St Bene’t’s Patronal Festival
The Sermon for the 10.00 Eucharist at St Bene’t’s
on 9th July 2023, St Bene’t’s Patronal Festival
The Reverend Canon Richard Ames-Lewis
St Benedict, whose day we celebrate today, would surely have been surprised at his fame and his legacy. He would have been astonished that the monastic order which bears his name has survived, albeit in reformed ways, for 1500 years, to the present day. He would be amazed that he gave his name to no fewer than sixteen popes and is the patron saint of Europe. He would be no less surprised that to find that he is the patron saint of 17 parish churches in the England, including this holy place. Or that the fathers of our Church of England, in the turmoil of the 16th century, created the Book of Common Prayer by adapting the Benedictine Daily Offices. You will all know, as good Church of England people, that the Prayer Book encourages all of us in a routine of daily prayer and so suggests that we are all potentially members of a Benedictine lay religious community.
But, as I say, Benedict would have been amazed. In his lifetime he was a man of modesty who shunned publicity and fame. He never sought high office, received no accolade; he was never ordained deacon, let alone priest. He was in fact a humble monk, even if a pretty high-calibre one.
We know little of his early life, but what we know suggests he had a privileged background. He was born in Nursia, a village in Umbria, to noble parents, in about 480. He had a twin sister, whose name, Scholastica, suggests a love of learning, and an intellectual family perhaps. His parents had high hopes for Benedict, and he was sent to Rome to be classically educated, which I suppose was the equivalent then to being packed off now to an elite Oxbridge college. But Rome at that time was troubled, torn apart and uncertain. It had this in common with the 21st century: life was an urgent struggle to make sense of what was happening. The Fall of Rome in 410 had left the post-imperial city without a rule of law and at the mercy of barbarian hordes. In addition, the Christian church was riven with division about the meaning of grace.
Benedict was not a happy student and couldn’t cope with the licentiousness of the student lifestyle. Perhaps we can guess from this that his student years, as with many of us, were also the years of his first encounter with Christ. So he dropped out. He heard the Lord’s call in today’s gospel reading: “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’
He dropped out to the remote village of Subiaco, up in the mountains east of Rome. There, with the help of a local monk, he lived for three years the life of a hermit in a cave. (Among all his other attributions, you may know that St Benedict is the patron saint of speleologists.) These hermit years were his wilderness years, during which he came to know and understand himself and God, and his reputation grew for self-discipline and wisdom. St Gregory the Great, who wrote the Life of St Benedict, anxious to describe his miracle working, tells the story that a local monastery needed an abbot, and the community came and begged Benedict to come to lead them. He knew that "their manners were diverse from his and therefore that they would never agree together: yet, at length, overcome with their entreaty, he gave his consent". The experiment failed; the monks were riven by jealousy and envy of his wisdom. The legend goes that they put poison in his drink. He prayed a blessing over the cup and the cup burst into flames. This miracle is commemorated here on the churchwardens’ staves which bear an engraved depiction of the poisoned chalice.
Despite this and other tribulations, over time he built up twelve little monastic communities in the area, all needing his oversight. In 516 he began to write his Rule for Monks, a task which took him several years. And in about 530 he left for Monte Cassino, a hillock between Rome and Naples, where he founded the monastery which has come to bear his name and where he lived for the rest of his life, dying in 547.
So Benedict’s legacy to us is not a reputation of holiness and wisdom, attaching to a personality who we might admire or love. It cannot be this, for we know hardly anything about him. Instead, his legacy is a remarkable document which he titled “A little rule for beginners”, which has come to be known as The Rule of St Benedict, designed to be read out loud to a community of monks living under the authority of an Abbot.
It comprises 73 short chapters dealing with spiritual wisdom: how to live a Christ-centred life. And administrative wisdom: how to run a monastery. More than half the chapters describe how to be obedient and humble, and what to do when a member of the community is not. About a quarter regulate the work of God, the “Opus Dei”, when the monks are at worship, And about a tenth deal with the management of the monastery. But through it all, we learn that men and women need to love and to be loved if they are to be fully human; that they need a place in which to fully belong; that they need freedom and yet must accept authority. The Rule understands about the paradox that all of us need to be both in the marketplace and in the desert; that if we join in common worship we need also to pray alone; that, if we are to be open to change, we need to be committed to stability.
An example is the Rule’s approach to work/life balance: the day is divided equally into three parts. Eight hours are to be devoted to prayer, of which four make up the seven offices of the day and four are dedicated to private prayer; eight hours are to be devoted to manual work, sacred reading or acts of charity; and eight hours are to be devoted to sleep. Here we see the care to meet human need alongside the priority of service to God.
The Rule is written as an urgent cry from the heart to listen to God in Christ. The prologue begins “Listen my son to the instructions of your master, turn the ear of your hearts to the advice of a loving father. Accept it willingly and carry it out vigorously.” There’s an urgency: the certainties of the world are passing away. In a time of social upheaval, the Rule presented monastic life as a holy alternative, an ark floating on the troubled waters, by which human and eternal values might be saved, and which has lasted not only for one troubled century but for fifteen, and still has the capacity to bring many safely to land.
The question is, what has all this to do with us at St Bene’t’s? We have been for over 1000 years a congregation under St Benedict’s patronage, but we are not monks or nuns. We have not taken any vows to Religious Life, with the sacrifices that go with it. Nevertheless, I think in some ways we live a Benedictine life.
Look first at the Benedictine vow of stability. In times of instability, we find that our spiritual roots go deep in this place. Successive generations of Christian seekers have found nourishment in the life of prayer and worship here. Of course, St Bene’t’s is a kind of churn where people come and seek and change and move on. Our stability is found, paradoxically, in a continually changing community life, sustained by the continuity of our corporate worship and prayer.
Then the Benedictine practice of hospitality. The Rule says “Let all who arrive as guests be welcomed like Christ”. I am sure we can all remember our first experience of arriving at St Bene’t’s. I hope yours was, like mine, an experience of overwhelming surprise, that I should be regarded as important enough to be of interest. Seeing Christ in the stranger is a practice we all work at, and St Bene’t’s provides our place of welcome.
But most important of all, the practice of living under a Rule. For many of us, having a spiritual director and a Rule of Life bring this Benedictine practice to life. This loving, guiding hand over our prayer lives and over our relationships mediates the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. As Benedict says, “Through this continual practice and the life of faith, our hearts are opened wide and the way of God’s commandments is run in a sweetness of love that is beyond words.”
