St Benedict and Not Ashamed of the Gospel

1. Bible

Romans 1:16-17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”

2. Liturgy: Holy Saturday Lamentations

Holy Saturday is a ways off but the Symposium Seminar is reading this service this morning. Here are the opening lines:

Noble Joseph, taking down Thy most pure body from the Tree, wrapped it in clean linen with sweet spices, and he laid it in a new tomb.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

Going down to death, O Life immortal, Thou hast slain hell with the dazzling light of Thy divinity. And when Thou hast raised up the dead from their dwelling place beneath the earth, all the powers of heaven cried aloud: “Giver of Life, O Christ our God, glory to Thee.”

Both now and ever and to the ages of ages, Amen.

The Angel stood by the tomb, and to the women bearing spices he cried aloud: “Myrrh is fitting for the dead, but Christ has shown Himself a stranger to corruption.”

You can read the full service here.

3. Fathers: “I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel” by St Sophronius of Jerusalem

I recently began reading St Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem during the seventh century Islamic conquests. Here’s a small sample from one of his homilies:

I will cry out and proclaim aloud and herald the special marks of this feast day. “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel” of Christ, as Paul before us loudly proclaimed, but with his help I put to shame the conceits of the pagan sages, for it is the incomprehensible “power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” How could I be ashamed to speak of the ineffable power of God? Let not the likes of Aristagoras, Anaxagoras, and Anaximander or the likes of Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato, the wisest champions of wisdom turned to folly, vainly find fault with our mysteries, sages who do not have the ability to “understand either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.” It was only fair that a fisherman’s reed marked these men and that a leather-worker’s knife cut them up and left them inert and lifeless refuse of the earth.

You can read more of this homily here.

4. Poetry: “A Sonnet for St Benedict” by Malcolm Guite

You sought to start a simple school of prayer,
A modest, gentle, moderate attempt,
With nothing made too harsh or hard to bear,
No treating or retreating with contempt,
A little rule, a small obedience
That sets aside, and tills the chosen ground,
Fruitful humility, chosen innocence,
A binding by which freedom might be found

You call us all to live, and see good days,
Centre in Christ and enter in his peace,
To seek his Way amidst our many ways,
Find blessedness in blessing, peace in praise,
To clear and keep for Love a sacred space
That we might be beginners in God’s grace.

5. Books & Culture: “Benedictine Poetry and the Restoration of Christian Culture” by Christopher Fisher

Cluny Media has recently been publishing and reprinting an impressive number of great books. They recently published a book with two essays by John Henry Newman on St. Benedict and Benedictine schools. Edited by Christopher Fisher, the Executive Director of Portsmouth Institute, a like-minded organization that seeks to renew culture, it also includes a preface by Fisher. Here’s the opening lines of that preface:

Josef Pieper begins his magnum opus, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, as St. Thomas Aquinas might have done: with an objection. Many will argue, he says, that now (that is, post-war Europe) is not the time to talk about leisure. After all, “our hands are full and there is work for all.” On the contrary, he answers, it is precisely in this period of civilizational rebuilding that we must begin by restoring the meaning of leisure.

The same argument might be made of the Benedictine life today. Now, some might argue, is not the time to retreat from the world. Now is the time to go forth, to engage, to confront.

Like with Pieper’s leisure, the reality is more complex, even paradoxical: Just as the difficult work of rebuilding of Western civilization requires a recovery of leisure as its source of vitality, so a broader evangelical engagement with secular society demands the cloister.

In his essay on “The Mission of St. Benedict,” St. John Henry Newman argues that the fruit of the cloister, the heart of the Benedictine life, is the cultivation of a certain spiritual disposition which he calls “poetic.” It is this Benedictine poetic vision, he argues, which transformed civilization once—and has the power to do so again.

Read the whole preface here.

6. Essays et al: “On the Poetics of Monasticism” by St. John Henry Newman

One of the Newman essays included in Fisher’s book above is titled “The Mission of St Benedict.” Last April we published a good portion of it on our website. Here’s an excerpt:

Poetry, then, I conceive, whatever be its metaphysical essence, or however various may be its kinds, whether it more properly belongs to action or to suffering, nay, whether it is more at home with society or with nature, whether its spirit is seen to best advantage in Homer or in Virgil, at any rate, is always the antagonist to science. As science makes progress in any subject-matter, poetry recedes from it. The two cannot stand together; they belong respectively to two modes of viewing things, which are contradictory of each other. Reason investigates, analyzes, numbers, weighs, measures, ascertains, locates, the objects of its contemplation, and thus gains a scientific knowledge of them. Science results in system, which is complex unity; poetry delights in the indefinite and various as contrasted with unity, and in the simple as contrasted with system. The aim of science is to get a hold of things, to grasp them, to handle them, to comprehend them; that is (to use the familiar term), to master them, or to be superior to them. Its success lies in being able to draw a line round them, and to tell where each of them is to be found within that circumference, and how each lies relatively to all the rest. Its mission is to destroy ignorance, doubt, surmise, suspense, illusions, fears, deceits, according to the “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas” [Happy is he who has been able to learn the causes of things”] of the Poet, whose whole passage, by the way, may be taken as drawing out the contrast between the poetical and the scientific. But as to the poetical, very different is the frame of mind which is necessary for its perception. It demands, as its primary condition, that we should not put ourselves above the objects in which it resides, but at their feet; that we should feel them to be above and beyond us, that we should look up to them, and that, instead of fancying that we can comprehend them, we should take for granted that we are surrounded and comprehended by them ourselves. It implies that we understand them to be vast, immeasurable, impenetrable, inscrutable, mysterious; so that at best we are only forming conjectures about them, not conclusions, for the phenomena which they present admit of many explanations, and we cannot know the true one. 

Read the lengthy excerpt of the essay here.

7. Essays et al: “An Improbable Guide to St Benedict” by Brandon Buerge

Since we’re on a roll with St. Benedict, here’s a post from the archives. It’s my all-time favorite piece on Benedict by my friend Brandon Buerge. If you haven’t read the Rule of Benedict, this is an excellent place to get your feet wet, as it offers a “one-sentence-per-Chapter summary with applications to a modern audience of non-monastic vocation.” Here’s is the Prologue and the first eight (of 73) chapters:

Prologue – One who is placing his hope in heaven will pursue seriously a life of holiness, or his is a foolish hope. This rule is devised as an aid to those who are so inclined.

1. Kinds of Monks: Those who move from community to community are only running from their own sinfulness—stay put.

2. Qualities of the Abbot: The man in charge of the community should have the character of Christ, and be obeyed as Christ, for he will be judged by Christ.

3. Summoning the Brothers for Counsel: Even the leader shouldn’t make decisions on his own.

4. The Tools for Good Works: Develop virtue by obeying Christ’s commands in the “workshop” of a stable community within His Church.

5. Obedience: Life in Christ begins with humility, and humility begins with obedience.

6. Restraint of Speech: The less you talk, the less you sin.

7. Humility: You will only rise in virtue as far as you lower yourself in humility.

8. The Divine Office at Night: Pray when the sun is down, even though it’s cold.

Read all of them here.

8. Essays et al: “Patrick Doom: A Hero Worthy of Imitation” by Erin Doom

Since we’re gearing up for the Feast of St Patrick, here’s another post from the archives. It’s the eulogy I gave for my grandfather Patrick just over two years ago. Here’s the opening:

There is so much to tell you about my grandfather Patrick Doom. When I sat down to think about what good words I wanted to say about him (that is what the word "eulogy" means, based on the Greek roots: eu: good; and logos: word), I quickly generated seven pages of notes. And I had barely gotten started. So instead of going on and on I decided to limit myself by going back to the short response I offered via text message as soon as I received word of his death: “A true hero...We need more men like him today. May his memory be eternal!” That’s how I’d like to frame my remarks today.

Read the whole thing here.