Suffering Service: The Benedictine Life

The lives of our eremitical and monastic saints present us with the most praiseworthy and moving examples of generosity and self-sacrifice at once with regards to deep-rooted human aspirations, and with the divine injunction: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” (S. Matthew 19, 21). 

Saint Benedict in Subiaco
Fra Angelico

One of the great tropes of Augustine’s treatise on the City of God is that we all seek peace: nothing could be more human than the desire and the enjoyment of peace, security and tranquillity. Somehow, however, human affairs, in both the public and domestic spheres, almost invariably involve an element of tension, acrimony and conflict, very often about things that, in the grand scheme of this life seen as the preparation of our death, matter but very little. No doubt, all the conflicts and unpleasantnesses of our quotidian lives about trifles, if borne with patience and humility, contribute greatly to our sanctification. However, trifles can be distracting and their recurrent demand upon our attention unnerving. When we are seized by the vision of the last things and by the love of Christ, all else sinks into the one perspective of the returns of duty and love we owe Him. 

Movements of generosity, no doubt impelled by grace and fired by love, combine with a supernatural sense of justice, leading us to ask ourselves: “What have I done with my life? What have done with the faith my parents handed on to me? What have I done with the gifts that God has lavished upon me? What have I done with the promises of my Baptism?” If persecution lead the first Christians to the deserts, there to worship in peace and quietness, and to transmit the faith in the relative security of the wilderness, it is the tumult and the strife of Rome, that first impelled our Holy Father Benedict to leave the City and retire to the quietness of the countryside. There, far from the public licentiousness and the political conflicts of the time, he gave himself over the severest austerities, recognising that if the wilderness provided a refuge for the body, it remained the theatre of a more lasting and, even, lethal conflict – the inner struggle with oneself, with temptations and passions – in one word, with the flesh. He abandoned earthly strife because he knew that the gift of himself to the Lord would be fraught with the most intense spiritual warfare. This relative earthly peace afforded by the deserts of Subiaco, and later, of Monte Cassino no doubt enabled him, with undivided attention, and in obedience to the commandments, “to do battle for the true king, Christ the Lord” (Holy Rule, Prologue, 3)

Christ in the Wilderness
Ian Kramskoy (1872)

The generosity of a consecrated life, one that is entirely given to God and oriented toward Him needs to be sustained by fidelity in love, especially when the darkest hour strikes. We remember the young novice of the “Dialogue of the Carmelites” who desires ardently to be with Christ suffering in Gethsemane, and chooses as her religious name “Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ”. The fidelity in love is no doubt expressed for eremites and monastics in their constant station of prayer, in their prayerful presence before their Master, seeking to commune in love, while at the same time, in the same movement, interceding for the whole world, praying on behalf of those who cannot or will not pray. In the solitude of monastic cells, physical or spiritual, the desire for “normal” human companionship can, indeed, be sublimated into the most self-less and prayerful solicitude for the whole of humanity. This should lead us to appreciate more firmly the monastic vocation for what it is truly worth. In this world, where true and fruitful intimacy with fellow humans, let alone with God, is made by the day more difficult, the thought of men and women who give their lives in order to achieve what from worldly standards can be seen as an empty intimacy is both sobering and encouraging. Christianity, after, all is founded on vicarious suffering. 

Let us pray, during this Octave of the feast of Saint Benedict, and on the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, for all eremites and monastics: may we ever be mindful and thankful of the truly essential service they render to the Church and to the world; may we also be moved by their example to seek the true peace and practice true charity, and ever long for constant prayer and conversation with Christ our Lord, in the secret cells of our hearts.