Читать книгу Listen My Son - Dwight Longenecker - Страница 10

Benedict's Rule speaks to our time because he also wrote in a century of social upheaval and uncertainty. In AD 410 – seventy years before he was born – Rome fell to the barbarian invasions, and by the middle of the sixth century Rome had been sacked for a second time and the Huns were ravaging northern Italy. The civil authority was in tatters; wars, violence and anarchy were raging and the Church too was torn in pieces by theological controversy over the nature of grace. In the midst of this turbulent time Benedict managed to construct a way of life which rode the storm like an ark in the raging flood.

Benedict was born around 480 into a noble family of Nursia. He was sent to Rome to study, but abandoned the city because of the decadence he saw there. He went to live the hermit's life in the hills near Subiaco where he was looked after by another solitary monk. Eventually he was invited to become the abbot of a nearby monastery, but after almost being poisoned by the rebellious monks he left. He finally settled with some brothers at Monte Cassino, where the reconstructed mother house of the Benedictine order still stands today. Some distance away his sister Scholastica had established a convent of nuns, and Benedict met with her once a year. Before his death Benedict's friend and confidant, Servandus, tells us how he was summoned to Benedict's cell one night. Benedict had got up in the night to pray and he saw a bright light come down from heaven. Encapsulated in that light was the entire created order ‘as if gathered into a single ray of light’. This ultimate vision of the unity of all things is the gift which is given through the life of contemplation. Benedict's Rule is a way to run on the path towards that vision of unified love. So he calls us in his Prologue to ‘run on the path of God's commandments with an inexpressible delight of love’.

The life of St Benedict was written by Pope St Gregory the Great. In his Dialogues he records the death of St Benedict. He died on 21 March 547 in the oratory or chapel of the monastery. After receiving communion he stood with his hands raised in prayer, and died supported by his brothers. So in death he was surrounded by the community, making him a latter-day Moses whose arms were held up by Joshua and Aaron so the battle could be won. After his death, the monastery was destroyed by the invading Lombards and the traditions tell us that some monks took Benedict's remains, and those of his sister, to the Abbey of St Benoit-sur-Loire, where his relics remain today.