11 July 2013
Memorial of St. Benedict
If you’re like me, you have grown weary of 21st-century spiritual clichés: “So much instant connectivity and technology in 21st-century life…” “Now more than ever we need to get away from all the distractions…” Sure, fine, distractions.But is spiritual distraction really a new phenomenon?
Distractedness and the need to ‘get away’ periodically is not unique to our time and place. Consider how often Jesus needed to escape the crowds to be by himself to pray – and he didn’t even have friends nagging him to play Words with Friends on his iPhone.
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Today is the feast of St. Benedict, patriarch of Western monasticism. While we Jesuits fancy ourselves “contemplatives in action,” we claim no corner on balancing work and prayer in our lives.
Benedict of Nursia writes, “Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.”
Like many great founders of religious movements, Benedict was not content with the state of the Church and world of his time. Born in the town of Nursia, he went to study the humanities in Rome. He found fifth-century Rome in decadent decline, so he headed to the hills. A natural leader of others, Benedict established multiple monastic communities outside of Rome in the early 500s, the most famous of which is in Monte Cassino, about 80 miles southeast of Italy. The rules he laid down to run this monastery would guide Western monasticism for the next fifteen centuries. They became essential for passing on the intellectual and spiritual patrimony of Western Europe at times when the cities were subject to invasions, destruction, plague, and decay.
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So today, let us find time to balance our work with prayer – not because we have some uniquely modern obstacle to prayer, but because obligations and distractions have been around as long as humankind. The key is to find balance – a challenge in any century.
May the grace be to follow St. Benedict’s suggestion: “Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.”
St. Benedict of Nursia…pray for us!