the practical situations of man's life. Gregory's aim was
to demonstrate that God is not a distant hypothesis placed at the origin
of the world but is present in the life of man, of every man.
This perspective of the "biographer" is also
explained in light of the general context of his time: straddling the
fifth and sixth centuries, "the world was overturned by a tremendous
crisis of values and institutions caused by the collapse of the Roman
Empire, the invasion of new peoples and the decay of morals". But in
this terrible situation, here, in this very city of Rome, Gregory
presented St Benedict as a "luminous star" in order to point the way out
of the "black night of history" (cf. John Paul II, 18 May 1979;
L'Osservatore Romano English edition [ORE], 28 May, p. 8).
Benedict lived for God alone
In fact, the Saint's work and particularly his
Rule were to prove heralds of an authentic spiritual leaven which,
in the course of the centuries, far beyond the boundaries of his country
and time, changed the face of Europe following the fall of the political
unity created by the Roman Empire, inspiring a new spiritual and
cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the
Continent. This is how the reality we call "Europe" came into being.
St Benedict was born around the year 480. As St
Gregory said, he came "ex provincia Nursiae"
from the
province of Norcia. His well-to-do parents sent him to study in Rome.
However, he did not stay long in the Eternal city.
As a fully plausible explanation, Gregory mentions
that the young Benedict was put off by the dissolute lifestyle of many
of his fellow students and did not wish to make the same mistakes.
He wanted only to please God: "soli Deo placere
desiderans" (II Dialogues, Prol. 1). Thus, even before he
finished his studies, Benedict left Rome and withdrew to the solitude of
the mountains east of Rome. After a short stay in the village of Enfide
(today, Affile), where for a time he lived with a "religious community"
of monks, he became a hermit in the neighbouring locality of Subiaco. He
lived there completely alone for three years in a cave which has been
the heart of a Benedictine Monastery called the "Sacro Speco" (Holy
Grotto) since the early Middle Ages.
The period in Subiaco, a time of solitude with God,
was a time of maturation for Benedict.
It was here that he bore and overcame the three
fundamental temptations of every human being: the temptation of
self-affirmation and the desire to put oneself at the centre, the
temptation of sensuality and, lastly, the temptation of anger and
revenge.
In fact, Benedict was convinced that only after
overcoming these temptations would he be able to say a useful word to
others about their own situations of neediness. Thus, having
tranquilized his soul, he could be in full control of the drive of his
ego and thus create peace around him. Only then did he decide to found
his first monasteries in the Valley of the Anio, near Subiaco.
In the year 529, Benedict left Subiaco and settled in
Monte Cassino. Some have explained this move as an escape from the
intrigues of an envious local cleric. However, this attempt at an
explanation hardly proved convincing since the latter's sudden death did
not induce Benedict to return (II Dialogues, 8).
In fact, this decision was called for because he had
entered a new phase of inner maturity and monastic experience. According
to Gregory the Great, Benedict's exodus from the remote Valley of the
Anio to Monte Cassio
a
plateau dominating the vast surrounding plain which can be seen from
afar has a symbolic character: a hidden monastic life has its own
raison d'κtre but a monastery also has its public purpose in the
life of the Church and of society, and it must give visibility to the
faith as a force of life.
Indeed, when Benedict's earthly life ended on 21
March 547, he bequeathed with his Rule and the Benedictine family
he founded a heritage that bore fruit in the passing centuries and is
still bearing fruit throughout the world.
Throughout the second
book of his Dialogues, Gregory shows us how St Benedict's life
was steeped in an atmosphere of prayer, the foundation of his existence.
Without prayer there is no experience of God. Yet Benedict's
spirituality was not an interiority removed from reality. In the anxiety
and confusion of his day, he lived under God's gaze and in this very way
never lost sight of the duties of daily life and of man with his
practical needs.
Seeing God, he
understood the reality of man and his mission. In his Rule he
describes monastic life as "a school for the service of the Lord" (Prol.
45) and advises his monks, "let nothing be preferred to the Work of God"
[that is, the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours] (43, 3).
However, Benedict states
that in the first place prayer is an act of listening (Prol. 9-11),
which must then be expressed in action. "The Lord is waiting every day
for us to respond to his holy admonitions by our deeds" (Prol. 35).
'Ora et labora'
Thus, the monk's life
becomes a fruitful symbiosis between action and contemplation, "so that
God may be glorified in all things" (57, 9). In contrast with a facile
and egocentric self-fulfilment, today often exalted, the first and
indispensable commitment of a disciple of St Benedict is the sincere
search for God (58, 7) on the path mapped out by the humble and obedient
Christ (5, 13), whose love he must put before all else (4, 21; 72, 11),
and in this way, in the service of the other, he becomes a man of
service and peace.
In the exercise of
obedience practised by faith inspired by love (5, 2), to which the
Rule dedicates an entire chapter (7). In this way, man conforms ever
more to Christ and attains true self-fulfilment as a creature in the
image and likeness of God.
The obedience of the
disciple must correspond with the wisdom of the Abbot who, in the
monastery, "is believed to hold t the place of Christ" (2, 2; 63, 13).
The figure of the Abbot, which is described above all in Chapter II of
the Rule with a profile of spiritual beauty and demanding
commitment, can be considered a self-portrait of Benedict, since, as St
Gregory the Great wrote, "the holy man could not teach otherwise than as
he himself lived" (cf. Dialogues II, 36). The Abbot must be at
the same time a tender father and a strict teacher (cf. 2, 24), a true
educator. Inflexible against vices, he is nevertheless called above all
to imitate the tenderness of the Good Sheherd (27, 8), to "serve rather
than to rule" (64, 8) in order "to show them all what is good and holy
by his deeds more than by his words" and "illustrate the divine precepts
by his example" (2, 12). To be able to decide responsibly, the Abbot
must also be a person who listens to "the brethren's views" (3, 2),
because "the Lord often reveals to the youngest what is best" (3, 3).
This provision makes a Rule written almost 15 centuries ago
surprisingly modern! A man with public responsibilty even in small
circles must always be a man who can listen and learn from what he
hears.
Benedict describes the
Rule he wrote as "minimal, just an initial outline" (cf. 73, 8);
in fact, however, he offers useful guidelines not only for monks but for
all who seek guidance on their journey toward God. For its moderation,
humanity and sober discernment between the essential and the secondary
in spiritual life, his Rule has retained its illuminating power
even to today.
By proclaiming St
Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October 1964, Paul VI intended to
recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule
for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe. Having
recently emerged from a century that was deeply wounded by two World
Wars and the collapse of the great ideologies, now revealed as tragic
utopias, Europe today is in search of its own identity.
Of course, in order to
create new and lasting unity, political, economic and juridical
instruments are important, but it is also necessary to awaken an ethical
and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the
Continent, otherwise a new Europe cannot be built.
Without this vital sap,
man is exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of
seeking to redeem himself by himself a utopia which in different ways,
in 20th-century Europe, as Pope John Paul II pointed out, has
caused "a regression without precedent in the tormented history of
humanity" (Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture,
12 January 1990, n. 1; ORE, 5 February, p. 5).
Today, in seeking true
progress, let us also listen to the Rule of St Benedict as a
guiding light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at
whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism.
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