Words centuries old are still true

AT the end of his remarkable book After Virtue the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre surveyed the intellectual fragmentation of the late 20th century and surprisingly concluded his study with an appeal to the example of an early church saint.

“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us... We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St Benedict.”

For authentic moral life and living to thrive we would do well to look back many centuries to the man whose genius offered the church and the world a pattern of community living in which the standards of the gospel can not only survive but thrive.

Benedict, whose feast day as one of the patron saints of Europe is kept in July, was born around the year 480 in Umbria. He could reasonably have expected the standard career of a Roman nobleman. However, in the biographical fragments which St Gregory the Great has left, we are told that around the age of 20, he left the world of Roman society and his studies and went to live an ascetic life near Subiaco, some 40 miles outside Rome.

He was, of course, not the first monk. By 500 there were monastic communities all over the Christian world and Benedict encountered older hermits in his early days living a secluded life. However, his sanctity, wisdom, charisma and, it must be said, eminently sane approach to living the religious life set him apart.

People came to join him and by the time of his death around the year 547 he had founded a dozen monasteries. Subiaco was his first foundation. Monte Cassino, rebuilt many times, not least following the Second World War, is perhaps the most famous.

What makes Benedict the father of Western monasticism and such an important figure for our fractured times is his rule. Other monks had written notes to guide monks and communities but no single rule was or is as important as Benedict’s. In 73 chapters it combines various types of wisdom. The mystical sections on the life of prayer sit alongside detailed descriptions of how to organise a monastery. The work of prayer and the daily grind of living together are part of a seamless whole.

Interest in Benedict’s teaching has never waned. There are several books about Benedict’s life and teachings at the start of the third Christian millennium. Perhaps it is his humour and sense of moderation which shines out. A famous saying about Benedict’s rule states that “A lamb can bathe in it without drowning while an elephant can swim in it.” In other words, it contains wisdom for the beginner and for the old monk who has lived it for a lifetime and yet who may still regard himself as “a beginner”.

Benedict gives our age, as he has given the last 15 centuries, some simple but telling instructions. “Listen” is the first word, a very necessary corrective to our noisy age’s desire to throw many words at God. “Prayer and work” are kept in balance. So, too, are sleeping and waking, public and private prayer, Biblical study and recreation. And behind it all is the concept “that in all things God may be glorified.”