Each year, the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia draws the Church back to one of the wellsprings from which Europe’s spiritual identity took shape. To speak of him is necessarily to recall the work of the monasteries: the preservation of books, the cultivation of the land, the founding of schools and the gradual rebuilding of a continent marked by migrations and the collapse of the ancient Roman order. Yet, to understand what has come down to us from Benedict, we must return to the inner disposition from which it all began. Saint Gregory the Great tells us that the young Benedict, sent to Rome to pursue his studies, was troubled by the world around him. He sensed that he might lose, together with moral integrity, what was most true in his own life. He therefore left the city, moved by the desire to please God alone: soli Deo placere desiderans. These words express a decision that gradually came to embrace every aspect of his existence.
The solitude of Subiaco became for him a time of purification. Before gathering disciples around him, Benedict had to confront the forces that divide the human heart: the desire for self-assertion, disordered attraction, anger and the temptation to repay evil with evil. His spiritual fatherhood matured through this struggle. Only those who allow themselves to be judged and healed by the truth can accompany others without turning guidance into possession. Benedict thus gives us a decisive criterion by which to recognise every form of spiritual abuse: those entrusted to our care must be loved, protected and led towards freedom. The Rule preserves the sobriety of this journey. Its opening word, “Listen”, already offers an essential insight into the human condition. Human life begins with what we receive: life itself, a name, a language, the faces of others and the promise of God. Faith, too, is born of listening. Benedict addresses the disciple as a son and invites him to open the ear of his heart. Truth asks for an alert intelligence and a freedom ready to respond. People today possess possibilities that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. We can communicate at any moment, gain access to an almost limitless quantity of information and intervene in matter and in the processes of life itself. At the same time, our capacity for attention appears increasingly fragile. Words crowd upon one another and demand an immediate response. Judgement often comes before understanding. The conscience risks becoming little more than an echo chamber for the most insistent voices.
Benedict points to another path. Listening requires time, discipline and silence. It also requires the humility to acknowledge that reality possesses a depth that does not depend upon our preferences. Monastic silence makes such attentiveness possible. It helps us to distinguish what comes from truth from what arises out of fear, vanity or resentment. From this perspective, Benedictine obedience becomes intelligible. It belongs to the creature’s response to the Creator and finds its measure in Christ. The Son receives everything from the Father and fulfils his will in love. For the monk, obedience means entering into the filial form of Jesus’ life. Such obedience also engages reason, because it requires us to discern the voice to which we entrust our freedom.
The Rule devotes considerable attention to the authority of the abbot. His title evokes that of a father, and for this very reason he is required to examine his conscience continually. He will have to give an account of those entrusted to him. His words gain credibility through his conduct. He must know the character of the brothers, adapt his approach to their circumstances, correct, encourage and wait. Severity may have a place in the government of the community, but it must always remain subject to the salvation of the person and to the judgement of God. Within this vision, authority depends upon listening. Benedict asks the abbot to summon the brothers whenever an important matter has to be considered. The views of the younger members deserve particular attention, because “the Lord often reveals what is best to the younger”. This instruction springs from faith in the freedom of God, who can use a voice without status or influence to enlighten the one who bears the burden of the decision. This principle also touches closely upon the life of the Church. Every ministry loses its fruitfulness when it becomes detached from listening to the Word and to the lives of real people. Ecclesial authority receives its meaning from service to communion and truth. Title, office and legal competence do not remove the need for conversion. The greater the responsibility, the more demanding becomes the duty to watch over one’s intentions, words and use of power.
Benedict displays a realistic understanding of human nature. Those who enter the community differ in age, education, ability and temperament. There are the strong and the weak, the diligent and the negligent, those who understand at once and those who need to be accompanied patiently. The Rule does not imagine an ideal community. It orders the common life of men exposed to tiredness, illness, envy, touchiness and murmuring. Benedictine moderation grows out of this attention to concrete reality. Food, sleep, work, clothing, tools, the care of the sick and the reception of guests all belong to the spiritual journey. Everything is placed within a relationship with God. The cellarer must treat the objects of the monastery with the care given to the sacred vessels of the altar. The abbot must take account of each person’s strength when assigning a task. The sick are to be served as Christ. The guest who knocks at the door bears the mystery of the Lord’s presence. Faith thus takes on an everyday form. It enters into the way time is used, common goods are safeguarded, a brother is addressed, food is eaten and work is carried out. Benedictine spirituality does not rest upon religious feeling alone. The heart is educated through repeated gestures, quiet fidelity and renunciations that free a person from the tyranny of his own moods.
Liturgical prayer also belongs to this education. The hours of the day receive their order from the recurring Psalms and the hearing of Scripture. Time ceases to be a mere succession of tasks and becomes the space in which God summons the human person. The monk leaves his work for the Work of God and, after prayer, returns to his task with renewed sight. This relationship between prayer and work has profoundly shaped European culture. Manual labour acquired a spiritual dignity, while study became part of the search for God. The library and the school grew alongside the monastery church because the Word had to be read, understood and handed on. Grammar, music and the other disciplines served an understanding of faith capable of engaging the whole person. Addressing the world of culture at the Collège des Bernardins, Benedict XVI observed that the monks had not come together with the intention of building a new civilisation. They were seeking God, quaerere Deum. It was precisely this search that gave rise to a culture. The question of God enlarged reason, disciplined language, demanded the patience of study and created places in which life could be preserved and handed on.
Here I find something decisive for our own time. A culture remains alive when it keeps open the question of truth and of the destiny of the human person. Reason is diminished when it regards as meaningful only those realities that can be measured, produced or used. The question of God belongs among the highest possibilities of human intelligence, because it concerns the foundation of being, freedom, goodness and hope. The Benedictine search also has a communal dimension. The monk seeks God alongside other men whom he has not chosen. Stability binds him to a particular place and to a concrete community. It prevents him from continually escaping difficulty by taking flight. The brother, with all his limitations, becomes part of the vocation he has received. The chapter on good zeal, placed close to the end of the Rule, gathers together the fruit of this journey. The monks are called to show one another honour, to bear one another’s weaknesses with patience, to seek the good of others and to obey one another. Benedict sees the community advancing towards God as a body in which each person bears the burden of the other. This teaching takes on particular significance in an ecclesial and civic climate marked by polarisation. Zeal can become filled with bitterness even when it claims to defend a just cause. Truth is then separated from charity, and the brother becomes an obstacle to be removed. Benedict asks us to examine the spiritual quality of our zeal and to judge it by the fruits it bears in communion.
Patience with the weaknesses of others does not entail indifference towards the good. It arises from an awareness that God guides each person through times and along paths that remain partly hidden. Correction retains its meaning when it seeks the brother’s growth. Humiliation, contempt and satisfaction at another’s fall reveal instead a heart that still stands in need of conversion. In this light, the relationship between Saint Benedict and Europe also becomes clear. The monasteries helped to shape the continent because they gave concrete expression to a particular understanding of the human person: a creature called by God, endowed with reason, responsible for his work and bound to others by a fraternity that transcends social and ethnic origins. The Europe of today continues to live from many of the fruits that ripened throughout that history. The dignity of the person, the value of conscience, care for the weak, the importance of education and the responsibility of authority received from Christianity a depth that now belongs to the continent’s memory. That memory can fade even while its legal formulations remain in force. When the foundation is forgotten, the concepts continue for a time to be written and proclaimed, but gradually lose their power to guide human life.
The feast of the Patron of Europe therefore invites us to return to the question that guided Benedict. To seek God means allowing reason to reach the ultimate questions and allowing life to be judged by truth. It means recognising that the human person receives his dignity from a calling that precedes every human power. From this awareness arise interior freedom, respect for others and care for the realities entrusted to us. Saint Benedict did not give his disciples a project intended to dominate history. He entrusted them with a Rule that he himself described as modest, suited to those who are still at the beginning. This modesty belongs to Christian wisdom. Conversion proceeds through concrete steps, taken up anew each day beneath the merciful gaze of God. At the end of the chapter on good zeal, Benedict gathers the whole of monastic life into the relationship with Christ. The brothers are to prefer nothing whatever to him, so that he may lead them “all together to everlasting life”. Those words, “all together”, should challenge and stir us. Christian holiness leads to communion. The path towards God passes through responsibility for one’s brother, the patience required by life in common and the humble willingness to continue being formed.
On the Solemnity of Saint Benedict, we ask, as a Church, to receive once more this education of the heart. Europe needs it in order to understand its own history and to face the future with a reason open to truth, a responsible freedom and a hope capable of enduring.
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Direttore Silere non possum
