Weeks ago at a Wednesday audience in St. Peter's Square, the Pope reminded us of St. Benedict of Nursia who lived some 1500 years ago. To a nation such as the U.S. approaching 250 years of age with a citizenry that has at best a hazy understanding of its own origins, seeing the significance of a 1500 year old monkish man from across the Atlantic may be impossible. Europe, on the other hand, is just as old as that memory, and I think the Pope was trying to remind the Europeans of how old their continent really is. Neither the Reformation nor the French Revolution, nor even the re-mapping of Europe after WW II can claim to be the origin of what is Europe today. These were events along the way and part of their history. But by listening to one of her founding fathers, Europe would do well to learn the lessons of the life of St. Benedict. And America would do well to remember that St. Benedict, one of our founding grandfathers, was as essential to our existence as he was to Europe's.
For while the modern world would rather bury St. Benedict as insignificant history in a dark time of a superstitious past, the saint rises from his muddy grave and reminds us once again that there was a time when Europe wasn't, a time when she did not exist. And it was also not inevitable that Europe would exist. Men and women like St. Benedict cared enough about civilization to keep it civil. For while the barbarians sought to bring disorder and chaos by scorching books rather than scribing them and burning libraries rather than building them, their attempt to vitiate civilization during those early centuries brought us into a dark age. It was the successive invasions of the Vandals and the Goths, the Vikings and the Visigoths that threatened to destroy what Athens and Rome had given the world: culture, civilization, and political order. The people of the falling Roman Empire, no longer protected by the power of the centurion were at the mercy of the barbarian. They lost their freedom when the rulers were destroyed. But it was Benedict and his spiritual offspring - the monks of Western Catholicism - that saved culture. Benedict was able to achieve this not by becoming a political ruler but by simply writing a Rule.
And generations of Benedictine monks - priests, lay people, kings, peasants - ordered their life around that Rule, praying, worshiping, working, and living under the banner of Christ the King. And while the countryside was being burned by the horde, in the monastery monks were burning with intellectual and cultural fervor. The candles that lit the monastery halls, archways, and chapels gave light to those monks that sought to restore order and knowledge to the European countryside. The monastery candle was the light of the dark ages.
For within those monasteries, often themselves the object of warring and destruction, monks were busy copying ancient texts - the whole wealth of antiquity - in order that they would survive that dark age. All of the great literature of the ancient world survives today because of the scribal work of humble monks - hours and hours of copying and restoring in order that the knowledge and intellectual treasure of antiquity would not be lost.
And besides that great task, they found time to run farms with new and greater technological advances; they taught and restored literacy to the poor; they mined for elements; they invented champagne, brewed beer, and made wine; they took in lost travelers and the shipwrecked; they perfected water powered technologies; they found ways to produce iron, build gliders, make clocks, and store spring water for drought seasons. They created a universal written script which replaced the numerous, illegible scripts of the empire. They did much more. But in short, the monks preserved the very culture and civilization that was in danger of being wiped out by the lawlessness that was enveloping the world.
St. Benedict could not have foreseen what his Rule and his dedication to Christ and the Church would do for the West. His own holiness of life was an example for the peasant and noble alike, and an impetus for restoration. For in addition to the many efforts of the Church and dedicated state leaders besides - it was his efforts that saved culture and restored the world. It was his efforts that laid the foundation for a civilization that we now take for granted, but may be losing: Europe. And Europeans are losing themselves in part because they have forgotten one of their fathers.
Who better to remind them of that father than a Pope of the same name?
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