For many and for one. A Benedictine oblate blog

Saint Benedict founded the abbey of Monte Cassino in about 529 AD. At Monte Cassino St. Benedict wrote his famous Rule.

And after a little while what had been the 6th century became the 20th century.

In 1964 upon the rebuilding of Monte Cassino abbey after its destruction in WWII by bombing, Pope Paul VI proclaimed St. Benedict “patron of Europe.”(1)

Near the beginning of the 21st century, new Pope Benedict XVI explained that he chose the Benedict name in part because of his admiration of how St. Benedict influenced an entire continent — helping to create European civilization after the destruction of the Roman Empire.

In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI visited Monte Cassino Abbey and spoke about the Pope’s desire that Europe live by its “Christian principles and ideals that constitutes an immense cultural and spiritual wealth:”

“This is possible but only if one accepts the constant teaching of St Benedict, that is the "quaerere Deum", the quest for God, as man's fundamental commitment. Human beings cannot completely fulfil themselves, they cannot be truly happy without God. It is your task in particular, dear monks, to be living examples of this inner and profound relationship with him, implementing without compromise the programme that your Founder summed up in the "nihil amori Christi praeponere", "prefer nothing to the love of Christ" (Rule 4: 21).”

This also applies to my own life, I want to live by the ancient endowment (patrimony) of “Christian principles and ideals that constitutes an immense cultural and spiritual wealth.” And it is true that in my life, the greatest change in my manner of living came when I began following, as best as I could, the Benedictine way of organizing the day and praying the divine office.

A Rule that helped create an entire civilization certainly has had sufficient guidance for one oblate and my manner of daily living.

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Footnotes:

Picture is Reading by ThunderChild5.

(1) Women for Faith & Family is also the source of this quote:

"In 1964 Pope Paul VI proclaimed Benedict “patron of Europe”, because of his influence in the formation of Christendom in the Middle Ages. The Pope’s letter, Pacis Nuntius (Messenger of Peace), issued October 24, 1964 during the re-consecration of the rebuilt monastery of Monte Cassino. Pacis Nuntius declares:

“Messenger of peace, creator of unity, master of civilization and above all, herald of the religion of Christ and founder of monastic life in the West: these are the proper titles with which to acclaim St Benedict Abbott. On the fall of the Roman Empire, by then exhausted, Europe seemed to fall into darkness ... bereft of civilization and spiritual values”.

I cannot say that prior to becoming a Benedictine oblate I was in darkness, but between then and now, I can say that my world is closer to the source of the light. It is a new way of life, a new personal culture.

MONASTERIES: OASES OF ASCETIC LIFE. A Benedictine oblate blog

Here is a long quote from Vatican Information Service (VIS)

MONASTERIES: OASES OF ASCETIC LIFE(1)

VATICAN CITY, 20 NOV 2008 (VIS) - The Pope today received participants in the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year. The assembly was held from 18 to 20 November.

Having recalled the theme of the meeting - "Monastic life and its significance in the Church and the world today" - the Holy Father indicated that "consecrated persons are a special part of the People of God. Supporting and protecting their faithfulness to the divine call is the fundamental role you play", he told the members of the dicastery.

Benedict XVI expressed the view that the work of these days, "which focused particularly on female monastic life, may provide useful guidance to monks and nuns who 'seek God", practising their vocation for the good of the whole Church". In this context he recalled how during his address last September to the world of culture in Paris, France, he had "highlighted the exemplary nature of monastic life in history, and underlined how its aim is both simple and essential: 'quaerere Deum', seeking God and seeking Him through Jesus Christ Who revealed Him, seeking Him by fixing one's gaze on the invisible truths that are eternal, in the expectation of the glorious manifestation of the Saviour".

"When consecrated people live the Gospel radically, when people dedicated to an entirely contemplative life profoundly cultivate the nuptial bond with Christ, ... then monasticism can, for all forms of religious and consecrated life, become a reminder of what is of essential and primary importance for all the baptised: seeking Christ and placing nothing before His love.

"The way indicated by God for this search and this love is His own Word", the Pope added, "abundantly present in the books of Sacred Scripture for mankind to reflect upon".

The recent Synod on the Word of God "renewed its appeal to all Christians to root their lives in listening to the Word of God as contained in Sacred Scripture, and invited religious communities in particular, and all consecrated men and women, to make the Word of God their daily sustenance, especially through the practice of 'lectio divina'".

The Holy Father concluded by expressing the hope that "monasteries may increasingly become oases of ascetic life, where the allure of the nuptial union with Christ is felt, and where the choice of the Absolute ... is immersed in a climate of constant silence and contemplation".

AC/MONASTIC LIFE/... VIS 081120 (420)

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Footnote

(1) All links in the above article are to Vatican documents, but the links were add by me in this blog post.

Rest in the Light. A Benedictine oblate blog

Rest on the Flight into Egypt

[Click pictures to enlarge]

The "Rest on the Flight into Egypt," is the 1879 painting by Luc Olivier Merson. I mentioned the painting at the very end of my last blog which was about focusing on beauty as preparation for an upcoming oblate retreat.

As I studied "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" I remembered Pope Benedict XVI’s own masterpiece work of art: his recent address to representatives from the world of culture, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, Friday, 12 September 2008. The Pope said:

“From the perspective of monasticism’s historical influence [on European culture], we could say that, amid the great cultural upheaval resulting from migrations of peoples and the emerging new political configurations, the monasteries were the places where the treasures of ancient culture survived, and where at the same time a new culture slowly took shape out of the old. But how did it happen? ... First and foremost, it must be frankly admitted straight away that it was not their intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past. Their motivation was much more basic. Their goal was: quaerere Deum [seeking God]. Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential ...

“They were searching for God. They wanted to go from the inessential to the essential, to the only truly important and reliable thing there is. .... “They were seeking the definitive behind the provisional. Quaerere Deum: because they were Christians, this was not an expedition into a trackless wilderness, a search leading them into total darkness. God himself had provided signposts, indeed he had marked out a path which was theirs to find and to follow.”

To me, Pope Benedict XVI described the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt." The painting reveals the same story — Mary and Joseph were treasuring the definitive beyond the provisional of this world. They preserved the eternal Truth from Herod’s tyrannical savagery.

We should not see Mary and Joseph in a barren desert. They are in total rest — in total peace. They were following signposts by the light that is God. Monasteries did the same thing and it created beauty in the parched soul of Europe.

MONASTERIES: PLACES OF SPIRITUAL POWER - VIS

All of the following is from Vatican Information Service (VIS):

MONASTERIES: PLACES OF SPIRITUAL POWER

VATICAN CITY, SEP 9, 2007 (VIS) - Shortly after 4.30 p.m. today, the Holy Father arrived by car at the abbey of Heiligenkreuz, 30 kilometers from Vienna. It is the largest Cistercian monastery in Europe and the oldest in the world to have remained open uninterruptedly since its foundation, in 1135.

The name Heiligenkreuz (Holy Cross) is due to a relic of the True Cross which was donated to the monastery in 1188 by duke Leopold V and which is still venerated there. Under the Nazis, the monastery was almost completely expropriated and many of the monks were imprisoned, Following World War Two, the abbot Karl Braunstofer reformed the liturgy in accordance with Vatican Council II and created a Latin breviary in which particular importance was given to the Gregorian Chant.

In the abbey is the Pontifical Theological Faculty, founded in 1802 as a teaching center for philosophy and theology. It currently has more than 100 students.

On his arrival, Benedict XVI paused in prayer before the relic of the True Cross in the abbey church together with the monks, teachers and students. Then, after a greeting from the abbot Fr. Gregor Henckel Donnersmack, he delivered a talk to those present.

"The core of monasticism is worship," said the Pope. "But since monks are people of flesh and blood on this earth, St. Benedict added to the central command: 'pray,' a second command: 'work.' ... Thus in every age monks, setting out with their gaze upon God, have made the earth life-giving and lovely. Their protection and renewal of creation derived precisely from their looking to God."

"Your primary service to this world must therefore be your prayer and the celebration of the Divine Office. The interior disposition of each priest, and of each consecrated person, must be that of 'putting nothing before the Divine Office.' The beauty of this inner attitude will find expression in the beauty of the liturgy," of which "the determining factor must always be our looking to God."

"Whenever in our thinking we are only concerned about making the liturgy attractive, interesting and beautiful, the battle is already lost," said the Pope. "In the light of this, I ask you to celebrate the sacred liturgy with your gaze fixed on God within the communion of saints, the living Church of every time and place, so that it will truly be an expression of the sublime beauty of the God Who has called men and women to be His friends."

The Holy Father then quoted a traditional pun which defines Osterreich (Austria) as Klosterreich (a realm of monasteries), and he called on the faithful to consider the abbeys and monasteries not as "mere strongholds of culture and tradition, or even simple business enterprises. Structure, organization and finances are necessary in the Church too, but they are not what is essential. A monastery is above all this: a place of spiritual power."

The Holy Father had words of praise for the Pontifical Theological Faculty, which is 205 years old and which the current abbot has named after Benedict XVI. It is important, he said, "that there should be academic institutions like your own, where there can be a deeper interplay between scientific theology and real spirituality."
Christian theology "is never a purely human discourse about God, but always, and inseparably, the 'Logos' and 'logic' of God's self-revelation."

In this context, the Pope recalled how St. Bernard, the father of the Cistercian Order, "fought against the detachment of an objectivizing rationality from the main current of ecclesial spirituality." Today, the Holy Father added, "in its desire to be recognized as a rigorously scientific discipline in the modern sense, theology can lose the life-breath given by faith" and "end up as an array of more or less loosely connected disciplines."

Turning to consider the question of vocations, the Pope pointed out that if they are "to be sustained faithfully over a lifetime, there is a need for a formation capable of integrating ... the entire personality.

Neglect of the intellectual dimension can give rise all too easily to a kind of superficial piety nourished mostly by emotions and sentiments, which cannot be sustained over a lifetime.

Neglect of the spiritual dimension, in turn, can create a rarified rationalism which, in its coldness and detachment, can never bring about an enthusiastic self-surrender to God."

After visiting the abbey museum, Benedict XVI returned to Vienna for his meeting with volunteer associations in the city's "Wiener Konzerthaus."

PV-AUSTRIA/RELIGIOUS/HEILIGENKREUZ VIS
070910 (750)

Benedict likes Benedict in the future of Europe

There are many monastic gems in the Pope's writings about St. Benedict. In the following article, you can pick out your own. One of my favorites is, "St. Benedict's work and his Rule led to "a true spiritual ferment which over the course of the centuries - well beyond the confines of his homeland and his time - changed the face of Europe and created, with the collapse of political unity, a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the people of the continent""

The increasing number of oblates is the result of a similar spiritual ferment which can be seen moving through the world now.


All of the following is a quote from the Vatican Information Service (VIS):

ST. BENEDICT: FATHER OF MONASTICISM, PATRON SAINT OF EUROPE
VATICAN CITY, 9 APR 2008 (VIS) - Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis during this morning's general audience to St. Benedict of Nursia, "the father of western monasticism, who with his life and work exercised a fundamental influence on the development of European civilisation and culture". The audience, held in St. Peter's Square, was attended by 20,000 people.

The most important source for the life of the saint, the Pope explained, is the second book of "Dialogues" written by St. Gregory the Great, in which Benedict features as the "shining star" who shows the way out of the "dark night of history", in other words, the crisis of values and institutions caused by the fall of the Roman empire.

St. Benedict's work and his Rule led to "a true spiritual ferment which over the course of the centuries - well beyond the confines of his homeland and his time - changed the face of Europe and created, with the collapse of political unity, a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the people of the continent".

St. Benedict was born to a wealthy family around the year 480. He went to school in Rome but before completing his studies retired to a monastic community in Enfide. Subsequently he spent three years in a cave at Subiaco where he "underwent the three fundamental temptations that all human beings face: self-affirmation and the desire to place oneself at the centre, ... sensuality, ... and anger and revenge". This, said the Holy Father, was because "St. Benedict was convinced that only by overcoming these temptations would he be able find the right words to give others in their situations of need".

In the year 529 the founder of the Benedictine Order moved to Monte Cassino, "a height that dominates the surrounding plains and is visible from a distance". This was a symbolic decision on the saint's part, said the Pope, because "monastic life has its raison d'etre in withdrawal and concealment, but a monastery also has a public role in the life of the Church and of society".

Throughout his life St. Benedict "was immersed in an atmosphere of prayer, the main foundation of his existence. Without prayer there is no experience of God, but Benedict's spirituality was not an interior life divorced from reality. In the disquiet and confusion of his time, he lived under the gaze of God and with his own gaze fixed upon God, though without losing sight of his daily duties and the concrete needs of mankind".

St. Benedict died in 547. His famous Rule "provides useful advice not only to monks but to everyone seeking guidance on their journey to God. For its precision, its humanity, and its sober discernment between what is essential and what is secondary in spiritual life, the Rule has maintained its illuminating power up to today".

In 1964, Paul VI named Benedict as patron saint of Europe. "Having just emerged from a century profoundly marked by two world wars and following the collapse of the great ideologies, ... Europe today is searching for its own identity", remarked Pope Benedict.

"In order to create a new and lasting unity", the Pope concluded, "political, economic and juridical measures are necessary, but it is also necessary to generate an ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the continent's Christian roots. Without this vital lifeblood, man remains exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking redemption alone, a utopia which in 20th century Europe ... caused a retrocession without precedent in human history".
AG/ST. BENEDICT /...VIS 080409 (610)