Benedict Solemnity 11 July

Monday, 11 July 2011

In UK: St Benedict, abbot, patron of Europe (feast in Europe)

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Feast of the Church : in UK: St Benedict, abbot, patron of Europe (feast in Europe) 

Saint(s) of the day : St. Benedict, Abbot (c. 480-547), Patron of Europe  

St Benedict bronze
by Sr Concordia, Minster Abbey

 Solemnity for the Benedictine family.   

Chapter Sermon on Saint Benedict in the community by Br. Barry

SAINT BENEDICT 2011 .

• The small town of Norcia lies in a plain high in the Appenine mountains of central Italy. The town is surrounded by high mountain peaks. Nearby there is Monti Vetica at 5600 feet and Monte Ventesela at a similar height. In the distance to the east, there are the massive black peaks of Monte Argentella at over 7000 feet and higher still, Monte Vettore at 8100 feet.
• Saint Benedict was born in Norcia around the year 480. Benedict was a highlander.
• We can interpret Benedict’s flight from Rome to the hills around Subiaco as a homesickness for the mountains. He could see them everyday not so far to the east calling him back.
• The solitude of the mountains seemed to him the proper place to seek God. The many hermits who populated the area bore witness to that. But not just them – the common experience of mankind shows mountains to be universal religious symbols. From the Andes to the Himalayas, from the Alps to the Grampians there are holy mountains, those places on earth that are nearest heaven. They touch the sky. It was the same for Israel of the Old Testament: ‘Let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell and I will come to the altar of God’ (ps. 42 ).
• Benedict, in the environs of Subiaco would have re-learned to listen as he did as a boy on the mountains. Sounds on the hills are few and we are all the more aware of them for that: the occasional bird cry, footsteps on turf or rock, the buzz of insects, the sound of a mountain stream and there is always the wind.
• So deep was this experience of listening for Benedict that it was the inspiration behind the key word to his Rule: ausculta, listen. To ‘listen carefully to the Master’s instructions’, to ‘listen readily to holy reading’ is only an extension of his listening to the sounds of the mountain side.
• We have a remarkable testimony to Benedict’s love for mountains in the fifth chapter of St. Gregory the Great’s ‘Dialogues’. Rather than move three of his monasteries from the tops of mountains as the monks had requested, he goes to, literally, extraordinary lengths to keep them there. He performs the miracle of the spring of water, saying ‘the all-powerful God is quite able to produce water for you even on the top of the mountain’.
• In the light of all this, we might have expected to find the Rule of Saint Benedict full of the many mountain verses of the psalms but there is only one. It is in the Prologue: ‘Lord, who shall be admitted to your tent and dwell on your holy mountain’. The reason why he has used this particular one is obvious enough -  the subsequent verses fit in perfectly with the purpose of the Rule: to train his disciples how to live with others in the service of God: ‘ he who walks without fault, he who acts with justice and speaks the truth from his heart’ etc.
• Here we see that by the time Benedict came to compose his Rule, for him the place to seek God is no longer mountains as such; the community is the place where God dwells. God is to be sought in the service of others in a house whose centre is the oratory where ‘ nothing else is to be done or stored’ except prayer.
• The focal point of the oratory or church is the altar. The altar is the sign that it is no longer necessary to climb mountains to be near God because God has descended to earth. It is the visible sign of God’s communion with mankind. As someone has said ‘the altar is the sign of the love that exists between heaven and earth’. Even the Blessed Sacrament derives its holiness from the altar. It is the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
• In the unified nature of the way of life that Benedict legislates for, acts of service to the community have the value of a liturgical act. That is not to say that they substitute for the liturgy, only that the charity which should motivate such service has its source at the same place as the liturgy has its source: in the offering at the altar. From Christ our Lord, all good things come.
•  In the last move of his life, Saint Benedict is still on the mountains, the one usually associated with him, Monte Cassino. So to finish with a prayer from an official booklet of the Abbey of Monte Cassino ( the English is a bit ropey but we get the gist ):
• ‘Benedict, man of God,  From the praying and industrious peace of this Mount,  See us always pilgrims along the paths of life  And remember us that we must not prefer anything to our love for Christ.’