July 11, 1989
In Praise of Benedict
“Once there was a man who was revered for the holiness of his life. Benedict was his name, and he was also blessed with God’s grace.” Thus begins the Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates tomorrow, written by Pope St. Gregory the Great, himself a Benedictine monk. Who indeed was Benedict, and how did he come to play such a vital role, not just in the history of the Church, but in the evolution of Western civilization?
Nothing we know of Benedict through his hagiographer Gregory prepares us for the disproportionate influence he has wielded on the course of religious and human events these past millennium and a half. He was born around 480 A.D., the scion of a noble Roman family. As a young student, he found life in the imperial capital so decadent and corrupt he decided to become a hermit and seek God. Subsequently, he established two monasteries for those who sought to follow his example. He died about 547 A.D. That is all.
But the age in which Benedict lived was one of conflict and violent change. The old Empire was dying. Barbarian armies under Attila, Alaric and Genseric had overrun the Italian peninsula, devastating everything in their path and all but extinguishing every vestige of Graeco-Roman culture. It was in such a setting that the way of life prescribed by Benedict for his monks started to assume crucial significance.
Strangely so, for all Benedict really wanted to do when he set down his Rule for monks was to provide them with a framework within which to pursue a regimen of ora et labora, work and prayer totally dedicated to God’s service, in an atmosphere of peace and quiet away from the hustle and bustle of secular living. But peace and quiet was precisely what the men and women of those troubled times most needed, and as all Europe plunged deeper into what we have come to know as the Dark Ages, it was the Benedict’s monasteries that they turned to for refuge and solace.
Order, strength, stability, security: in a world gone awry, these were the values these religious enclaves stood for, and their very construction made these values immediately apparent. Look at Monte Cassino, the second monastery Benedict founded on the summit of a mountain overlooking the road from Rome to Naples. The words massive, formidable, impregnable readily come to mind. Obviously built to last, it is now almost 1,500 years old!
This ancient edifice bears witness, not just to divine zeal and spiritual fortitude, but likewise to human organization and achievement. For Benedict was both a man of God and a Roman – and, therefore, also a very practical man. God provides, but man lives by the sweat of his brow just the same.
Behind the high and thick walls of monasteries like Monte Cassino were not only seekers after perfection and holiness, but hardworking and highly skilled builders, craftsmen, artisans, cooks and farmers, not to mention scholars, musicians, and scientists, constituting a large family perfectly capable of looking after its own needs.
Not only did they preserve and copy the theological, philosophical, literary and scientific texts of classical antiquity. They also constructed edifices, cleared forests, built roads and bridges, cultivated fields, raised livestock, poultry and fish, spun yarn, fed and clothed the poor, healed the sick, welcomed pilgrims and strangers. All these, at a time when the rest of known humanity in the west merely struggled to stay alive.
The great libraries, the soaring cathedrals of England, the large farms of Germany, the great vineyards of France as well as the books, blocks of stone, and the crop strains, machines and implements used to organize them: they are the enduring legacy of that obscure genius who started out looking for God in wilderness and ended up saving the world of mankind.
