January 21 is the Feast of Saint Meinrad.
Still in the early days of 2021 I am mindful that we need his intercession as we in our country chart a renewed course of charity and hospitality!
Prayers for the monks and oblates of the Archabbey of St Meinrad.
In one week we have two diamonds in the crown of Benedictine (Cistercian) sanctity: St Gertrude and today, St Mechtild of Magdeburg (c.1210 – 1280).
The witness of St Mechtild is striking because it conveys a personal experience with the Lord. Far being abstract and vague, Mechtild relates her experience of the love she and God shared. These experiences are what we all are after in our relationship with the Lord. Mechtild’s biography notes that she was 12 when these mystical experiences began. When she was 18 she joined a community of Béguines. After forty years, she moved to the Cistercian convent of Helfta. Her prose showed poetic sensitivity in direct and simple language.
In another place I wrote of St Mechtild, “According to some scholars, this Cistercian-Benedictine nun and poet, theologian and mystic was the inspiration of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Interesting that her liturgical memorial comes at the end of the liturgical calendar given her visions of heaven, hell and purgatory! Some people register a doubt about her status as a canonized saint in the Church but she is remembered in the Roman Martyrology (2004) and venerated as such by many, including the Cistercian-Benedictines and that’s good enough for me. The Martyrology speaks of Saint Mechtild as a woman of exquiste doctrine and humility, and supernatural gifts of mystical contemplation.”
The words in the picture mean:
Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit
The flowing light of the Godhead
Herr himmlischer Vater, du bist mein Herz.
Lord Heavenly Father, you are my heart.
Herr Jesus Christus, du bist mein Leib.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are my love.
Herr Heiliger Geist, du bist mein Atem.
Lord Holy Spirit, you are my breath.
– St Mechtild von Magdeburg
Picture: (c) Initiativkreis Kloster Helfta.e.V. Durach
A blessed feast of All Saints of the Benedictine Order!
We have the opportunity today to celebrate In Festo Omnium Sanctorum Ordinis S.P.N. Benedicti…who fought the good fight under the Rule of St Benedict. Let’s reflect on the supreme importance of the monastic vocation, past and present.
Do we support our Benedictine monasteries? I am thinking of the monastic communities at Portsmouth , St Meinrad, Regina Laudis, Our Lady of the Rock, Marmion, St Walburga, the Petersham Benedictine Communities (St Mary’s Monastery & St Scholastica Priory).
Monastic life is indispensable to the life of the Church, East and West, much less civil society.
The beautiful hymn (Avete Solitudinis) from First Vespers prior to the 1963 reform of the Monastic Breviary:
Hail dwellers in the solitude
And in the lowly cloister cell,
Who steadfast and unshaken stood
Against the raging hordes of hell.
All wealth of gold and precious stone
And glories all of rank and birth
You cast away and trampled on,
With all low pleasures of this earth.
The green fields and the orchards grew
The simple fare whereon ye fed.
The brook was drink enough for you,
And on the hard ground was your bed.
Around you dwelt the venomed snakes,
And fiercest monsters harboured near.
All foul forms that the demon takes
You saw, but would not yield to fear.
Far, far beyond all earthly things
Your burning thoughts would wing their flight,
And hear the holy whisperings
Of angels in the heavenly height.
Thou Father of the heavenly host,
Thou glorious Son of Mary maid,
Thou Paraclete, the Holy Ghost,
To Thee be praise and glory paid.
Today is the liturgical memorial of Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923), priest, monk and abbot. Born in Dublin, served as curate in Dundrum, Ireland. Entered the Abbey of Maredsous, Belgium, 1886. Elected as abbot, he received his abbatial blessing in 1909.
Marmion’s spiritual writings were among the most influential of the 20th Century. His writings are considered to be spiritual classics. It is reported that St John Paul had Marmion’s writings in his private library.
In the USA, there is an abbey under the patronage of Blessed Columba, Marmion Abbey (www.marmion.org). Let’s pray for the monks, oblates and students there.
Today is the summer feast of the Holy Patriarch Benedict.
It is a day to heed the advice of Benedict: seek the Lord and listen to him. It is also a day to celebrate the feast with beer made by monks.
Benedict’s vision for monastic life is that the monk/nun live in community. One’s life in a stable, permanent community locates and lives the reality of the Lord’s Incarnation. We are keenly reminded that in Benedict’s experience human interaction shows an experience of Christ: the abbot holds the place of Christ; Christ in the guest, in the young monks, and in the seniors. Ultimately, no one is excluded in the Benedictine vision monastic life: every human interaction the monk/nun meets the Lord, in the flesh. This is keenly true for the Oblate and every other person.
I am remembering the words of Saint John Paul II had for the sons and daughters of Benedict: “May every Benedictine community present itself with a well-defined identity, like a “city on a hill,” distinct from the surrounding world, but open and welcoming to the poor, to pilgrims and to all who are searching for a life of greater fidelity to the Gospel!”
As with all solemn feasts in the Tradition of the Church there is an octave. It is a way to continue to enjoy and relish and to attend to the graces of the feast! Over the next 8 days how will you celebrate St Benedict? What grace will you beg from the Holy Spirit? How will you live the charism bequeathed to us by Benedict and his children through the ages?
On the Monks of Tibhirne (in French). “Sept frères pour l’éternité – Les moines de Tibhirine” was produced by Net for God who are part of the ecclesial movement, Chemin Neuf Community.
It is well done and informative.
Saint Benedict is a spiritual master who zeros-in on the key spiritual teaching of Christianity: nothing is preferred to the love of Christ. We do this by making a total gift of self, by a life of humility and forgetting self thus putting on the new person.
Saint Bernard’s only sermon Benedict says: “His holiness will preach to us, his offering of himself instructs us, his justice encourages us.”
Benedict and the charism he has bequeathed to us is demonstrated in one’s attention to the sacred Liturgy, an emphasis on charity and the practice of unconditional hospitality. All this leads to a peace that never fails.
The Rule of Benedict has the dimension of living in fraternal context. This was one of the points that the Cistercians promoted in their Charter of Charity of 900 years ago by Saint Stephen Harding, it is also the emphasis of many educational enterprises, religious and ecclesial communities, e.g., Communion and Liberation.
On this feast of Saint Benedict, let us listen attentively to the Lord and to the Rule of this Man of Blessing.
Today is the liturgical commemoration of Saint Frances of Rome, patron saint of the Oblates who live the Rule of Saint Benedict and who strive to serve. She died in 1440.
Along with Frances, we have King Saint Henry, as co-patron saints of the Benedictine oblates. Frances is also revered as the patron saint of motorists and motorcyclists because her path was always lit by her holy guardian angel. Some monasteries have their cars blessed today in memory of Saint Frances of Rome.
In Frances’ time in Italy is similar to ours today in that the monasteries are in decline: men and women are not seeking God through the monastic profession and the communal life. Her innovation was to gather women to serve the poor informed and formed by Benedictine spirituality. The Olivetan monks in Rome were helpful.
At first the women continued to live in their homes, but eventually found a house where they could gather and live in community without having to profess monastic vows. The oblate group that Frances for was seen as a hybrid, transforming the medieval practice of children’s oblate in monasteries, combining features of monastic life with secular life. At the same time similar groups surfaced and thrived in various places in Europe that became known as tertiaries. In some ways you can see the form of life that Frances had in the ecclesial movements of today, namely, Communion and Liberation and the Manquehue Apostolic Movement.
Frances therefore, created a new way of Benedictine life that was the union of the laity with Benedictine spirituality, grafting into the lives of the secular the call for this vocation in Benedictine life. A spiritual secularity is a gift of God to society and the Church. Unfortunately, what Frances did for the laity of the time didn’t gain widespread traction —at least not yet.
Who is interested in this form of life?
In everything may God be glorified.
Our venerable mother, Scholastica, the twin sister of the holy Benedict.
Scholastica guided a community of nuns near Monte Cassino, where her brother, Benedict, organized his community of monks. When she died, sometime around the year 543, the nuns and monks carried her body to Monte Cassino, and Benedict laid her in the tomb which had been prepared for himself. Benedict’s remains were placed in the same tomb, so that, as the saying went, “death would not part the bodies of this brother and sister, who had been of one mind in the Lord.” Her icon rests on the inside of the south arm of the icon screen. (NS)
Prayers for the nuns, and those named for our venerable mother.
Today, July 11, is the blessed feast of St. Benedict of Norcia, patriarch of western monasticism, and one of the patrons of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation.
St. Benedict gives inspiration to us not to build a frozen model of Christian or one that forgets the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Tradition of the Church.
Saint Benedict educates us by demonstrating for us not to prefer anything to the love of Christ. In the Gospel we here St. Peter say: “here is that we have left everything to follow you.” Can you say the same?
Let us hold each other in prayer through the intercession of St. Benedict praying for Fr. Carron and the Movement. Additionally, let recall before the Throne of Grace all the monks, nuns, sisters and oblates who live by the Rule of St. Benedict.
