St. Basil: No wall of separation between Church and monastery.

And, there is a welcoming door between the community and the monastery.

St. Basil’s monasticism “was not closed to the community of the local Church but instead was open to it. His monks belonged to the particular Church; they were her life-giving nucleus and, going before the other faithful in the following of Christ and not only in faith, showed a strong attachment to him - love for him - especially through charitable acts. These monks, who ran schools and hospitals(1), were at the service of the poor and thus demonstrated the integrity of Christian life.”(2)

“In speaking of monasticism, the Servant of God John Paul II wrote: ‘For this reason many people think that the essential structure of the life of the Church, monasticism, was established, for all time, mainly by St Basil; or that, at least, it was not defined in its more specific nature without his decisive contribution.’"(3) (4) (5)

From the earliest days, monasticism was integrated into both the life of the Church and life of the community. When God gives a person to the monastic life, that person becomes a gift to both the Church and community, from a life centered in God.

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Footnotes:

(1) St. Basil built hospital facilities that were a key step in the development of the modern hospital concept where people are admitted for medical treatment. A classic example of monastic activity — charitable, practical, innovative.

(2) Benedict XVI, General Audience, 4 July 2007, on Saint Basil.

(3) Apostolic Letter Patres Ecclesiae, n. 2, January 1980; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 25 February, p. 6).
Quoted in Footnote (2).

(4) St Basil died in 379 AD, 101 years before St. Benedict was born. St Basil lived in what is now modern-day Turkey — the East, and St. Benedict lived in Italy — the West. St. Benedict used many of St. Basil’s monastic principles when St. Benedict compiled the Rule of St. Benedict — the Rule that serves as the foundation for all Western monasticism.

(5) St. Basil was born into a family of saints, a Domestic Church, where he received the upbringing in the spirit of God, his older sister is St. Macrina. He studied in Athens and Constantinople. He became a priest and later a bishop of Caesarea—Cappadocia (Turkey). St. Basil is a Doctor of the Church. Long New Advent article on St. Basil the Great.



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A Monastery Wall is a One-way Wall

The walls of a monastery are to keep the world out of the monastery, not to keep the monastery out of the world.

This one-way flow worked throughout much of the 1,500-year history of Benedictine monasticism, as civilization collapsed or was subject to frequent foreign raids, monasteries guarded the light of truth.

Education and knowledge spread out from the monasteries to rekindle civilization. When similar forces are working in the world today, monasteries are fulfilling their historic role.

The flow is out from the monastery. This can be seen in the large number of monasteries that have active oblate programs, in monasteries' involvement with education, in their use of the Internet, and in their expanded spiritual retreats (St. Leo Abbey in Florida, for example) that serve people from all religious backgrounds. Little wonder that the Pope called monasteries places of spiritual power.


Visit a Benedictine monastery — you will find they live by the Rule of St. Benedict —and you will be welcomed as Christ.* If you enter the gate of a monastery and find that you are changed more than you change the monastery, that’s OK, and that is probably why you came.


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* Here is the reference in the Rule of St. Benedict to welcoming guests as Christ. This is the famous Benedictine hospitality:

CHAPTER 53
Of the Reception of Guests

"Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ, because He will say: "I was a stranger and you took Me in" (Mt 25:35). And let due honor be shown to all, especially to those "of the household of the faith" (Gal 6:10) and to wayfarers."