A Tale Of Two Benedicts

Cardinal Ratzinger’s choice to take the name "Benedict" left a lot of folks perplexed. Though he’s explained why he chose the name, I thought folks might like it if they had a little more background on St. Benedict and what this may say about the pope’s choice.

So I asked a priest friend of mine for some perspective–Benedictine perspective.

Here’s what my Benedictine friend had to say:

The Order of St. Benedict and the Church of Pope Benedict

As a Benedictine monk, I feel a unique closeness to our new pope who has chosen the name of the founder of my religious order—the oldest religious order in the Church.

St. Benedict of Nursia was born in A.D. 480 and died in A.D. 547.

In his day, what we now call “religious life” was a “grass roots” phenomenon, quite akin to today’s prayer groups started up by anyone who might wish to do so. A wealthy layman might start living as a monk on his own property, or give land to a group of monks. The phrase and formal reality of “religious order” did not exist. St. Benedict, like others before him, simply attracted disciples who wanted to live in community, sharing their daily worship, prayer and livelihoods. A group organized its own way of life, borrowing homemade regulations from other groups, or creating its own set of regulations.

It is a paradox that St. Benedict did not envision changing society, but subsequent history and the present Roman Pontiff rightly credit him with the development of Christian Europe and European civilization. His aim was to give direction to the lives of the men who had joined him inside the confines of a monastery. He made no plans for society outside the monastery.

St. Benedict left his monks a set of regulations we call either “The Rule for Monks” or “The Rule of Benedict.” I’ll refer to it as the “RB.” It has some spiritual advice in it, but it is mostly a set of practical directives: the daily and seasonal organization of community worship, meals, sleep, work and study; policies for hospitality; reception of new members; decision-making and governance in community life. Regulations written by other authors tended to have far less in terms of practical regulations than the RB.

The RB sets up three co-related poles of authority inside the monastery, and three poles of authority outside the monastery. (Throughout the RB, lots of things occur in groups of three.)

Inside the monastery, the RB gives some decisions to the vote of the whole community, some to the abbot (‘father”) alone, and some to the RB itself. Nonetheless, the abbot is the final arbiter inside the monastery.

The RB holds the monastery accountable to the larger Church by allowing and even encouraging outside intervention when morally and drastically necessary. The three groups that the RB authorizes to make such intervention are: the neighboring bishops, the abbots of neighboring monasteries and the neighboring laity. Grass roots were accountable even to grass roots!

The monks were to be self-sufficient, raising crops for their own tables or to sell. The monks were always to work the fields themselves, but could also have the help of tenant farmers. The RB explicitly directs monks to avoid all greed in business, and to sell or barter their goods at prices lower than others asked.

As an explicitly Christian venture, the RB sets some specific priorities. No other activity in the monastic life matters more than the Divine Office: the entire community of monks gathering several times a day to worship God formally by praying the Psalms and Scriptures. Three personages are to be treated as Christ himself: the abbot, the sick monk, the guest (whether religious pilgrim or needy beggar). The abbot is to assign monitors to patrol during the daily period of “Lectio Divina” (“divine reading”), to assure that no monk wanders about instead of reading from, reflecting on and praying over Sacred Scripture.

(Note. Both the beloved spirit and the neglected text of Vatican II share with the RB the intention of giving the liturgy the primary formative, inspirational and directional force in the Church. Vatican Council II, “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,” paragraph 10: “Nevertheless the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows. For the aim and object of apostolic works is that all who are made sons of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of His Church, to take part in the sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s supper.” It isn’t just for monks.)

Although the individual monk usually is to have little or no conversation with non-monks, he does have intensive experience serving (putting up with) his fellow monks. A Benedictine monk cannot flatter his own sense of heroism by saying he serves the poorest of the poor. Rather, a monk takes a daily share in relating, helping and doing housework for other undeserving, sometimes-crotchety bachelors like himself. That is his real-life opportunity to serve without picking and choosing—as an individual monk has little control over who gets into the monastery.

The whole package of community ceremonial worship, private, personal prayer and reading, service of neighbor (whether superior, fellow-monk or visitor) provides a solidly rounded-out program for a monk to “truly seek God”—to use the phrase by which the RB sums up the monastic vocation.

By the time St. Benedict died, his set of regulations, the RB, was in use in several central Italian monasteries.

The popularity of the RB began to spread through Italy and beyond. As the Church increasingly evangelized from Italy northwards, monasteries served as “pre-fabricated” Christian cultural centers. Monks and laity would arrive together, build a monastery and a village, celebrate the Sacraments, preach, catechize, baptize, educate, govern, form a local economy.

Benedictine marks remain on secular Western culture—even in physically tangible forms. At the historic heart of practically all major European cities is the site of a still-existing or former monastery. Magistrates and judges throughout the West still preside—and academics still parade—in robes patterned originally after the monastic choir vestment.

One peculiarly Benedictine usage that survives in all sorts of settings today is the use of the word “chapter” to refer to an organization or part of an organization. The RB directs monks to gather daily to listen together to a “chapter” or so of some spiritual reading. Benedictine monks gradually began to refer to any of their meetings as a “chapter meeting” or simply as a “chapter.” Monasteries have often constructed a room or separate building to serve for these meetings: the chapter house. Today, in Benedictine monasteries, the word “chapter” refers collectively to those monks who have already made perpetual vows (as opposed to those in the monastery who have not yet done so).

In the period after St. Benedict, the RB was not the only set of regulations in use in Europe; however, it was becoming the prevalent one. Under Emperor Louis I, the Council of Aachen (A.D. 816 to 819) imposed the standards of the RB on all monasteries throughout the Carolingian Empire. All “religious life” in the Church would be “Benedictine” until the advent of new, Church-approved religious “categories” (one meaning of the word “orders”) that began to appear after A.D. 1000.

The legacy of St. Benedict and his RB certainly seems to be the professed “mission statement” of Pope Benedict XVI: the primacy of liturgical worship and of personal conversion in prayer and Scriptural spirituality; the devout veneration of Christ in the poor, in the neighbor, in the brother, in the leader; solid and practical organization of community life. By seeking and serving God in these ways, every Christian can be built up and every become a building block for Christian civilization.

No, Hilary, it doesn’t take a village. It takes a monastery, because there is a God. Pope Benedict XVI wants to tell you that.