July 11, St. Benedict's Day

Today is the feast of Saint Benedict which is celebrated by the Universal Church.  We of the Benedictine Order itself keep also another more solemn feast on March 21st, which commemorates the Transitus, or Passing, of St Benedict at the end of his earthly life, from this world to eternity.

In an Apostolic Letter entitled Pacis Nuntius (Herald of Peace) dated October 24, 1964, Pope Paul VI declared Saint Benedict the Patron Saint of Europe. The Pope explained “…With the cross, the book, and the plow Christian civilization was carried, principally through him and his disciples, to the peoples who lived in the lands which stretch from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, and from Ireland to Poland….

“With the cross, the law of Christ…he sealed the spiritual unity of Europe in which the various nations…felt themselves to be united into one people of God…

With the book, the culture of the mind, he spread his doctrine through the old classics of literature and the liberal arts, preserved and passed on to posterity…with so much care…

With the plow, that is, agriculture, he changed the waste and desert lands into orchards and delightful gardens; and joining work with prayer in the spirit of those words, ora et labora, he restored the dignity of human labor.”

An eminent English Benedictine scholar of the mid-twentieth century, David Knowles, in his The Monastic Order in England (Cambridge, 1940) concludes his opening chapter on the Rule of Saint Benedict with these words: 

“The spirit of the Rule, that is, the peculiar shade of colour which the gospel teaching assumes as it comes to us from St Benedict, has often been described.  It is above all a spirit of order and of the forming of nature to receive grace by way of gentle, steady growth…It is a spirit alien alike to an austerity which is merely material and to a barbarism which falls below the level of human dignity.  It was a spirit eminently fitted to humanize and Christianize the new peoples; unlike almost all codes that had preceded or were to follow it, it assumed no previous ascetic preparation, no strongly marked vocation to this or that form of life, and it entirely lacked nice methods, cramping forms, or anything that could lead to extravagance.  The character which it impressed was one of order, of peace and benignity, and it became a force of incalculable power not only for sanctification, but also for the lower but indispensable tasks of civilizing and refining…

The Rule has in the course of history often been misunderstood and its teaching debased.  St Benedict’s humanity and gentleness, as Christ’s love and the Apostle’s charity, have often been degraded to something merely human and commonplace by leaving out of the reckoning the complete self-sacrifice without which they cannot be attained…

But in the Rule itself the message of the gospel is never degraded…St Benedict never confuses charity with mere good nature, filial respect and obedience with human affection, peace and order with comfort and ease, measure and discretion with faintheartedness and mediocrity, and through all vicissitudes the Rule has remained one of the great formative influences in the life of the Church…”

-- Abbot Caedmon

   Portsmouth Abbey