Ora et labora et lege: St Benedict and the restoration of cult, culture and cultivation
Learning to rebuild from the builder of Christendom
It was not the intention of St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547 AD) to found an Order in the Church, although he did found one numbering more than 4 million, 40,000 of which are saints, 22,000 bishops and archbishops (and counting!).
It was not the intention of St. Benedict to be a liturgist, though his influence on the development of the Latin liturgical rite is profound.
It was not the intention of St. Benedict to found schools, though he is at the root of the university system born in Christendom.
It was not the intention of St. Benedict to be an agriculturalist, but his monks are responsible for the cultivation of much of western Europe and elsewhere besides.
Of all the legacies which the Father of Western Monasticism and Patron of Europe bequeathed to posterity, the inheritance of his Rule ranks before them all.
From the Regula Sancti Benedicti we have, in a sense, the last will and testament of a father, a paterfamilias, handing on the entire riches of his spiritual estate - his animus. Benedict is that wise and faithful servant who gave increase to his Master’s fortune (Matt. 25:14-30), having received the Tradition before him and then handing it on to his sons and daughters in richer raiment. He did not seek to invent a new way of life, as some modern might. Rather, the wisdom he received passed through the crucible of a mortified and sanctified heart. We celebrate his transitus on the 21st of March, and his is the passage of a faithful servant entering into the joy of His Master!
The spirit of his rule and thus the immeasurable legacy of so magnanimous a Patriarch for cult, culture and cultivation has been captured by his spiritual heirs in the motto: ora et labora - pray and work. While the whole of the Regula reflects this duality, two small portions seem to summarise its content:
“As soon as the signal for the time of the divine office is heard, let everyone, leaving whatever he hath in his hands, hasten with all speed, yet with gravity, that there may be no cause for levity. Therefore, let nothing be preferred to the Work of God.” (Regula, Ch. 43, Verheyen translation )
“Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.” (Regula, Ch.48, Verheyen translation)
There is a paradox in St. Benedict’s instruction on prayer and work. On the one hand, the chanting of the psalms in choro is given first place in a monk’s day, yet he calls this prayer the opus Dei, the Work of God. On the other hand, under the chapter heading de opere manuum quotidiano - of the daily work of the hands, he counsels that both manual labour and lectio divina are to be taken up as weapons to combat idleness. Here, we are not dealing with logic but poetry. The work of prayer and the prayer of work are but one and the same for the monachus, who is solitary in his purpose of preferring “nothing whatever to Christ” (Regula, ch. 72). 700 years later, St. Bernard of Clairvaux would describe the monastic life as “negotissumum otium”, a most busy leisure. Chanting the divine office, prayerfully reading Scripture and working with one’s hand to sustain the life of body and community can all be described by the same pious paradox. There is nothing of the “productivity” mindset here, neither is the fuga mundi merely a vacation from all responsibility.
Beyond the walls of a monastery, however, these three elements of the rule - oratio, lectio and labor - can be adopted in some measure by any Catholic in order to extend the reign of Christ’s peace in the soul.
The first is oratio, prayer; especially the chanting of the psalms. St. Benedict clung to the tradition that the psalms are both “the prayer of Christ” and the “voice of Christ” (Regula, ch. 19) with which to address and praise God our Father. From this insight the entire Divine Office was arranged and crafted as essential to the cultus of the Church. Depending on our state and season of life, choosing to pray a portion of the Monastic breviary or traditional Roman breviary (such as Prime and Compline) places the prayers of Christ on our lips and in our hearts. The Antiphonale Monasticum provides the text and chants for singing the Day hours of the Divine Office in Latin.
The second element is lectio, reading. Here I must paraphrase the insight of Dom Jean Leclercq OSB in his study of monastic culture, “The love of learning and the desire for God in the middle ages”. The whole thrust of education, of the liberal arts, especially grammar, for St Benedict arises from a simple practicality: to read sacred Scripture or have it read to others, someone must know letters; grammar is the study of literature which trains the mind to weigh the sound and meaning of the letters, the words and the sentences. Thus studying the auctores, the authors, both the Romans for their mastery of latin and the Church Fathers for their commentary, are indispensable aids. This places prayerful reading of the Word of God as both a fons et culmen of culture and education.
Third and finally, there is labor. I count St. John Henry Newman’s interpretation of Benedictine work the best I’ve come across: “St. Benedict's direct object indeed in setting his monks to manual labour was neither social usefulness nor poetry, but penance; still his work was both the one and the other”. Atonement for sin, the curing of vice and cultivation of virtue are the highest ends of work which dispose their outcome to be a blessing on the world. Even though Benedict’s Roman culture esteemed the value of work like farming, it despised the idea of hiring one’s hands out for pay. Yet for a Benedictine, the penitential dimension of work reimbued manual labour with real value. Newman adds more: "Wherever they came… they converted the wilderness into a cultivated country; they pursued the breeding of cattle and agriculture, laboured with their own hands, drained morasses, and cleared away forests. By them Germany was rendered a fruitful country."..."The Benedictine monks were the agriculturists of Europe; they cleared it on a large scale, associating agriculture with preaching." (Newman, The Mission of St. Benedict)
At this point I have said nothing of the Holy Mass. Indeed, the Regula itself scarcely makes direct mention of the Mass. While some have assumed this means Mass was not offered in the early monasteries, it would seem far more likely that Mass would have been taken for granted as being the centre of monastic life. It may seem odd to say, but I think the rule of St. Benedict offers hope for those attending the Traditional Latin Mass and who face restrictions in many parts of the world over. Even if this is the case for the moment, there are still no restrictions on chanting the psalms from the old breviary and practicing lectio divina. In fact, both of these prayers flow out of the Mass and prepare us to return to it more disposed. If a Sunday Mass according to the vetus ordo is all we can manage to attend for one reason or another, the divine office and lectio divina can still prolong our savour of the sacred mysteries. Such prayers may even lead to a richer sacramental life being offered by the hierarchy to the faithful.
At any rate, these works of prayer and everything required to pray them were the tasks undertaken by Benedict and his monks that allowed the Holy Mass to flourish as the centre of Christendom. So says John Senior: “What is Christian culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone’s opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of 2,000 years of history. Christendom, what secularists call Western Civilization, is the Mass and the paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it. All architecture, art, political and social forms, economics, the way people live and feel and think, music, literature–all these things when they are right are ways of fostering and protecting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.” (Restoration of Christian Culture, 17)
Whether father or mother, husband or wife, clergy or laity, teacher, farmer, worker, artisan, student; if we wish to take up our place in the restoration of cult, culture and cultivation, there is much we can learn from St. Benedict in the order of prayer, study and work. One of his spiritual sons, St. Gregory the Great, described him as “scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus” - knowingly ignorant and wisely uninstructed. The deeper sense of the saintly pontiff’s character description has been captured by St. John Henry Newman in the most eloquent way possible, and I share it here to complete my thoughts on how Benedict’s witness is a perfect example of how to go about rebuilding the Walls in our times:
“He found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way, not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time or by any rare specific or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often, till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration, rather than a visitation, correction, or conversion. The new world which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing, and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes, and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully deciphered and copied and re-copied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one that "contended, or cried out," or drew attention to what was going on; but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning, and a city. Roads and bridges connected it with other abbeys and cities, which had similarly grown up; and what the haughty Alaric or fierce Attila had broken to pieces, these patient meditative men had brought together and made to live again.”
“And then, when they had in the course of many years gained their peaceful victories, perhaps some new invader came, and with fire and sword undid their slow and persevering toil in an hour. … Down in the dust lay the labour and civilization of centuries,—Churches, Colleges, Cloisters, Libraries,—and nothing was left to them but to begin all over again; but this they did without grudging, so promptly, cheerfully, and tranquilly, as if it were by some law of nature that the restoration came, and they were like the flowers and shrubs and fruit trees which they reared, and which, when ill-treated, do not take vengeance, or remember evil, but give forth fresh branches, leaves, or blossoms, perhaps in greater profusion, and with richer quality, for the very reason that the old were rudely broken off. If one holy place was desecrated, the monks pitched upon another, and by this time there were rich or powerful men who remembered and loved the past enough to wish to have it restored in the future.” (Newman, The Mission of St. Benedict)
May we all pray, work and read for the love of Christ!
St. Benedict, ora pro nobis!
Pax,
Mark Cornelius
