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Solemnity of Saint Benedict.Sermon in the Community Chapter by Br. Philip
Chapter Sermon - Solemnity of St Benedict 2015. Br. Philip
A young monk said to a senior "What
is a monk?" The senior replied "A monk is one who asks everyday -
what is a monk?" The question must indeed be put every day, and the answer
can only come from living.
The paths leading to the monastery are diverse.
But one day they will all converge and form a single way, converging on Him who
said "I am the way". The Christian who becomes a monk seeks no other
way than this. As St Benedict put it in the Prologue of the Rule, "Let us
set out on this way, as the gospel for our guide". In saying this St
Benedict is saying no more than St John who said "We must live the same
kind of life that Christ lived".
About two centuries after St Anthony, at
the end of the first great period of monastic history, St Benedict of Nursia
appears. He was born in the year 480 and died about the year 547.
Benedict had no pretensions about being
a founder. He merely wrote a way of life for the little community which
depended on him. He did not set out to write an original work. He was inspired
in large measure by a recent work which is now known as The Rule of the Master,
so called because we do not know who wrote it. Where the Master id long winded,
Benedict is concise. He has softened a rigidity in the Master's work. But, above
all, he has centered the life of the monk on the person of Christ. He speaks of
the love which the monk owes Christ. The love of Christ which must become before
all else. St Benedict found the phrase in The Rule of the Master, but he gives it
and the idea it embodied, a centrality and importance that the Master does not.
Benedict is wide ranging in his use of
sources and likes to refer to the whole monastic tradition. He recommended his
monks to read the works of St Basil. He ordered everyday that some parts of the
writings of John Cassian be read in public in the community, or something from
the sayings of the Desert Fathers.
Benedict produced the most powerful and
influential document of the monastic tradition in the Western Church. His rule
carries that imprint of that grace which was personal to himself.
In addition, special attention must be
given to the virtue of discretion which permeates the whole Rule. This is
neither caution nor prudent moderation, but a kind of insight which enables the
Abbot to adjust the demands of the monastic life to the grace which is given to
the community as a whole and to the individual monk. St Benedict calls this the
mother of all virtues and urges it on the abbot.
In speaking of the action of grace and
the advance of the monk in the spiritual life, St Benedict uses the phrase "our
hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love"! Such love is a
sure sign of the action of the Holy Spirit.
The Rule of St Benedict was not
immediately adopted by all monks, but eventually only St Benedict's survived
for monks and that of St Augustine's for Clerics.
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The Supreme Personality of Godhead:
The Supreme Personality of Godhead:
The God appears to us as a Light !!!
http://www.thegodmanscience.com/r18.html
The man of God, Benedict, being diligent in watching, rose early before the time of matins (his monks being yet at rest) and came to the window of his chamber where he offered up
his prayers to almighty God. Standing there, all of a sudden in the dead of the night, as he looked forth, he saw a light that banished away the darkness of the night and glittered with such brightness that the light which shone in the midst of darkness was far more clear than the light of the day.
During this vision a marvelously strange thing followed, for, as he himself afterward reported, the whole world, gathered together, as it were, under one beam of the sun, was presented before his eyes. While the venerable father stood attentively beholding the brightness of that glittering light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, in a fiery globe, carried up by Angels into heaven.
Then, desiring to have some witness of this notable miracle, he called Servandus the Deacon with a very loud voice two or three times by his name. Servandus, troubled at such an unusual crying out by the man of God, went up in all haste. Looking out the window he saw nothing else but a little remnant of the light, but he wondered at so great a miracle.
The man of God told him all that he had seen in due order. In the the town of Cassino, he commanded the religious man, Theoprobus, to dispatch someone that night to the city of Capua, to learn what had become of Germanus their Bishop. This being done, the messenger learned that the reverent prelate had departed this life. Enquiring curiously the time, the messenger discovered that he died at the very instant in which the man of God beheld him ascending up to heaven.
Saint Benedict: How he saw the whole world represented before his eyes.
{Bengali} When it was time to go to rest, the venerable Father Benedict retired to the top of a tower, at the foot of which Servandus the Deacon was lodged. One pair of stairs went to them both. Before the tower there was a large room in which both their disciples lay.The man of God, Benedict, being diligent in watching, rose early before the time of matins (his monks being yet at rest) and came to the window of his chamber where he offered up
his prayers to almighty God. Standing there, all of a sudden in the dead of the night, as he looked forth, he saw a light that banished away the darkness of the night and glittered with such brightness that the light which shone in the midst of darkness was far more clear than the light of the day.During this vision a marvelously strange thing followed, for, as he himself afterward reported, the whole world, gathered together, as it were, under one beam of the sun, was presented before his eyes. While the venerable father stood attentively beholding the brightness of that glittering light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, in a fiery globe, carried up by Angels into heaven.
Then, desiring to have some witness of this notable miracle, he called Servandus the Deacon with a very loud voice two or three times by his name. Servandus, troubled at such an unusual crying out by the man of God, went up in all haste. Looking out the window he saw nothing else but a little remnant of the light, but he wondered at so great a miracle.
The man of God told him all that he had seen in due order. In the the town of Cassino, he commanded the religious man, Theoprobus, to dispatch someone that night to the city of Capua, to learn what had become of Germanus their Bishop. This being done, the messenger learned that the reverent prelate had departed this life. Enquiring curiously the time, the messenger discovered that he died at the very instant in which the man of God beheld him ascending up to heaven.
Norcia (Perugia), ca. 480 - Monte Cassino (Frosinone), March 21 543/560
It is the patriarch of Western monasticism. After a period of solitude at the Sacred Cave of Subiaco, he passed to form coenobitic first at Subiaco, then at Monte Cassino. His Rule, which sums up the Eastern monastic tradition, adapting it with wisdom and discretion to the Latin world, opens a new path to European civilization after the decline of the Roman one. In this school of the Lord's service have a key role the meditative reading of the word of God and liturgical praise, alternating with the pace of the work in an intense climate of fraternal love and mutual service. In the wake of San Benedetto they sprang up on the European continent and in the islands prayer centers, of culture, of human promotion, of hospitality for the poor and pilgrims. Two centuries after his death, will be more than a thousand monasteries guided by his Rule. Paul VI proclaimed him patron of Europe (24 October 1964). (Avvenire)
Patronage: Europe, Monks, Cavers, Architects, Engineers
Etymology: = Benedict hopes that the good, from the Latin
Emblem: Stick pastoral Cup, Raven
Martyrology: Memory of St. Benedict, abbot, who was born in Norcia in Umbria and educated in Rome, he began to lead the life of a hermit in the region of Subiaco, gathering around him many disciples; He spostatosi then Cassino, where he founded the famous monastery and wrote the rule, so that it spread to every lugo meritargli the title of Patriarch of monks in the West. It is believed to have died on 21 March.
(March 21: A Montecassino, the anniversary of the death of Saint Benedict, abbot, whose memory is
celebrated on 11 July).
http://www.ibreviary.com/m/breviario.php?s=ufficio_delle_letture
SECOND READING
From the Rule of Saint Benedict, abbot (Prologus, 4-22; cap,72, 1-12; CSEL 75, 2-5, 162-163) Put Christ before everything Whenever you begin any good work you should first of all make a most pressing appeal to Christ our Lord to bring it to perfection; |
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http://spirituality.ucanews.com/2015/07/10/the-rule-of-st-benedict-2/ The Rule of St Benedict
Jane Michele McClure OSB
The entire document is less than a hundred pages. The author, with characteristic self-effacement, called it “a little rule for beginners.” Written in the sixth century for a collection of serfs, scholars, shepherds, and wealthy scions of nobility-a motley group of would-be monastics, the Rule of St Benedict survives today as a masterpiece of spiritual wisdom….
In the Rule’s prologue, Benedict said he intended to prescribe “nothing harsh, nothing burdensome” for his followers. His approach to seeking God was both sensible and humane. For Benedict, a spiritual pathway was not one to be littered with weird and unusual practices; rather, all that is needed is to be faithful to finding God in the ordinary circumstances of daily life. How to prepare oneself for this simple-but not necessarily easy-way of life is the substance of the Rule.
Benedict envisioned a balanced life of prayer and work as the ideal. Monastics would spend time in prayer so as to discover why they’re working, and would spend time in work so that good order and harmony would prevail in the monastery. Benedictines should not be consumed by work, nor should they spend so much time in prayer that responsibilities are neglected. According to Benedict, all things – eating, drinking, sleeping, reading, working, and praying – should be done in moderation….
Benedict stressed the importance of work as the great equalizer. Everyone from the youngest to the oldest, from the least educated to the most educated, was to engage in manual labor – a revolutionary idea for sixth-century Roman culture. Prayer, in a Benedictine monastery, was to consist of the opus Dei (the work of God – Psalms recited in common) and lectio (the reflective reading of Scripture whereby God’s word becomes the center of the monastic’s life). Prayer was marked by regularity and fidelity, not mood or convenience. In Benedict’s supremely realistic way, the spiritual life was something to be worked at, not merely hoped for.
The importance of community life is another great theme of Benedict’s Rule. Prior to Benedict, religious life was the life of the hermit, who went to the desert and lived alone in order to seek God. Benedict’s genius was to understand that each person’s rough edges – all the defenses and pretensions and blind spots that keep the monastic from growing spiritually – are best confronted by living side by side with other flawed human beings whose faults and failings are only too obvious. St Benedict teaches that growth comes from accepting people as they are, not as we would like them to be. His references to the stubborn and the dull, the undisciplined and the restless, the careless and the scatterbrained have the ring of reality. Though Benedict was no idealist with respect to human nature, he understood that the key to spiritual progress lies in constantly making the effort to see Christ in each person – no matter how irritating or tiresome….
Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ,
and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.
Rule of Benedict 72:11-12
and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.
Rule of Benedict 72:11-12
From www.e-benedictine.com
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How Benedict saw the whole world represented before his eyes. |
St. Benedict, founder of Western Monasticism and also the Patron of my pontificate. I begin with words of St. Gregory the Great, who writes of St. Benedict: "The man of God who shone on this earth with so many miracles was just as brilliant for the eloquence with which he exposed his doctrine" (Dial. II, 36 ). The great Pope wrote these words in the year 592; monaco saint had died barely 50 years earlier and was still alive in people's memories and especially in the flourishing religious Order he founded. St. Benedict of Norcia, with his life and his work has a fundamental influence on the development of civilization and European culture. The most important source on the life of him is the second book of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great. It is not a biography in the classical sense.According to the ideas of his time, he wants to illustrate with the example of a real man - St Benedict - the ascent to the peak of contemplation which can be achieved by those who abandon themselves to God. So it gives us a model of life as human ascent to 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 does not simply tell something strange, but to show how God, admonishing, helping and even punishing, intervenes in the concrete situations of life of 'man. She wants to show 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 the light of the general context of his time: a horse between the fifth and sixth centuries the world was upset 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. By presenting St. Benedict as a "luminous star", Gregory wished to indicate in this terrible situation, here in this city of Rome, the way out of the "dark night of history" (cf. John Paul II, Teachings, II / 1, 1979, p. 1158). In fact, the work of the Saint and, especially, his Rule were to prove heralds of an authentic spiritual ferment, that changed over the centuries, far beyond the borders of his country and of his time, the face of 'Europe, arousing after the fall of the political unity created by the Roman Empire a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the continent. E 'born how the reality we call "Europe." The birth of St. Benedict is dated around the year 480. thus says St. Gregory, "former province Nursiae" - from the province of Norcia. Her wealthy parents sent him for his education in studies in Rome. But he did not stop long in the Eternal City. As a fully plausible explanation, Gregory mentions that the young Benedict was disgusted by the lifestyle of many of his classmates, who lived in a dissolute and did not want to make the same mistakes. He wanted to please God alone; "Soli Deo placere desiderans" (II Dial., Prol 1). Thus, even before the conclusion of his studies, Benedict left Rome and withdrew to the solitude of the mountains east of Rome. After an initial 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 neighboring locality of Subiaco. He lived there for three years completely alone in a cave, from the early Middle Ages, is the "heart" of a Benedictine monastery called "Sacro Speco". The period in Subiaco, a time of solitude with God, was a time of maturation for Benedict. Here he had to endure and overcome the three fundamental temptations of every human being: the temptation of self-affirmation and the desire to put himself at the center, 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 tell others a useful word for their situations of need. And so, having tranquilized his soul, he was able to fully control the impulses of the ego, so to be a creator of 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. But this attempt at an explanation hardly proved convincing since the latter's sudden death did not induce Benedict to return (II Dial. 8). In reality, this decision was called for because he had entered a new phase of his inner maturity and monastic experience. According to Gregory the Great, the exodus from the remote Valley of the Anio to Monte Cassio - a hill, dominating the vast surrounding plain, visible from afar - has a symbolic character: a hidden monastic life has its raison d ' be, but a monastery also has its public purpose in the life of the Church and society, it must give visibility to the faith as a force of life. In fact, when on 21 March 547, Benedict concluded his earthly life, he left with his Rule and the Benedictine family he founded a heritage that led in past centuries and still bears fruit all over the world. For the full Second Book of the Dialogues, Gregory shows us how the life of St. Benedict was immersed in an atmosphere of prayer, the foundation of its existence. Without prayer there is no experience of God. But Benedict's spirituality was not an interiority removed from reality. In the anxiety and confusion of his time, he lived under the gaze of God, and hence never lost sight of the duties of daily life and the 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 of the Lord's service" (Prol. 45) and asks his monks "Work of God [that is, the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours] let nothing be preferred" (43.3). Stresses, however, that prayer is primarily an act of listening (Prol. 9-11), which must then be expressed in action. "The Lord expects us to respond daily with deeds to his holy teachings", he says (Prol. 35). So the life of Monaco becomes a fruitful symbiosis between action and contemplation, "so that in everything God may be glorified" (57.9). In contrast with a facile and egocentric, today often exalted, the first and indispensable commitment of a disciple of St Benedict is the sincere search for God (58.7) along the path laid by the humble and obedient Christ (5,13), all 'love of what he does not have to precede anything (4.21; 72.11) and hence, in the service of the other, becomes a man of service and peace. In the exercise of obedience practiced by faith inspired by love (5,2), the humility monaco conquest (5.1), to which the Rule dedicates an entire chapter (7). In this way, man conforms ever more to Christ and attains true self-fulfillment 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 holds "the place of Christ" ( 2,2; 63,13). His figure, described above all in the second chapter of the Rule with a profile of spiritual beauty and demanding commitment, can be considered as a self-portrait of Benedict, since - as Gregory the Great writes - "the holy man could not teach otherwise than how he lived "(Dial. II, 36). The Abbot must be both a loving father and a strict teacher (2,24), a true educator. Inflexible against vices, it is nevertheless called above all to imitate the tenderness of the Good Shepherd (27,8), to "assist rather than dominate" (64,8), to "emphasize more with deeds than with words everything It is good and holy "and" illustrate the divine precepts by his example "(2:12). To be able to decide responsibly, the Abbot must also be someone who listens to "the advice of the brothers" (3,2), because "the Lord often reveals to the youngest what is best" (3.3). This provision makes a surprisingly modern Rule written almost fifteen centuries ago! A man with public responsibility, and even in small circles must always be a man who can listen and learn from what he hears. Benedict describes the Rule as "minimal, just the beginning" (73.8); in reality, however, it offers useful not only to monks, but also to all who seek guidance on their journey toward God. For its size, its humanity and its sober discernment between the essential and the secondary in spiritual life , it was able to maintain its illuminating power up to today. Paul VI was proclaimed October 24, 1964 St. Benedict Patron of Europe, designed to recognize the marvelous work carried out by the Ghost by the Rule for the formation of civilization and European culture. Europe today - just out for a century profoundly wounded by two World Wars and the collapse of the great ideologies, now revealed as tragic utopias - is searching for its identity. To create a new and lasting, are certainly important the political, economic and legal, but we must also arouse ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the Continent, otherwise you can not rebuild Europe. 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 the Europe of the twentieth century has caused, as noted by the Pope John Paul II, "a unprecedented regression in the tormented history of humanity "(Teachings, XIII / 1, 1990, p. 58). Looking for the true progress, we listen today to the Rule of St. Benedict as a light for our path. The great monaco is a true master in whose school we can learn the art of living true humanism. Author: Pope Benedict XVI (General Audience 04.09.2008)
His aristocratic family sent him to Rome to study, that he never complete. It attracts the monastic life, but his initial plans fail. For some people it is a saint, but some people do not understand it and fight it. Some scoundrels robed abbot and then they want to try to poison him. In Italy the Byzantines tear to the Goths, with years of war, a land ravaged by hunger, disease and terror.Moreover, in Gaul succession to the throne they are resolved in the family with the murder.
"We should ask ourselves to what excesses he would push the people of the Middle Ages, if he had not raised this voice big and sweet." He says in the twentieth century historian Jacques Le Goff. And the voice of Benedict begins to be felt from Montecassino to the 529. It has created a monastery with men in harmony with him, that refer liveable those lands. Year after year, that's fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, the laboratory ... Here we begin to renew the world: here become equal and brothers "Latin" and "barbarians", former pagans and former Arians, former slaves and former masters of slaves. Now all are one, the same law, the same rights, the same respect. Here ends the antiquity, at the hands of Benedict. His monasticism does not flee the world. Serving God and the world in prayer and work.
It radiates examples all around with its legal system founded on three points: stability, so in his monasteries entering to stay there; compliance time (prayer, work, rest), with whom Benedict reassesses the time as an asset to not squander ever. The spirit of brotherhood, finally, encourages and cheers obedience: there is the authority of the abbot, but Benedict, with his deep knowledge of man, taught to exercise it "with great vocals and sweet".
The founder given to new times what they vaguely expected. There were already so many monasteries in Europe before him. But with him the monastic refuge become monasticism-action. His rule is not Italian: it is now the European Union, because it adapts to all.
Two centuries after his death, will be more than a thousand monasteries guided by his Rule (but we do not know for sure if he will be the first author. As we continue to be uncertain on the year of his death at Monte Cassino). Pope Gregory the Great has dedicated a book of his Dialogues, but only to edification, neglecting many important details.
In the book, however, there is an expression recurring: visitors Benedict - kings, monks, farmers - often find it " intent to read. " Even the monks study and learn. The monastery is not a simple association of scholars for the recovery of the classics: the study is running dell'evangelizzare. But this work also makes it a haven of culture in the time of the big blind.
His aristocratic family sent him to Rome to study, that he never complete. It attracts the monastic life, but his initial plans fail. For some people it is a saint, but some people do not understand it and fight it. Some scoundrels robed abbot and then they want to try to poison him. In Italy the Byzantines tear to the Goths, with years of war, a land ravaged by hunger, disease and terror.Moreover, in Gaul succession to the throne they are resolved in the family with the murder.
"We should ask ourselves to what excesses he would push the people of the Middle Ages, if he had not raised this voice big and sweet." He says in the twentieth century historian Jacques Le Goff. And the voice of Benedict begins to be felt from Montecassino to the 529. It has created a monastery with men in harmony with him, that refer liveable those lands. Year after year, that's fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, the laboratory ... Here we begin to renew the world: here become equal and brothers "Latin" and "barbarians", former pagans and former Arians, former slaves and former masters of slaves. Now all are one, the same law, the same rights, the same respect. Here ends the antiquity, at the hands of Benedict. His monasticism does not flee the world. Serving God and the world in prayer and work.
It radiates examples all around with its legal system founded on three points: stability, so in his monasteries entering to stay there; compliance time (prayer, work, rest), with whom Benedict reassesses the time as an asset to not squander ever. The spirit of brotherhood, finally, encourages and cheers obedience: there is the authority of the abbot, but Benedict, with his deep knowledge of man, taught to exercise it "with great vocals and sweet".
The founder given to new times what they vaguely expected. There were already so many monasteries in Europe before him. But with him the monastic refuge become monasticism-action. His rule is not Italian: it is now the European Union, because it adapts to all.
Two centuries after his death, will be more than a thousand monasteries guided by his Rule (but we do not know for sure if he will be the first author. As we continue to be uncertain on the year of his death at Monte Cassino). Pope Gregory the Great has dedicated a book of his Dialogues, but only to edification, neglecting many important details.
In the book, however, there is an expression recurring: visitors Benedict - kings, monks, farmers - often find it " intent to read. " Even the monks study and learn. The monastery is not a simple association of scholars for the recovery of the classics: the study is running dell'evangelizzare. But this work also makes it a haven of culture in the time of the big blind.
Author: Domenico Agasso
| Source: |  |
- Benedict (san), Rule , St. Paul Editions, 2015 to 112 pages
- John McKenzie, The Life of Saint Benedict ,, 2014-50 pages
- Gregorio Magno (san), Life of St. Benedict. , Monastic Writings, 2014 to 183 pages
- Dom Guillaume Jedrzejczak, , Lindau editions, 2013 - 552 pages
- San Gregorio Magno, Life of St. Benedict. Commented by ... , Bologna Dehoniane Edizioni, 2009 - 240 pages
- Claude Martin, Practice of the Rule of St. Benedict , Glossa Edizioni, 2009 - CX-226 pages
- Benedict (san), Rule , St. Paul Editions, 2009 to 128 pages
- Flaminia Morandi, San Benedetto , Pauline Editions, 2009 - 192 pages
- Flowers Myriam, , Edizioni Dehoniane Bologna, 2009 - 192 pages
- Salvatorelli Luigi, San Benedetto and Italy of his time , Laterza, 2007 - 186 pages
- Johanna Domek, a year with San Benedetto , Gribaudi, 2007 - 272 pages
- , Benedict of Norcia , Queriniana Edizioni, 2006 - 168 pages
- Pamparana Andrea, Benedict. Father of many nations , Anchor, 2006 - 272 pages
- Ceserani G. Paolo, Paolo Ventura, San Benedetto , Jaca Book, 2006-32 pages
- , Benedict of Norcia. The Rule for man ... , San Paolo Edizioni, 2006 - 112 pages
Chapter Thirty-five: how he saw the whole world represented before his eyes: and also the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, ascending to heaven.
At another time, Servandus, the Deacon, and Abbot of that monastery, which in times past was founded by the noble man Liberius 43 in the country of Campania, used ordinarily to come and visit the man of God: and the reason why he came so often was, because himself also was a man full of heavenly doctrine: and so they two had often together spiritual conference, to the end that, albeit they could not perfectly feed upon the celestial food of heaven, yet, by means of such sweet discourses, they might at least, with longing and fervent desire, taste of those joys and divine delights. When it was time to go to rest, the venerable Father Benedict reposed himself in the top of a tower, at the foot whereof Servandus the Deacon was lodged, so that one pair of stairs went to them both: before the tower there was a certain large room in which both their disciples did lie.
The man of God, Benedict, |97 being diligent in watching, rose early up before the time of matins (his monks being yet at rest) and came to the window of his chamber, where he offered up his prayers to almighty God. Standing there, all on a sudden in the dead of the night, as he looked forth, he saw a light, which banished away the darkness of the night, and glittered with such brightness, that the light which did shine in the midst of darkness was far more clear than the light of the day. Upon this sight a marvellous strange thing followed, for, as himself did afterward report, the whole world, gathered as it were together under one beam of the sun, was presented before his eyes, and whiles the venerable father stood attentively beholding the brightness of that glittering light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, in a fiery globe to be carried up by Angels into heaven.44
Then, desirous to have some witness of this so notable a miracle, he called with a very loud voice Servandus the Deacon twice or thrice by his name, who, troubled at such an unusual crying out of the man of God, went up in all haste, and looking forth saw not anything else, but a little remnant of the light, but wondering at so great a miracle, the man of God told him all in order what he had seen, and sending by and by to the town of Cassino, he commanded the religious man Theoprobus to dispatch one that night to the city of Capua, to learn what was become of Germanus their Bishop: which being done, the messenger found that reverent Prelate departed this life, and enquiring curiously the time, he understood that he died at that very instant, in which the man of God beheld him ascending up to heaven.
PETER. A strange thing and very much to be admired. But whereas you say that the whole world, as it were under one sunbeam, was presented before his eyes, as I must needs confess that in myself I never had experience of any such thing, so neither can I conceive |98 by what means the whole world can be seen of any one man.
GREGORY. Assure yourself, Peter, of that which I speak: to wit, that all creatures be as it were nothing to that soul which beholdeth the Creator: for though it see but a glimpse of that light which is in the Creator, yet very small do all things seem that be created: for by means of that supernatural light, the capacity of the inward soul is enlarged, and is in God so extended, that it is far above the world: yea and the soul of him that seeth in this manner, is also above itself; for being rapt up in the light of God, it is inwardly in itself enlarged above itself, and when it is so exalted and looketh downward, then doth it comprehend how little all that is, which before in former baseness it could not comprehend. The man of God, therefore, who saw the fiery globe, and the Angels returning to heaven, out of all doubt could not see those things but in the light of God: what marvel, then, is it, if he saw the world gathered together before him, who, rapt up in the light of his soul, was at that time out of the world? But albeit we say that the world was gathered together before his eyes, yet were not heaven and earth drawn into any lesser room than they be of themselves, but the soul of the beholder was more enlarged, which, rapt in God, might without difficulty see that which is under God, and therefore in that light which appeared to his outward eyes, the inward light which was in his soul ravished the mind of the beholder to supernal things, and shewed him how small all earthly things were.
PETER. I perceive now that it was to my more profit that I understood you not before: seeing, by reason of my slow capacity, you have delivered so notable an exposition. But now, because you have made me thrughly to understand these things, I beseech you to continue on your former narration.|99
44. Ibid. pp. 97, 98. This vision of the whole world, and St. Gregory's explanation, deeply impressed the mediaeval mind. It was imitated by Marcus, the Irish Benedictine who wrote the Vision of Tundal (Visio Tnugdali, ed. Wagner, p. 52), and by Dante (Par. xxii. 133-153). St. Thomas Aquinas discusses it with a view to showing that St. Gregory's words do not imply that St. Benedict, still living in the present life, saw God in that vision per essentiam, in His Essence. (Summa Theologica, II. ii. Q. 108, A. 5 ad 3.)
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/gregory_02_dialogues_book2.htm#C22
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