Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero
The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2025
Proverbs 2:1-10
Acts 2:42-47
Luke 14:27-33
Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, who is most known for his rule, “The Rule of Saint Benedict”. Most of what we know about him comes from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great. The literary genre of The Dialogues was widespread in the middle ages and called “Exemplum” (example or model). These were short stories often using reworked biblical passages and other stories to convey certain truths about the protagonist’s virtues as a way of teaching and motivating. Reading The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict with our postmodern minds renders it absolutely useless. But a careful reading that digs deeply and creates a metaphorical interpretation can give meaning to our spiritual journey by showing us Benedict the human. Benedict was not born our holy father Benedict. He was a human being who was vulnerable, broken, and weak. He went through periods of temptation, challenges, growth, development, and also setbacks. His was a journey that serves as a model of these periods in our own lives.
Benedict was born around 480 AD to a noble family in Nursia, Italy. He seems to have been deeply religious from an early age. Having completed his primary studies, he was sent to Rome to study, presumably by a demanding father with very strong expectations that he would acquire a good education. His mother, good noble mother that she was, sent him with his childhood nurse as his servant. In Rome, however, Benedict found all manner of moral corruption and excess living and was turned off by it. Was this unique to Rome at a specific time in history? Certainly not. We all live in a world that’s godless and full of moral corruption. Just turn on the news and hear about the last presidential executive order, or the last bill passed by congress to give the very rich more money while so many can’t make ends meet and others suffer hunger, in such a wealthy country. Absolute moral degradation.
And as is often the case, it is this disheartening experience that occasions Benedict’s monastic vocation and the process of detachment necessary to gain self-knowledge and seek God alone. To do so honestly means he has to let go of family expectations and the financial security that comes with it. He renounces his father’s inheritance and begins a vulnerable stage in his life, mostly. He still has his nurse, who goes with him when he decides to leave Rome and travel to Affile, at the foot of a mountain. After some time and a series of events it is clear the nurse represents a maternal attachment of which Benedict decides he needs to let go. But instead of courageously facing his nurse and telling her he needs to be without her, he secretly escapes to Subiaco, about 10 miles away, and leaves her there alone. Not very nice, Benny! So, we are beginning to see a bit of a pattern here. First fleeing from the city and his family, and now secretly fleeing from his childhood nurse. But in God’s economy everything is put to good use. If we are sincere about our desire to live in God’s Reign, God will transform our shortcomings and weakness of character. Benedict will eventually come to champion the practice of stability as a spiritual discipline that fosters inner strength, resilience, not running away, but staying put and facing the challenges and joys of life by relying on God's grace and presence, even in the midst of difficulties.
In Subiaco, he lives in a cave as a hermit for three years, very much in the manner of a tradition he would have been very familiar with- that of the desert elders of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Romanus, a monk from a nearby monastery, meets him on the way, hears about his desire, clothes him in the habit and serves as his formator, sometimes even breaking the rules of his own monastery, as we formators are known to do at times, in order to provide his novice what he needs. From his monastery, which was at a higher altitude than Benedict’s cave, he would tie some bread for food, and a little bell to the end of a long rope and lower it over the cliff. The little bell would let Benedict know when the bread was there without interrupting his solitude.
The story tells us that one day, as the bread was being lowered, the “ancient enemy of humankind,” threw a stone at the bell and broke it. Who is this “ancient enemy of humankind”? The most obvious answer would be the devil! But Benedict went to a cave to acquire self-knowledge and to do that he has to confront his own demons. The demons most commonly encountered at the beginning of monastic life tend to be those of rigidity, extremism, and control, and they can lead us to anger, self-absorption and the illusion that we need no help from anyone, because, well, leave me alone. I know what I know, and I know what I think is right. Benedict is his own enemy of humankind.
But face his demons Benedict did. He struggled with loneliness, and temptation, and after giving in to the persuasion of an entire community of monks who begged him to be their abbot after their abbot had died, his very severe leadership almost got him killed. They tried to poison him. Not to excuse the behavior of those crazy monks- very bad! Bad monks! But this and other stories show us a fallible human being who through perseverance came to be known as truly holy.
Benedict founded twelve monasteries in Subiaco before moving southward to Monte Cassino, where he built a bigger monastery and wrote his Rule. After his years of solitude, he had renewed his contacts with the Roman clergy and scholars and had access to all the main Christian monastic texts written before him. Benedict’s Rule is heavily influenced by the writings of John Cassian, another monk before his time, who is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism from the East to the early medieval West. The Rule also shows to have been mostly the editing and reworking of an earlier and very severe monastic rule called “The Rule of the Master”.
What Benedict adds, omits, rearranges, and revises from The Rule of the Master shows a remarkable mastery of right measure, and discretion. The Rule says we should eat, but not too much. We can drink but not too much. We have to sleep, but not too much. You must work, but not too much. Benedict even regulates the times for prayer, so there has to be an end, and then you work or study. More than a systematic collection of regulations, the Rule of Saint Benedict is more about how to live in community in the love of Christ so that all are treated equally as beloved children of God. It is a reflection steeped in Scripture that guides us through a human journey into the heart of God. It calls for a community where all have the same access to books for their learning; a community where all are offered the same adequate amount of food and drink; a community where all have a voice, even the newest members. It sadly sounds like an ideal that could make many political and religious leaders of our day very uncomfortable.
The longest chapter of Benedict’s Rule is on the subject of humility- quite a countercultural concept in today’s world where self-promotion and competition are so praised, a sense of entitlement seems to reign supreme. But true humility is not weakness, but a sign of strength, self-awareness, and openness to growth. It requires radical self-honesty, and a total acceptance of who we are with all our unchangeable past, our strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures. It requires that we surrender and learn to love those parts about ourselves that we think of as unlovable so that our capacity to love can widen. The humble is able to respect the dignity of every human being because the humble knows we are all in need of mercy daily. The humble knows that calling out evil is an act of love, but we must do so without engaging in verbal or social violence. It is only through humility that we can ground ourselves in our true identity as people who are called to overcome evil with good.
The Benedictine call then is to inner transformation and deeper relationship with God. It’s a call to move beyond the superficial to becoming more and more sober so we can see what really is, and approach life with balance, mindfulness, and awareness of our actions and their impact on others. We do this in community, working, praying, obeying, rejoicing, and every day trying again to mirror Jesus’ own life and teachings. And we do it with the confidence that God, who shatters our expectations, and surpasses our understanding, only desires for us to evolve into the fullness of the image in which we are made. Our Holy Father Benedict, pray for us. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
