When animals still had the ability to speak, in the African
jungle, a story is told of an encounter between a tortoise and a lion. They met
one afternoon as both were hustling for food. The lion told the tortoise “you
know I am going to eat you!” The tortoise was puzzled because ordinarily,
tortoises are not usually on the lions’ menu but the lion repeated once
again...” I am telling you that today I
am going to eat you!” As you might know, the tortoise is the third slowest
animal after the snail and the chameleon and so there was no way the tortoise
would escape. The tortoise pondered the news for a moment and then told the
lion.” I have no problem with you eating me but before you do, please give me
five minutes”.
The lion agreed and then the tortoise started moving in
circles round a reasonably well sized area. The tortoise made the grass in the
area flat and some got uprooted. After he finished, he told the lion “now you
can eat me”. It was now the lion’s turn to be puzzled and he asked the tortoise
“what were you doing”. The tortoise told the lion “what I was doing was to
leave a mark so that those who pass by here will know that though you ate me,
there was a struggle. That mark will indicate that there was a struggle and
that I was not an easy meal for you!” ...We shall come back to this in a
moment...
Today we are celebrating the feast of St. Benedict, a law
giver, a spiritual master and father of numerous monks and nuns to whom western
civilization owes its survival during the so called dark ages and that earned
him the title of the patron of Europe. Benedict was not an academician, he was
not a great missionary or a renown preacher like the apostles or the early
church fathers before him. He was not a dramatic follower of the gospel like
Francis of Assisi (who shed his clothing in public at his conversion) and
numerous others after him. He was just an ordinary monk, doing ordinary things
that monks do.
How then, you may
ask, did a simple monk who spent most of his life enclosed in a monastery earn
the title ‘Patron of Europe’? The answer to that lies in the rule he wrote for
himself and his followers, all summarized up in the opening statement… ”Listen
carefully my son to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear
of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves, welcome it and
faithfully put it into practice”. The Master Benedict is speaking about here is
our God and father who loves us through our Lord Jesus Christ and who so cares
for us, as to give us nuggets of wisdom to live by so that we can get closer to
him in this life and attain eternal happiness with him when all is reunited
with him.
These nuggets of wisdom come to us this morning in the
portion of the book of Proverbs that we heard in our first reading. Proverbs
are simple and clear guidelines that are easy to follow if one chooses to, for
instance, the road sign that tells you No Left Turn. You can still turn left
but you would be very unwise because the consequences of doing so could be
fatal not only to you but to others as well. There is a keyword in today's
first reading that helps us to understand it. The word is IF.
If you accept my word, if you treasure my commandments, if
you make your ear attentive to wisdom, if you incline your heart to
understanding, if you cry out for (insight)or discernment, if you look for it
as if it was silver, if you set your store by the commandements, my son if you
take my words to heart. IF, IF, IF…. and what does IF imply? It implies a
choice, an invitation by God, a commandment, but we have to exercise freedom.
We have to choose to enter into the journey of doing the will of God. IF you do
A, B will happen and of course IF you don't do A, C will happen. Every choice
as we well know has a consequence. The rule of Benedict is a book of IF’s but
the first word as already mentioned is LISTEN.
Listen to the word of God, listen to his commandments,
listen to wisdom, to proverbs, to the teaching of saints, to you superiors, to
your conscience, to the truth. Be open and listen before you speak. God will
speak to you if you listen. God will make himself known to you if you slow
down, God will make his presence felt if we are humble, God will show himself
to us if we pray. We have to take God's word to heart, set store by his
commandments, turn our ear to wisdom, apply our heart to truth, cry out for
discernment and understanding, and only then will we understand what the fear
of the Lord is and discover the knowledge of God.
The knowledge of God comes if we turn to God and open our
hearts to seek him. If we go back to our lion and tortoise story, the Moral of
that story is that we should leave a mark in whatever we do and more so as
Christians. Benedict Listened to his conscience and to the word of God and
withdrew to the wilderness of Subiaco and later to Monte Cassino and by his way
of life and the rule that he left for monastics left a mark in the world. Like
the tortoise in our story that had set out to search for food and not death,
Benedict never set out to leave a mark or to make himself famous. He simply
converted his way of life to listen and follow God and went about living his
conversion and conviction.
People listening to the truth of the word of God have been a
great wisdom of the faith and a light in darkness for civilizations since the
time of Jesus, hence leaving their mark as people of faith. Benedictine monks
and nuns have kept the faith alive and civilizations alive throughout the
centuries and by so doing left a mark. We too are called to leave a mark as
followers of Christ through the example of our spiritual father St. Benedict.
We should strive to make our monasteries, especially Holy Cross Monastery, not
just good places to visit but power houses of prayer and light in darkness.
The same applies to those of us in parishes and in our
homes. Our parishes and Christian homes should be beacons of light, islands of
peace and tranquility, of love and of hope. We are called as Christians and as
monastics to leave our mark because christian living is not always bread and
butter but a life of struggle with sin, with our ego, with the devil.
The golden question this morning is When you and I die, what
mark will we leave? St. Paul in the Second reading we heard from the Letter to
the Philippians urges us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling
for it is God who is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for His
good pleasure! Paul also cautions us against murmuring and arguing, something
Benedict counsels us to be vigilant about, time and again in his rule! Only
then can we be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation in which we shine like stars in the
world!
Paul in our reading today is simply telling us that before
we even think of leaving a mark when we are dead, we ought to be shining like
stars already! We are truly living as Christians in the midst of a crooked and
perverse generation made worse by the inaction or false doctrines and teachings
from those who call themselves Christians! Our present moment is characterised
by the darkness of racism and hate perpetuated or given theological backing by
some so called conservative Christians in the midst of a disease of pandemic
proportions.
The present moment is indeed the dark ages of the 21st
century! Let us turn to St. Benedict and ask him to pray with us for this
country and indeed for the whole world as we try to understand what our purpose
is. It is the Light of Christ that has formed us and wisdom of the gospel that
has sustained us and it is only that light that will get us out of this present
darkness. St. Benedict urges us to listen and therefore before we come to any
solutions or before our sly politicians come up with any more clever ideas, let
us pray for ourselves and for them that they may listen. That they may listen
to the wisdom of God found in his word so that the light of the Gospel may
shine in this land and throughout the entire world. Amen
