The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve

The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2024

• Proverbs 2:1-9
• Psalm 1
• Luke 14:27–33

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

Thomas Moore, not the nineteenth century Irish poet Thomas Moore, but the contemporary author and speaker who is best known for his book Care of the Soul, wrote a book in 1994 which I read the following year. It was a memorable gift in those years.  Meditations: On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, is a series of short thoughts, memories, parables, and experiences mainly focused on Moore’s time as a monk in his twenties. One memorable parable has lingered in my mind for years:

“Three monks knelt in the chapel in the dark morning hours before dawn. The first thought he saw the figure of Jesus come down from the cross and rest before him in midair. Finally, he said to himself, I know what contemplation is. The second felt himself rise out of his place in the chair. He soared over his brother monks and surveyed the timber-vaulted ceiling of the church, and then landed back in his place in the choir. I’ve been blessed, he thought, with a minor miracle, but in humility I must keep it to myself. The third felt his knees growing sore and his legs tired. His mind wandered until it came to a stop on the image of a luscious hamburger laden with onions and pickles. ‘No matter how hard I try’, said the devil’s helper to his master, ‘I can’t seem to tempt this third monk.’”

I remember being baffled by this story when I first read it almost thirty years ago.  I wanted contemplation, I wanted the miracle - or at least my image of them.  Hamburgers do not belong in prayer - they are for eating, not praying. 

It is somewhat ironic, then, that the longer I ponder and live the Rule of Benedict, the more the hamburger appears in prayer.  Does Moore have a point about the third monk?  Is the third monk onto something? 

St. Gregory the Great in his biography of St. Benedict is generally believed to be at least embellishing if not inventing miracle stories and pious legends about St. Benedict’s own miraculous powers and mystical experiences.  St. Benedict seemed to have had more than the average number of visions and miracles. At the time, those were signs of spiritual importance and power.  The Rule itself, curiously, does not put much energy into knowing secrets and floating around.  The Rule is not even that interested in a thorough discourse of what prayer even is other than prayer should be sincere and short.  He is interested in a deeper reorientation.  The whole Rule is the living of prayer.  Our every thought, word, and deed is formative for relationship with God.  And the whole Rule is prayer because the Rule describes life and life is prayer.  And life is prayer because humans live life and to be human is to be being-in-communion.  St. Benedict takes as given that as creatures made in God’s image and crowned with glory and honor this is as obvious and as natural as breathing.  Life is the divine office and the world is the oratory.  Benedict’s gift and power is in unveiling before our distorted and blurry vision the sacredness of all of life, especially those activities which in their ordinariness reflect no obvious sign of God’s presence.  We may receive the gift of more immediate or direct encounters with God if God so chooses, but those experiences are the effect of daily faithfulness, not ends in themselves; they are opportunities for humility, not possessions to be held over the heads of those not so gifted.  The ultimate unfaithfulness for St. Benedict is to go about filling a cabinet full of trophies to my deep spirituality and profound maturity.  Rather, I can hear St. Benedict saying to the first and second monks in the parable, “You have had insight into some great mystery? Great, now go work in the fields.”  “You have received a minor miracle?  Be thankful and go wash the dishes.”  “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

What makes the third monk different (and I believe for St. Benedict truly holy) is an honest, earthy acceptance of his creatureliness as the ground of humility.  Moore’s language is quite precise on this point: the first monk knew something mysterious after a long search; the second monk received a miracle. But the third monk is different in that Moore says his mind wandered and came to stop on the image of the hamburger. The third monk is simply noticing, not grasping at or seeking to possess the hamburger, but noting the presence of the thought in a detached manner.  It is not that he is beyond temptation entirely, that would mean he was dead, but that he is conscious that everything belongs, he is not seeking to defend, perform, possess, or compete for or against anyone or anything in his praying.  He hears in Jesus’ admonish to give up possessions the wisdom that possession is impossible, so the deepest giving up is the illusion that I can possess in the first place.  The home toward which we are hastening is that human life where everything is received as a gift, where we are stewards of blessings not to be grasped or owned, but participated in and enjoyed.

In the Gospel reading the Lord is prodding us to take stock - estimate, consider.  If builders are thoughtful about their building supplies and kings about their troop strength, then how much more ought we to bring honest scrutiny to the realities which inform and shape our whole lives?  A conscious choice requires that our feet are planted on the ground, our ears are listening for the truth, our hearts are attuned to love.  

The greatest obstacle to conversion is my own fantasy land image of conversion. St. Benedict is allergic to any image of self or God which leads to escaping reality, rising above others, or enlisting God in my project of having the final, absolute answer to the mysteries of the divine.  As we estimate, consider, and then give up the illusions that get revealed in our honest assessment of ourselves, we find freedom - the freedom to unlearn habits of thought and action which are familiar, but which stifle our true selves.  Into our empty hands Christ places the gift of our incarnation to be celebrated and enjoyed in the abundance of the kingdom of heaven.  Eugene Peterson is channeling the spirit of St. Benedict in his paraphrase of the beginning of Romans 12 in the Message Bible: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life - and place it before God as an offering.”  Amen. 

The Feast of Saint Benedict - July 11, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero, OHC

The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2023

Proverbs 2:1-9

Psalm 1

Luke 14:27–33

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, who is most known for his rule, which we know as “The Rule of Saint Benedict”. It is a document he seems to have worked on throughout the duration of his life. It is also, clearly, a product of his own monastic conversion, which happened within an already existing tradition. 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 of Saint Benedict also shows to have been mostly the editing and reworking of an earlier and very severe monastic rule called “The Rule of the Master”. But 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. How did he develop this sense of right measure, moderation, and discretion? What was Benedict’s formation?

Most of what we know about Saint Benedict comes from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, written about sixty years after Benedict’s death. The work is a combination of hagiographical sketch and miracle stories, but there are things in it that we can receive as… factual approximations. At any rate, as readers of Scripture, we know that something does not need to be factual to be true. In fact, if we read any document written before the Age of Enlightenment literally and not deeply and carefully, we will very likely not find what is true.

Nevertheless, the first time I read “The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict” when I was a novice, I strongly felt it had been a phenomenal waste of my time. I thought it was utterly absurd and useless. But God has a sense of humor, so years later, when I was studying in Rome, one of the first classes of the Monastic Formator’s Program was titled “Saint Benedict and the Dialogues”. I think Saint Benedict would have had much to say about my grumbling and rolling of my eyes when I found out we would be studying “The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict”. And because God will also humble us, the class turned out to be extraordinary, and one of the most significant classes I experienced in that already outstanding program. Fr. Mauritius Wilde, OSB guided us in tracing St. Benedict’s spiritual development as an archetype for our own spiritual development.

The literary genre of “The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict” is called “Exemplum,” which means “example” or “model”. The genre was widespread in the Middle Ages. Exemplum is a form of story in which the protagonist, through a certain behavior and series of actions, has achieved a certain result, usually corresponding to the salvation of the soul. These stories were written for teaching, enjoyment, and motivation. The key for us today is to read the story creating a metaphorical interpretation that gives meaning to our spiritual journey.

In the case of The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict, it is not helpful to read any part of the book wondering if a miracle presented actually happened. What’s beneficial is to read carefully, to go deeper, and to try to extract meaning in the story, and to see Benedict the human being. Benedict was not born our holy father Benedict. He was a human being who was vulnerable, broken, and weak. He went through stages of temptation, trials, growth, and development, but also setbacks. His was a journey that serves as a model of these stages in our own lives.

Benedict was born around the year 480, in central Italy, to a noble family. We always hear that Benedict went to Rome to study, but St. Gregory tells us that he was sent to Rome to study, presumably by his father, who wished him to have a good education. But in Rome, Benedict was turned off by the excesses of the Roman society of the time. So, Benedict’s journey becomes about the process of detachment necessary to gain self-knowledge and do God’s will, as opposed to meeting family’s expectations. And this desire was very likely there before he went to Rome. He renounces his father’s inheritance, letting go of financial security, and thus entering a vulnerable stage in his life.

Leaving everything behind, he travels about 40 miles to Affide, a place at the foot of a mountain. We read in the Dialogues that his childhood nurse goes with him. After some time and a series of events, Benedict secretly escapes from her, which indicates she may have come against his will. But this action shows a weakness is young Benedict’s character. The courageous and compassionate thing would have been to face his nurse and say he wanted to be without her. In our monastic vocation it is necessary to detach from family and even to let go of certain relationships. But the process of detachment must always happen in love. And detaching does not mean cutting off!

From Affide, Benedict then travels to Subiaco, where he lived in a cave as a hermit for three years. There, he remained concealed from the world, except for a deeply caring monk named Romanus from a nearby monastery. He represents the formator. The cave represents Benedict’s novitiate, his “fuga mundi”.
 
“Fuga mundi” is the traditional monastic terminology for the detachment from the world that happens when one enters the monastery. “Fuga” literally means “flight”. There are biblical reasons for why flight from the world is not healthy. God created the world, so it is good. The incarnation also shows us that we are to embrace the world, because “God so loved the world.” At the same time, it is OK to want to detach from the dominating values of this world: lack of justice and morality, contempt towards those who are different, total environmental indifference, consumerism, greed, and the thirst for privilege. Past the novitiate, the symbol of a monk’s “fuga mundi” is the monastic cell, our cave, if you will, where we go to learn about our deepest self so that we can know God. Fr. Mauritius also taught us that the other symbol of the “funga mundi” for a monastic is the habit. It is our statement to the world that we choose different; that things do not need to be the way they are. The desire to want to flee the ways of the world can be justifiable and useful, but we can’t stay in our cave forever. There are times when the habit must come off and we must leave our monastic cell.

There is another anecdote in the Dialogues that shows how Benedict struggled before he began to ponder and eventually master a sense of right measure, moderation, and discretion. Romanus would regularly set aside as much bread as he could from his own daily portion, and would secretly leave his monastery, and take the bread to Benedict. There was no path leading to Benedict’s cave from the monastery, which was at a higher altitude. So Romanus would tie the bread, 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, so he could come out and get it.

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 easy answer would be the devil! That is, if we think of the devil as an external little red man with horns and dressed in red! In that case, bad is external- out there! This leads us to point the finger: “If that Brother wouldn’t behave that way… If he wouldn’t say the things he says sometimes… If they wouldn’t allow him to do those things… I would not be feeling this way…” But this “ancient enemy of humankind” is within us. The “ancient enemy of humankind’ who threw the stone at the bell was Benedict! And why did he do so?

One of the temptations of “fuga mundi” is going to extremes. Benedict has the illusion that he can live with absolutely no help from anyone. This kind of religious extremism turns our vocation to be about our ego and not about God. For Benedict, the temptation he must flee from is himself and his fixation on detachment. Yes, we need to let go and let God, but God sends us help through others. Our deepest nature is communion and communication. God as Trinity is communion. Life with God has to do with communion. Benedictine monasticism is communal. A Benedictine monk seeks God alone… in community! It is life in community and the mutual obedience, and the dealing with others that comes with it, that leads us to God. It is no wonder that Benedict went on to found twelve communities of monks before settling in Monte Casino in the mountains of Italy where he lived in a thirteenth monastery as abbot with other monks.
 
So, it seems to me that a big part of the Benedictine call is to be passionately caring (like Romanus!); to be compassionate, loving, and patient towards our own struggles because it is the only way we can be compassionate, loving, and patient towards the struggles of others. We do this trusting that God 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, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Feast of St Benedict - Jul 12, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Peter Rostron, OHC
Feast of St Benedict - transferred - Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27-33

St Benedict

I want to share something with you that I don’t think will come as a surprise. Community is hard. It is where what we want, and what others want, and what God wants, collide. Many times, all our various desires can coincide, but often there is conflict, within and between our selves, and with God. But engaging in the hard work of community is what expands our capacity to love. As Br. Reinaldo expressed in his sermon on Sunday, living into God’s commandment to love our neighbor as our self is a revelation that there is in fact one love - God’s love - and that the more we can love our selves, in all our inner messiness, the more we can love our neighbor. We must know and come to terms with our own personal demons, and learn how to treat our selves with compassion, before we can fully love others. We are like vessels and conduits for God’s love; the more clogged we are with our own stuff, the less readily can God’s love flow through us.

This hard work of “cleaning house” so that we are better able to love, has been presenting itself to me in many ways these past months. Occasionally, it seems too much for me, and a voice yells “Flee!” But I’ve learned to pause, knowing that an even more imperative and truthful voice soon says, “Stay.” This voice has been appearing in so many different places, that I am convinced it is God’s voice. It has spoken to me in the Breakthrough program, in my new work with a therapist, in the declining health of my mother with its resulting magnification of long-festering and dormant issues among my siblings and me, in the reverberations within this community that naturally occur when four new men enter in a short period of time, and in the surprisingly profound amount of knowledge and wisdom that I am still unpacking from my recently completed spiritual direction program. I find myself in the midst of a profusion of challenge and change and growth, but within that, I’m finding a growing awareness of God’s boundless love.

One of the channels through which I’ve been receiving encouragement from God lately has been Richard Rohr’s daily email meditations. Here is some of what he has been saying recently about the hard work of community.

Our shadow self is any part of ourselves or our institutions that we try to hide or deny because it seems socially unacceptable...Our shadow is often subconscious, hidden even from our own awareness. It takes effort and life-long practice to look for, find, and embrace what we dismiss and what we disdain... Shadow work is what I call "falling upward." Lady Julian put it best of all: "First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!"...[For this recovery to happen], we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality. All transformation takes place here. We have to allow ourselves to be drawn out of "business as usual" and remain patiently on the "threshold,” where we are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That's a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible. It's the realm where God can best get at us because our false certitudes are finally out of the way. This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed.”

Here is that place. Here is that liminal space in which I feel my self - our selves - operating. And this is precisely the kind of space that I believe St. Benedict was seeking to create in his “school for the Lord’s service.” A school of love. A school in which the bigger world, God’s world, is revealed. Benedict would not have been familiar with some of our contemporary language, but Rohr’s message, I think, would resonate with him. His Rule provides a structure designed to offer the stability and encouragement and safety required for the hard work of which Rohr speaks and in which I, and we, are engaged. We are now seventeen men, each with his own, unique story, each with his wounds and challenges and gifts. Each doing his own work of conversion. Living so closely together, with Benedict’s Rule as our guide and source of stability, if we interact fully and honestly with one another, if we make ourselves vulnerable to one another, if we obey Christ’s admonition that we heard in today’s gospel to give up our possessions - that is, those things that weigh us down and inhibit our freedom to grow and love - then real transformation can happen. Therein lies the value of community, especially one that is grounded in the wisdom of St. Benedict.

The earliest Christians, too, understood the importance of living in community, as was reflected in today’s reading from the book of Acts. Community is essential to the full expression of a Christian life. As members of Christ’s body it is only through coming together in community that we can fully know and be Christ in the world, to experience pain, surrender, and resurrection, as Christ did. Benedict drew on the wisdom of scripture, such as we just heard from the book of Proverbs, on his own encounters with God, on his own battles with personal demons, and on the work of others to craft a brilliant and eloquent document that has remarkably stood for 1500 years. In part, it is practical, providing for a daily routine of prayer, work, and study. It offers guidance on matters such as discipline and diet and travel. It sanctifies our lives through the vow of obedience, stability, and conversion. But, pervading all of this, it is love that gives the Rule its power and longevity and universality. The Rule is suffused with love, with compassion, forgiveness, and humility, qualities that transcend the mundane and that are at the heart of a life lived in Christ. From the opening Prologue, where Benedict says that “we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love” to the closing chapter, where we are gently urged to, “with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners,” one can feel the great love of Benedict, and of God.

Another strong theme in the Rule is hospitality, which is particularly relevant to our life here at Holy Cross. In her book, Hospitality: The Heart of Spiritual Direction, Leslie Hay offers several definitions of hospitality, the truest and simplest of which is “seeing and receiving all as Christ,” an imperative from St. Benedict. She quotes Daniel Homan, OSB, and Lonni Collins Pratt in saying too that “hospitality is born in us when we are well loved by God and by others.” And there again is that central core of Benedict’s monastery: love. With the guidance of the Rule, and through hard work on our selves and on our relationships with each other, we become more fully open to being loved by God, which in turn nurtures our ability to offer hospitality, to be a welcoming presence to our guests and to one another. As a Benedictine community, we can be a font of God’s love, to be spread into the world.

And, Lord knows, ours is certainly a world that needs God’s love. We have tumult and violence and suffering such as Benedict knew. As was his world, ours is in desperate need of hospitality, of community, love, compassion, humility, forgiveness. Br. Reinaldo spoke of this on Sunday. Somehow, our society needs to cultivate an atmosphere in which our impulse is to show mercy to the stranger, the enemy, to offer help and to be forgiving, rather than to vilify the “other” and pursue violent retribution. We, as a Christian community, can’t single-handedly change the world, and we can't expect change to happen overnight, but we can be a living example of the power of love. We can offer the hospitality of Christ and show others a way to live, with the wisdom of St. Benedict as our guide. His voice joins all the voices of sacred scripture and of all the saints in pointing the way. We, with God's help, must continue to listen and respond.

Feast of St Benedict - Jul 11, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Feast of St Benedict - Saturday, July 11, 2015

Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27-33

St Benedict of Nursia

In one of the sessions I attended of the House of Deputies at General Convention the debate centered on our calendar of commemorations. What is a saint? What are the criteria for sainthood in our Church? Who should be recognized? Why should they be recognized?  Today we observe the feast of Benedict. Unfortunately, after 1500 years of lived Benedictine tradition and legend, many think of Benedict, as they do of Jesus, as beginning life as fully a formed and integrated individual.

It seems like the higher we esteem someone, the greater the need to see perfection. We forget that we don’t come to God by doing it right. We come to God by doing it wrong. If we came to God by being perfect, no one would come to God. Our failures open our hearts and move our rigid minds toward truth, understanding, and compassion. It is in doing it wrong, feeling rejection, and experiencing pain, that we are lead to total reliance on God. Remember, the central symbol of transformation in Christianity is a naked, bleeding human… the picture of failing and loss, which is really winning, according to the paradox revealed to those who follow Christ. If there’s one thing we have in common as human beings it’s our weakness and powerlessness. There is a broken, wounded part inside each of us. Benedict was no different.

Historically, Benedict is a shadowy figure. The account of his life given by Gregory the Great in The Dialogues bears all the marks of early medieval hagiography. It was written about 40 years after Benedict’s death. That Gregory actually knew him is highly unlikely. Benedict remains a man of mystery except for the clear glimpses we get of him in his Rule. Much of the Rule comes from an earlier 6th century Italian rule called the Rule of the Master. What Benedict takes, omits, rearranges, and revises tells us more about him than any legends surrounding his life.

His Rule evolves as his life did in the process of coming to a deeper knowledge and truth of himself and his desire for union with God. It was written over the period of his lifetime and grounded in his lived experience. As we chart his geographic moves from Nursia, Rome, Affide, Subiaco, Villa Neronis, Vicovaro, and finally, Monte Cassino, we see his growth as a person as well as his change in perspective, which is reflected in his Rule. Even though we like to think of Benedict and his twin sister, Scholastica, as springing from the womb with halos, I suspect that the young man studying in Rome was more than a little self-righteous, priggish, rigid, and judgmental, to say nothing of self-centered. His flight from Roman society and, more importantly, from himself, to Affide, with his childhood nanny, probably did little to lessen his self-importance.  In Affide he became a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

The legend of the monks who sought him out as their abbot and later tried to murder him, tells us less about their evil ways than it does about how difficult a person he may have been to live with at that time, and how limited his capacity may have been for relationships that were not based on his terms. Who of us in community has not at least entertained a fantasy about what community life might be like without a particular brother!

I suspect that it was not until he actually stopped running away from himself, when he entered the cave, in Sacra Speco, that he truly began to know himself and God’s love for him. He becomes free as he lets go of the need for power and control, for safety and security, and for affection and esteem. It is then that he begins to attract others and is able to receive them as other.

Community is not only the context and setting of his Rule, but the very vehicle that brings us to knowledge of self and union with God and others. Even his discipline code, which takes into consideration the uniqueness of each monk, is never meant as a punishment or exclusion, but as a means of restoring the brother back to community. It’s designed as a means of conversion and transformation.

It’s crucial to appreciate Benedict’s emphasis on humility. He lived this experience. It was not theoretical for him. It’s the subject of the longest chapter of the RB (7) -- about 8% of the entire Rule. He came to know that the humble could always find God in their lives. They have nothing to prove, protect, or promote. They are conscious of their need for mercy daily. The usual claims that appeal to our egos are of no use whatever and are actually revealed as much of the problem.

He stressed humility because he understood that it is essential if an individual or a community is to flourish.  Humility requires radical self-honesty — which presupposes radical self-knowledge. It’s grounded in a realistic acceptance of who we are — our unchangeable past, our inherited DNA, our innate gifts and aptitudes, our failures and successes, our weaknesses and strengths, and our relationships with others and God.

If a person possesses a realistic assessment of who she is, where she’s come from, and where her place is in the scheme of things, she has a good chance of accepting others and allowing them their place. Humility opens us up and places us in the right posture to receive grace. As the sense of God’s acceptance and compassion for us grows, so we embrace the other with the same grace we receive. Humility breaks down our egotistical fantasies and our need to be in control — our need to be the exception.

The awareness of our own frailty always exceeds what we can know of another’s. The one we consider our enemy always carries the dark side of ourselves, the things we cannot or will not own about ourselves. We can only face our dark side by embracing those who threaten us. The prideful alternative is a life based on radical untruth, which destroys the individual and, as a result, the community.

Benedict’s chapter on humility follows the chapters on obedience and restraint of speech. They all involve the eradication of self-will and self-centeredness. It requires that we acknowledge our enslavement to narcissism. Empowered by the intensity of God’s unconditional love, we find it possible to demolish our defenses and to admit the truth of who we are. Like obedience, humility involves trust in God and in those with whom God has chosen to place us. Only those who have a realistic assessment of their worth can truly trust God.

When Jesus speaks of the builder who must calculate the whole cost of the tower before breaking ground, of the ruler who assesses the enemy’s strength before sending troops to battle, or of a disciples inevitable encounter with the cross, he is simply reminding us that participation in the life of God means anticipation and acceptance of its full cost. As Benedict reminds us in the Rule, the cost of conversion stretches over our lifetime.

The invitation that he addresses to us in his Rule and life is for us to be renewed in the image of the One who made us in the first place. Like Benedict, we come to God not by being strong or right, but through our mistakes, not by self-admiration but by self-forgetfulness. Our surrender is a willingness to trust that we are loved. We are who we are in the eyes of God, nothing more, and nothing less.   

+Amen.

Feast of St Benedict of Nursia - Jul 11, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Feast of St Benedict of Nursia – Wednesday, July 11, 2012



Proverbs 2:1-9
Luke 14:27-33



I want to focus this morning mostly on the life of St Benedict, for through the lives of the various saints we encounter the living Gospel in powerful ways.

And to talk about Benedict, without talking about the Rule of Benedict, would be passing strange indeed. So first let me just read a short passage of the rule...

Flowers from the garden for St Benedict's feast

Of the Porter of the Monastery: Inside near the gates of the monastery a cell is to be provided for a brother of advanced age. Posted there, let him at all times close up the monastery behind those who leave and open it for those who are coming in, and announce arrivals to the abbot. During periods devoted to reading, he must see to it that the gates are locked. In a like manner, when the signal for the Divine Office has sounded he is to lock the gates and be present in the oratory...

Those who know the Rule of Benedict will be scratching their heads a bit – for what I read is not really from the Rule of Benedict. Benedict's rule, as many know, has an evil twin: The Rule of the Master.

The two rules share many starting points. Benedict also addresses the porter of the monastery – an older brother is to be given a room near the entrance and his charge is to deal with those who come to the door – so far The Master and St Benedict are nearly verbatim. But how the porter deals with the person who comes to the door – there is the difference. The Master's porter is more or less a gate keeper. He is to keep keep folks out and make sure those allowed in are kept in line so as not to disturb the community. Benedict's porter is there to extend hospitality to the strangers at the door – to welcome them and offer them a blessing. Two rules diverge, as Robert Frost might say...

The two rules have much in common, but whereas Benedict always seems to be focusing on devoted Christians growing in a life of faith, the Master always seems to be prepared for unwilling followers who must be kept in line at all times. Was one rule based on the other? Who knows. Were both rules based on some older, lost tradition? Scholars wonder.

So... let me sort this out for you... As Brother Andrew would say, it may not have happened exactly this way, but this is the truth...

We know the legend of Benedict's first monastic encounter. He was called to lead a monastery that was in trouble... The abbot had died, but more than that, the community was a shambles... The brothers knew they were falling apart and so they sought Benedict, a good and powerful leader, to get them back on track. And so Benedict dutifully assumed the position of Abbot and set about the work of restoring order to this community. It was certainly challenging, but this was what the community had begged him to do – this is why they recruited Benedict.

And so it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about communities that the brothers of the monastery conspired to kill Abbot Benedict. What else could they do?

They put poison in his wine and waited for Benedict to drink his own death. But God intervened. Before drinking, Benedict prayed a blessing over the cup and it shattered, the tainted wine was spilled and Benedict was saved. The Brothers, who may not have been terribly devoted in their faith, were much more devoted to eliminating their Abbot. Next they poisoned his bread, but before he could eat the deadly loaf, a raven swept in and snatched it away. That must have been a mighty raven...

So here is my theory, which I know to be true... When Benedict assumed the position of Abbot at that troubled monastery, he attempted to enforce the Rule of the Master. The result, to say the least, was not life giving. But when God spared Benedict from the terrible poisons he also put it in Benedict's mind to spare future generations from that terrible rule. And so Benedict crafted his rule out of the dregs of the Rule of the Master.

Time and again The Rule of Benedict starts with the same chapter heading as the Rule of the Master, and time and again Benedict turns away from a stringent, precise, highly detailed answer to a generous and hospitable answer. How much food and drink should each brother have? The Master knows to the ounce. St. Benedict is more vague – each should have enough... but not too much... and if there is a shortage we may have to do with less... and if that is the case, we had better not complain...

The Master's rule calls us to behave. Benedict's rule calls us to live life to the Glory of God.

It is a difference of extreme importance – and one that has been part of the Christian enterprise since the time of Jesus, and part of the religious enterprise long before that.

From the very beginning of scripture we see the pattern of these two rules emerging. Starting during the life of Moses, rules (the law) become important in the way faithful people live their lives. You really can't be faithful without some sort of rule. Some of the rules, the law, define how we live with each other, in community. And other rules, also the law, call us to live in a way that is pleasing to God – one is a code of justice and the other a code of holiness.

There lies a fundamental difference between the Rule of the Master and the Rule of St Benedict. The Master is defining a code of holiness. You do what the rule says because that is what is pleasing to God. Benedict is defining a code of just living. You live according to the rule because that brings about a community where all are treated as brothers and sisters – as equally loved children of God.

Why on earth would anyone choose a rule like the Rule of the Master over a rule like the Rule of St Benedict. It is tempting to answer that no sensible, faithful person would, but that is not the truth. The reality is that the Rule of the Master, while it may seem daunting in its minute detail, is simpler to follow. You don't have to figure out what is right or wrong, you just have to figure out what the rule says. Benedict is much messier. It demands that you think and that you adapt. For someone looking for a fixed and unchanging truth, the Rule of Benedict is an unappealing destination.

Yet Benedict's rule is fully concerned with our transformation of life. And it is in the messy, confusing, sometimes frustrating, even contradictory working out of life in community under a rule that our ways are converted – that we are transformed – that God's kingdom is built in our hearts.

The Master seeks to control and manage our will. Benedict seeks to harness our will.

If the rules of Benedict and the Master were available in Jesus day, I dare say Jesus would have been enthusiastic about Benedict's rule while the Pharisees would have been far more enamored of the Master's rule. Jesus is always interested in justice – especially justice for the weak, the powerless, the oppressed. The Pharisees are interested in absolute truth and sound doctrine.

There are still Pharisees with us. I even have my own inner Pharisee – and though I can not necessarily speak for all my brothers, I dare say each has an inner Pharisee or two... There are certainly days, living in community, when I long for a strict, domineering rule – the Rule of the Master. Of course, I really want that rule applied mostly to my brothers...

We tend to overlook that Jesus was a trouble making revolutionary who was interested in disturbing the status quo – because the status quo is designed to give all the advantage to the rich and powerful. Following Jesus meant then, and still means today, standing against the culture.

And so too with St Benedict, we tend to have in mind a very domesticated, tamed sort of Monk. But Benedict was also a revolutionary and a trouble maker. He wanted people to live in a community rather than as hermits, and not only a community, but a community where all were equal – where a child of a slave could be senior to the child of nobility... where all would have access to education, to books, to state-of-the-art medicine... where all would eat the same food and drink the same moderate amount of drink... where all would have a voice – even the newest member of the community was to be consulted before a major decision was made. Imagine how uncomfortable that could make the rulers of nations and of the church...

We may not think of Benedict as particularly revolutionary, but think what it would mean if the world as it is now were transformed into the community Benedict has in mind... it would be wildly revolutionary. It will be wildly revolutionary.

Benedict, through his holy and inspired rule, has given us a plan for conversion of our ways of life to the monastic way – that is to say a plan not for safety, not for comfort, but for revolution.