Saint Gregory the Great

St Gregory, popeWhen the Church prays the Mass and the Divine Office today we’ll ask God to hear in the “intercession of Pope Saint Gregory, [to] endow, we pray, with a spirit of wisdom those to whom you have given authority to govern, that the flourishing of a holy flock may become the eternal joy of the shepherds.”

We rely on Saint Gregory’s intercession in a big way today.

We are reminded by Pope Saint Gregory that “The only true riches are those that make us rich in virtue. Therefore, if you want to be rich, beloved, love true riches. If you aspire to the heights of real honor, strive to reach the kingdom of Heaven. If you value rank and renown, hasten to be enrolled in the heavenly court of the Angels.”

Gregory (540 – 604) was born in Rome and was a civil servant, the usual path for a man of an aristocratic family; he became Rome’s Prefect.

In time, Gregory became a monk and then he founded a monasteries in Rome and in Sicily. As a deacon he was sent as an envoy to Constantinople.

History tells us that Gregory was the first monk –likely to be living the Rule of Benedict– to be elected Pope. His papacy was reform-minded when it came to property, service, concern for the poor and marginalized, the Church’s liturgical life, including sacred music. You can say that Gregory had a working relationship with people in tension with the Church, especially the Barbarians threatening the peace of peoples.

Beside his prodigious intellectual and social work, Gregory ought to be remembered in a significant way for setting the course of evangelizing the English peoples when he sent Augustine and his monks to England in 596.

The freshness of Saint Bernard

Saint Bernard was the brother of Saint Humbeline. At 22, he and four of his blood brothers with 25 friends, entered the new form of monastic life at Citeaux; at some point later, another brother and his father joined him. The monks at the Abbey of Citeaux were reformed Benedictines. In a short time Bernard became the abbot of Clairvaux with a constituency of nearly 700. One of his spiritual sons became Blessed Eugene III, pope.

Bernard (+1153), Cistercian abbot, saint, and Doctor of the Church, is no easy thinker to face alone. You really do need God’s grace to help you get through his works. Challenging is a good word when thinking of Saint Bernard.

History credits Bernard with the foundation of no fewer than 163 monasteries in his lifetime. When Bernard died, historians labeled the Cistercians as the first true Order in the Church with nearly 343 communities. He singularly did more than any other for the Cistercian order than any.

As one Benedictine nun said of Saint Bernard, he was angry a lot of the time, a brilliant writer even when he nothing to say, at odds with Abelard, condemned for preaching the Second Crusade, and kind to Jews at a time when no one was kind to Jews (we know of a German rabbi saying his community received help and protection from the holy abbot).

Bernard’s love of family, affection for others, and capabilities are well-known, but so are his limitations. One of the power-broker churchmen of the time, Cardinal Haimeric, thought that Bernard was meddling in matters above above his competence. The Cardinal cleverly said, “It is not fitting that noisy and troublesome frogs should come out of their marshes to trouble the Holy See and the cardinals.”

And Bernard’s response, “”Forbid those noisy troublesome frogs to come out of their holes, to leave their marshes . . . Then your friend will no longer be exposed to the accusations of pride and presumption.”

One of the theological positions Bernard held was not holding to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This doesn’t make Bernard a questionable man of the Church because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not defined until the 19th century. And yet, he sang eloquently of the Virgin Mary.

Questions of the parameters of justification John Calvin to quote Bernard in his heretical teaching. Bernard was a solid theologian that led Pope Pius VIII to name him a Doctor of the Church and the “last of the Fathers.”

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

A poetic text for this great liturgical memorial …

The Father’s light of glory has drawn in to itself
The holy Doctor Bernard,
Come, praise with him the Lord!

On earth he spoke of Jesus,
His birth in human flesh,
And found therein a meekness
Which turns our hearts to God.

The mysteries of the Virgin concealed in
Scripture’s word, He opened as a fountain
Of God’s abounding love.

His speech flowed deep with wisdom
As though a mountain lake
Containing saving waters ran down in streams of light.

We ask today assistance to truly
know ourselves, and in our hearts to savor
The presence of the Word.

To Father, Son and Spirit
All praise and honor be,
In truth and love coequal
For all eternity.

Blessed Guerric of Igny

I am reminded by my own heart that the the early morning is a particularly good time of the day to be clothed in a special silence, but there are time at dusk that the discipline of silence is helpful. This is an essential part of spiritual maturity, an adult faith in Divine Providence. Listening and speaking to the Trinity is done when the heart and mind are slowed, even word-less. Knowing and following God’s will is only possible if we give a certain amount of day to quiet, that is, silence. Not a punishing silence, not a hopeless silence, but a manner of being that helps us to see ourselves in action: the manifestation of the virtues of faith, hope, charity, justice, peace, perseverance, etc.

Blessed Guerric in his 28th sermon says,

“As the Christ-child in the womb advanced toward birth in a long, deep silence, so does the discipline of silence nourish, form and strengthen a person’s spirit, and produce growth which is the safer and more wholesome for being the more hidden.”

Silence, therefore, is a gift that allows us to enter more deeply into the revealed Word of God, the biblical narrative through the practice of lectio divina, the practice of prayerfully reading the sacred Scripture. It is, I am convinced, the new springtime of the Church as Benedict XVI said, proposing once again the ancient Christian practice. Most often we when we hear the words lectio divina we think of monastic reading where the person is immersed in God’s holy word with the distinct desire to seek the face of God, thus making a home for that Word in his heart.

The famous Cistercian father Blessed Guerric of Igny (c. 1070/80-1157) was influenced by Origen and whose formation was under Saint Bernard was quite insightful on many things when it came to liturgical theology and the monasteric life.

If you are inclined to read more about what this Cistercian father taught, you may want to pick up a copy of John Morson’s Christ the Way: the Christology of Guerric of Igny (Liturgical Press). But his liturgical sermons are worth every effort; they are published by Liturgical Press, too.

Blessed Guerric taught the following to his brothers lectio divina:

Search the Scripture.  For you are not mistaken in thinking that you find life in them, you who seek nothing else in them but Christ, to whom the Scriptures bear witness.  Blessed indeed are they who search his testimonies, seek them out with all their heart.  Therefore you who walk about in the gardens of the Scriptures do not pass by heedlessly and idly, but searching each and every word like busy bees gathering homey from flowers, reap the Spirit from the words. (Sermon 54)

Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus: Christian examples of friendship and hospitality

The Church universal celebrates the liturgical memorial of Saint Martha today. However, for those who live the Benedictine charism, the ordo (notes for Mass and the Divine Office) is much more expansive by observing the feast of Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Even though these holy siblings predate Benedict and his blessed Rule, they are easily considered Benedictines.

The reason being is that Benedictines see all three siblings as Christian examples of interpersonal friendship and mutual obedience, hospitality (openness) and friendship with the Lord. But there is a deeper meaning in keeping the holy siblings together in the liturgical act. Each of the protagonists represent a fullness of the Christian life: penitence, service and contemplation (awareness). You could easily include confession of faith as when Martha declares her belief in Jesus’ radically claim of resurrection.

As Brother Emmanuel, a newly ordained Deacon at St Joseph’s Abbey (Spencer said),

Our Father, Saint Bernard, compares the monastic community to a family, like the one Jesus visited at Bethany. In the monastic community we find Lazarus, the penitent; Martha, the active servant and Mary, the contemplative. All three are necessary to make the monastery what it ought to be. For Saint Bernard true monastic perfection consists in ‘the union of all three vocations: that of the penitent, the active worker and the contemplative.’ (Sermon for the Assumption) Thomas Merton agreed that while the contemplative life was to be  preferred to the active life, the ‘most perfect souls’ would combine the vocations of Lazarus, Martha and Mary.

Benedictine monks, nuns, sisters and oblates are known for offering hospitality to pilgrims. In the Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 53 on The Reception of Guests, we read: “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for him himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matthew 25-35).” You could easily include, You must honor everyone (1 Peter 2:17). This chapter is a manner of being, a path of meeting the Lord through a relationality with the person in front of us. Hence, hospitality is way of living communio, as way of engaging in friendship, as way of extending and receiving invitation to be a better person, as way to walk a journey with the other given to us to care for.

So, the feast of Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus is a feast of friendship and hospitality. We are friends with Christ he first called us His friends, and friends open us to Him.

We need Saints Mary, Martha and Lazarus to show us how to live. They open show us to be Christians. Mary, Martha and Lazarus show us how to be a new Benedict and Scholastica.

Saint Benedict, the man of blessing

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Today is the Feast of Saint Benedict! It was originally the feast of the translation of his relics, but after Monte Cassino was bombed they discovered that his relics were evidently never translated! Pope Paul changed it to the feast of Saint Benedict Patron of Europe. One of the most sensible things he ever did.


The perduring gift to the Church is the Rule of Saint Benedict. It is a beautiful compilation of how to live together seeking the face of God. One part on humility is worth noting. Benedict’s teaching on humility is here.

Father Giussani points out about life in Communion and Liberation:


“Now, we must also say that to live communion is not a small matter; it is all of Christian life, because Christian life is Christ among us who makes us one sole body. And this, I believe, is the heart of the original Benedictine tradition, with which our Movement felt itself to coincide from the beginning. The heart of our Movement is this, and I really believe that it is being disciples of the original Benedictine history that has made our Movement like this. Therefore, it is no small matter; it is the example that has to happen.”


A short review of the importance of Saint Benedict and Benedictines in the life of Communion and Liberation is here.

Blessed feast of Saint Benedict.

Benedicite

Saint Romuald, monk

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Today is the feast of Saint Romuald, monk, abbot, and founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines. Romuald was a mid-10th century man of an aristocratic family who after living a life of craziness and witnessing immorality of friends and family, he move to follow the Lord caused him to radically live differently than the norm.

Camaldolese Benedictines are not well known in the USA. There are only four foundations of the Camaldolese monks and nuns in the USA: 3 in California (monks) and one in New York State (nuns).

The Camaldolese monks in Rome, for example, have as their main church, Saint Gregory the Great. From there, Gregory sent the Benedictines to England. Today, the Camaldolese monks have somewhat an ecumenical outreach to non-Catholics, and they have had an on-going relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 2007, Pope Benedict wrote to the Camaldolese Order on the feast of Saint Peter Damian. Read the letter. It speaks of the charism of the Camadolese vocation as one of solitude and communion. This is not an esoteric vocation: it is a manner of living that grounds a person in the essential.

In 2012, the Camadolese Benedictines observed a 1000 years of being a faithful community in the Church, known as the Holy Hermitage of Camaldoli. At this time, Pope Benedict said,

“Saint Romuald, the father of the Camaldolese monks, striving for an eremitic life and discipline, wandered through Italy for many years, building monasteries and tirelessly promoting the evangelical life among monks.”

And so, what does this say to us? The life of Romuald and what Benedict has highlighted, we can form our lives around the principles of silence, prayer, communion with God and others, living according to Good News. This is a serious proposition. This is what Jesus asks of us.

With the Church, we pray:

O God, who through Saint Romuald renewed the manner of life of hermits in your Church, grant that, denying ourselves and following Christ, we may merit to reach the heavenly realms on high.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury

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The “Apostle of the English,” Saint Augustine of Canterbury is the one most credited for proclaiming the Gospel and organizing the Church in England in late sixth and early seventh centuries, a mission given to him by Pope Saint Gregory the Great.

We know little of Augustine’s birth or of his early life. Scholars think, however, he was as a Roman, in fact, a member of a noble family. The vocation he followed was to the monastic life  under the Rule of Saint Benedict. Augustine’s Benedictine life was lived in a recently for formed colony of monks under Gregory, later pope, saint, and doctor of the Church.


What know of Augustine’s mission is in light of Pope Gregory’s missionary impulse for the deeper conversion of the Anglo-saxons. Data tells us that in around 595, five years into Gregory’s 14-year pontificate, Augustine was sent, with about 40 monks, to England to develop a plan for evangelization. Even though the gospel had been planted in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the faith was weak or not well taught and so it was thought that the people needed to be evangelized anew. The mission was given in June 596 but the monks didn’t end up leaving until the spring of 597. In time, Augustine‘s talents surfaced and was nominated the superior and then archbishop.

Through the preaching of the monks, King Ethelbert would later convert, and eventually even be canonized; his wife Bertha became exemplary in the practice of the faith.


Augustine and Gregory both died in 604.


Saint Augustine, pray for Great Britain, and us.

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Saint Bede the Venerable

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Today in 725, Saint Bede the Venerable, the sole English Doctor of the Church died, at his monastery in Jarrow. His liturgical memorial is kept today. Here is the account of his death.

“On Tuesday 24th May 735 Bede took grievously ill but continued to teach, he cheerfully suggested to his pupils that they learn quickly as he may not be with them long. The next day Bede taught until nine in the morning. He then dictated part of his book to Wilbert. That evening Wilbert said to Bede “Dear master, there is still one sentence that we have not written down.” Bede said “Quick, write it down.” Wilbert then said “There; now it is written down.” Bede replied “Good. You have spoken the truth; it is finished. Hold my head in your hands, for I really enjoy sitting opposite the holy place where I used to pray; I can call upon my Father as I sit there.” 

“And Bede then as he lay upon the floor of his cell sang the Gloria and as he named the Holy Spirit he breathed his last breath. His only possessions – some handkerchiefs, a few peppercorns and a small quantity of incense were shared amongst his brother monks as he had wished.

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Saint Pachomius

St. Pachomius.jpgWe honor a great Church father, Saint Pachomiuswith the liturgical memorial today. 


Saint Pachomius is a founding figure in Christian monasticism. History recalls for us that it Pachomius who is attributed with being the first to write a rule for cenobitic (communal monk, as opposed to being a hermit) monastic life. The text survives only in Coptic.


Pachomius lived in the first half of the 4th century, he is a former soldier in the Roman army.

Saint Pachomius, pray for us!

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