+ HOMILY for the Solemnity of our Father St Benedict

St Gregory in his Dialogues shows us how St Benedict had a gift for prophecy. He could read people’s hearts and even see the present in the light of the future. In writing his Rule, St Benedict repeatedly urged his monks to learn to see, and to be seen. Two particular visions must have marked St Benedict’s consciousness
especially.

The first of these he told to a friend, a layman called Theoprobus, who used to visit St Benedict in his cell. One time Theoprobus was surprised to see that the normally unflappable abbot was in tears. He asked what was wrong, and Benedict told him why. He had just had a glimpse of the future, and that was terrifying: “This whole monastery which I have built,” he said, “ and everything that I have prepared for the monks, has by the judgment of almighty God been handed over to barbarians. And I have just barely been able to obtain one concession: that those who will then be living in this place will survive.” Tradition has seen the fulfilment of this prophecy in the destruction of Monte Cassino by Lombard forces in 589.

So St Benedict must have spent much of his life building up something he knew would soon be pulled down. But he didn’t let this discourage him. St Benedict was determined to offer each fraction of his existence as a sacrifice of praise to the Lord, holding nothing back. It was actually a kind of priestly worship which allows for no reservations: the offering has to be whole and entire, whatever happens. In our uncertain times, it is good to be reminded that our own life can be offered to God, no matter what goes on in the world.

There was a second vision which explains St Benedict’s response to the first, but it came much later, not long before St Benedict’s death. Night had fallen, and St Benedict had gone to the top floor of a tower, as if the abbey were a kind of Jacob’s Ladder. On this ladder, St Benedict had climbed up to the highest rung. There he stood at a window, looking out and praying, when “suddenly,” (St Gregory tells us), “in the dead of night, he saw that some light poured from above had scattered all the night’s darkness, and it shone with such splendor that this radiant light was brighter than the day. A verymarvelous thing followed as he looked
upon this, for (as he himself told it later), the whole world too was brought before his eyes, as if gathered under one ray of the sun.”

That must have been quite an experience, to see the whole world like that, its vastness, complexity and seeming contradictions embraced by the purifying light of God’s everlasting love! St Benedict had long been prepared for this sight; he was ready, now, to enter into the mystery which it represented. This he did not long afterwards, dying with his arms raised in prayer, surrounded by his disciples.

A monk is someone who strives to see the world as God sees it. Today this effort has become deeply counter-cultural, even within the Church, it has to be said. Everyone has all this anxiety, and yet we have a remarkable confidence that our times represent the height of human accomplishment. We expect that God’s way of seeing things should adapt itself to ours, not ours to his. It’s no surprise, then, that so many of our efforts come to nothing.

May the intercession of St Benedict keep our feet far from this self-centeredness and show us instead the way of life. That way leads outward, onward, upward. It carries us, on wings of trustful obedience, back to “the one God and Father of all”, from whom we stray by thinking we know better. The Gospel itself confirms that we can see God: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”. If we make this our life’s goal, we shall eventually, like St Benedict, see everything else, too, in God. Even trials of uncertainty will contribute, then, to a perfect symphony of praise, to the glory of God our Father.