“Today, in seeking true progress, let us listen to the Rule of St. Benedict as a guiding light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism” (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, April 9, 2008).
At his first general audience after ascending to the papacy, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger revealed that he’d taken the name “Benedict” as a nod toward Pope Benedict XV, whose pontificate “guided the Church through the turbulent times of the First World War.” He also took pains to reference St. Benedict of Nursia — named Principal Patron of all Europe by Pope St. Paul VI in 1964 — saying, “St Benedict … is a fundamental reference point for European unity and a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of his culture and civilization.”
In 2005, most Catholics were only just beginning to realize that, beyond the thinning-out of worshippers in her great churches and cathedrals, Europe was making a full-armed embrace of post-Christian modernity — something hinted at in 2001, when then-prime minister Tony Blair, while discussing his faith, was interrupted by his head of communications who told him, “We don’t do God.”
Clearly Pope Benedict XVI understood that a continent busily unmooring itself from its greatest civilizing influence was a continent risking chaos unto self-destruction. Nearly 20 years later, Europe is a union of nations whose individual cultural identities are being lost to a combination of unbridled immigration and low birthrate demographics, and whose collective conscience is erasing all memory of the underlying force that fed her greatness, mostly for the better.
By invoking the fifth century patriarch of western monasticism as his own patron and influence, Benedict XVI was urging Europe (and the post-Christian world on every continent) toward a specific escape route — one marked out by the Benedictine motto, “Ora et labora.” That is, “Prayer and work.”
The motto and its concept are not mere words hung on the air, but shorthand for a wholistic and comprehensive way — The Rule of St. Benedict — which for 1600 years has guided monastic communities full of individuals, with their own ideas and quirks, toward the successful integration of faith and interpersonal support. Promising “nothing harsh, nothing burdensome,” the Rule has also been successfully embraced by secular interests as great as complex as corporations, as stalwart as friendship communities or as small and “ordinary” as single families.
By invoking the fifth century patriarch of western monasticism as his own patron and influence, Benedict XVI was urging Europe (and the post-Christian world on every continent) toward a specific escape route — one marked out by the Benedictine motto, “Ora et labora.” That is, “Prayer and work.”
Leaning on service to Christ, the Rule’s practical influence on western civilization is difficult to deny, but for some it might be easy to miss. That’s because it’s so full of what seem like “simple no-brainers” to people who don’t realize just how powerfully the Rule’s influence helped to create a civilization that was, until pretty recently in fact, civil and ordinary.
Key lessons from the Rule
These days, it may be argued that the Rule, and its wisdom, is downright counter-cultural, from it’s very first word:
“Listen,” it begins, speaking to a culture with a head full of noise, plugged in and perpetually distracted by passing enthrallments and completely unaware that when we are unpracticed in listening, we devolve away from civility and toward crassness, unable to hear things urgently important to our lives, not least the “small still voice” through which we encounter grace, mercy and mystery. Listening opens a pathway to memory and to the something-greater-than-self who waits to meet us in the quieted mind.
“Restrain your speech”: this is the other side of “listening” — an invitation away from the fear that if we don’t post every thought to social media, or shout along with every crowd, we might not be seen or (even worse), might be seen but thought “out of touch.” But learning that “there are times when good words are to be left unsaid” is fundamental to learning self-restraint in every other situation, which is evidence of maturity and inner resilience.
“Try humility”: Christ in Gethsemane modeled humility for the world in that huge moment when he declared, “not my will but yours be done” (Lk 22:42), but the pursuit of humility is full of small moments of self-effacement and obedience (which is itself another countercultural idea). “We descend by exaltation and ascend by humility,” writes St. Benedict. Humility coupled with obedience needn’t be as off-putting an idea as we’ve been trained to think. As the Benedictine Oblate and writer Tom McDonald says, “Everybody obeys someone or something. Stopping at a stop sign is an obedience. It’s also an act of prudence, which should give us a better idea of what we obey, and who, and why, and when.”
“Be hospitable”: To “meet others with all the courtesy of love” is to incorporate everything that has come before — the listening and the restraint of our own speech in order to better serve the other; the obedience to social niceties of open welcome that have all-but fallen out of custom; the humility inherent in paying respectful attention a guest’s entire person and the needs of body, mind and spirit. In this way, we honor the one before us as we would Christ.
Begin all things with prayer
In the brilliant movie “Groundhog’s Day,” Bill Murray’s completely uncivilized character undergoes a complete restoration through a series of actions that, as it turns out, follow the advice of the Rule pretty closely. Perhaps he would have gotten there faster if he’d taken on one more piece of advice:
“Begin with prayer”: In the beautiful prologue to the Rule we read, “every time you begin a good work, you must pray to (Christ) most earnestly to bring it to perfection.” The advice undergirds the totality of “ora et labora” by reminding us that everything we are “doing” is connected to our “being” (and our “being” is what craves peace, contentment, success, love and ultimately oneness with the Eternal). To begin everything action — our daily duties, yes, but even the listening, the becoming silent, the offering of hospitality, etc — with prayer is to bring the ordinary into contact with the extraordinary. It begs that all we are doing, within the life we are trying to create for ourselves, is suffused with rightness through the help of the One who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6).
Can you imagine what the world would be like if it suddenly became not just brave or counter-cultural or anything but “ordinary” to know that the people who are running the world — presidents and kings and prime ministers and Church leaders and bus drivers and bankers and bureaucrats and moms and dads — were beginning every action in earnest prayer, seeking out that light and extraordinary power for assistance on all that is undertaken?
On a more secular level, perhaps it would seem like our civilization was once again being built-up and schooled in the “true humanism” that Pope Benedict XVI so confidently ascribed to the power inherent in the Rule of St. Benedict.
