These visions, for Pope Saint Gregory the Great, showed a close union between Benedict and God, a union so intense that the Saint was given the share of an even more magnificent vision, the whole of creation as gathered in a sunbeam. During his life, Saint Benedict performed many miracles. What was fresh is now ancient.
The “upper room” of Monte Casino became European culture’s symbolic Acropolis and Temple Mount, the beacon to the town, the lighthouse of Western civilization, and it was Saint Benedict who first lit its lamp. Saint Benedict was born at Norcia around 480 AD. In the period between 525 and 529 AD he founded the Abbey of Montecassino. He would live for Christ and Christ alone. Shortly before he died, Saint Benedict saw the soul of his sister Saint Scholastica rising to heaven in the form of a dove.
Founders influence the Church’s spirituality and theology almost as much as Divine Revelation itself. So many centuries later, the pioneering path that Benedict cut for Western civilization is difficult to appreciate. The immense legacy of the founders of large, powerful, and lasting Orders in the Church is mysterious. Saint Augustine of Hippo, Benedict’s only serious competition for the greatest saint of the first millennium, also left a widely adopted rule but it never produced the unified and practical communities which Benedict’s Rule generated. St. Benedict was a religious reformer who lived in Italy in the late 400s and early 500s.
Before the time of today’s saint, to be a monk meant to wander into the Syrian desert and never come back, to climb a rocky summit in the Sinai and never descend, to sit cross-legged atop a pillar, to fast to emaciation, or to remain wordless as a hermit in a damp cave in Lebanon.
In the fifth century, the young Benedict was sent to Rome to finish his education with a nurse/housekeeper. In this beloved story from near the end of his life, Benedict’s sister Scholastica shows him (and us) that charity is the end of the rule, and sometimes even trumps the letter of the rule. Therefore it happened that as their souls were always one in God while they lived, so their bodies continued together after their death. This selection is taken from chapters 33-34 of The Life of Saint Benedict by Gregory the Great. Feasts at the Conclusion of the Easter Season, National Liturgical Calendars of the World. Saint Benedict was born at Norcia around 480 AD. Its mission is to share the “joy in the truth” which our patron St. Augustine called “the good that all men seek.”. But by no persuasion would Benedict agree to that, saying that he might not by any means stay all night out of his Abbey.
At Montecassino Saint Benedict displayed prodigious activity. July 11—Memorial The notoriety which this miracle brought drove Benedict to withdraw further from social life. That historical time frame, a mere four years before the Western Roman Empire formally fell by the deposition of the last Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was quite difficult. What is known for certain is that he held in his hands what the world had to offer for a few short years and then dropped it like a murder weapon. The Benedictine Rule came to dominate all of Europe. In addition, he founded a thirteenth monastery for novices and those needing education. St. Benedict (d. 547) is considered the founder of Western monasticism, and many forms of religious life find their root in The Rule of St. Benedict. But the good father, being not able to go forth, stayed there against his will, where willingly before he would not stay. The next day the venerable woman returned to her convent, and the man of God to his Abbey: who three days after, standing in his cell, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, beheld the soul of his sister (which was departed from her body), in the likeness of a dove to ascend into heaven.
When he finally met Totila, he warned him with a dire prediction: “You have hurt many and you continue to do it, now stop behaving badly! Patron Saint of Europe and monks, His Rule helped create Europe, one monastery at a time. Exercising spiritual and practical fatherhood over his brother monks, he was inspired to write a Rule. You will enter Rome, you will cross the vast sea, you will reign for nine years; however in the tenth year, you will die.” And that is exactly what happened. Faith & Culture is the journal of the Augustine Institute’s Graduate School of Theology. Benedict founded Western monasticism, the communities of monks who pray, eat, work, and socialize together in a common chapel, refectory, field, and workshop. 12:8)? Saint Benedict Window, Saint Benedict Church Rectory, San Benedetto Church, Norcia — The Birthplace of Saint Benedict, Sacro Speco, Subiaco — The cave in which Saint Benedict lived, Cloister Garden, Montecassino — The place where Saint Benedict wrote The Rule and died. In the end, a life so noble was justifiably followed by a much-glorified death. April Decades after Benedicts’s death, Pope Saint Gregory the Great recorded some precious few anecdotes of the great monk’s life, but the lack of hard facts and historical chronology leave room for speculation.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy. After leaving Subiaco, Benedict went towards Cassino. The “upper room” of Monte Casino became European culture’s symbolic Acropolis and Temple Mount, the beacon to the town, the lighthouse of Western civilization, and it was Saint Benedict who first lit its lamp. Afterwards, he founded twelve monasteries and assigned twelve monks to each of them.
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