I need some help
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PPforWedTh_April29-30Benedictines-CatholicStuff.pptx
Some people said that the abbot of Cluny was ALMOST (but not quite) as powerful as the Pope!
A) The Benedictines: INTRO
With power and hundreds of monasteries came a lot of land…and a lot of corruption.
All of a sudden, monks didn’t have to be poor and focused on God anymore.
A) The Benedictines: INTRO
They could have private two room suites including their own bath and be focused on God!
So, like all long-lasting human institutions, the Benedictines went through cycles of poverty, purity, corruption, and reform.
A) The Benedictines: INTRO
The Benedictines also played a large role in conserving texts, and learning, during the chaos left by the Fall of Rome
(next slide = https://uwm.edu/graduateschool/professional-development/the-scriptorium/
There are still many Benedictines around today.
b) Saint benedict
Saint Benedict. Detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_of_Nursia
A) The Benedictines: INTRO
About 70 years after the fall of Rome, one finds Benedict of Nursia .
He was born around 480 ce and died about 547.
Supposedly, Benedict did miracles…
…like healing a monk when a wall fell on him.
Saint Benedict Restores a Monk to Life
Depiction by Lorenzo Monaco (crushed by a falling wall…see the “devil” near the wall!)
Even with such miraculous gifts, though, it was hard to get people to live together in harmony!
Things always rise up to pull a community apart.
In the following slide, you can see a little devil who is beckoning and enticing one of the monks…
…away from the light of community, and out into the dark isolation of temptation and confusion.
Lorenzo Monaco. (devil tries to tempt a monk away from the community)
Some of his monks, for example, thought that Benedict was too harsh.
They began to hate him SO MUCH…that they decided to poison his wine.
Fortunately for both Benedict and monasticism, his wine cup (“miraculously”) shattered…
…allowing the poisoned beverage to seep harmlessly into the ground instead.
SAINT BENEDICT
Francisco de Zurbarán (Spanish,
Fuente de Cantos 1598–1664
Madrid)
Date: ca. 1640–45
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 74 x 40 3/4 in.
(188 x 103.5 cm
The Benedictines
What Benedict is best known for, however, is his Rule…
…the ground-rules for how to Live Together in Community and Prayer…
while not going Crazy or becoming Corrupt.
Why is the formation of such a community based on Prayer important?
Well, left to our own devices, we’d probably just forget to pray.
The community reminds us.
Why not just withdraw totally from our busy lives like the Desert Fathers, then, so that we don’t get distracted?
The life of the hermit is difficult.
Most of us cannot handle such a life. We would dissipate into vice or weird neurotic loneliness. It would be of no benefit to us whatsoever.
The Benedictines
However in a community, we would receive necessary support to live a balanced, prayerful life centered on God.
St. Benedict’s Rule gives us the framework for this community.
The Benedictines
Benedict described his Rule in terms of a (huge) keg of beer.
If you put the spigot really high up, only tall people would be able to reach it.
But if you put the spigot right in the middle of the cask,
…it is readily accessible for everybody.
That is like saying that if you make it REALLY HARD to live this holy life in your monastery…
…the normal person would have to leave!!! They wouldn’t be able to make it!
It has to be…not too hard…not too easy…not too hot…not too cold…
…the sort of monk’s life that most of us could handle.
Thus the Rule of St. Benedict took a previous rule, the Rule of the Master (the original monastic rule)…
… and made it much more sensible and balanced for the common person.
The Benedictines
For example, the Rule of the Master required penance if one were even a few seconds late for prayer.
The Rule of St Benedict , however, counsels that the group prayer start just a bit late and slowly,…
… so that those who ARE running those few seconds late have time to slip in un-noticed.
The Benedictines
Prayer, by the way, was 8 times a day:
Matins or Vigils (before night ends, just at dawn) ,
Lauds (early morning, after dawn),
Prime (around 7 am),
Terce (around 9 am),
Sext )(around noon),
None (around 3) ,
Prayer centered on the Psalms.
One would pray all 150 psalms once a week.
The Benedictines
One lived in the same location for one’s whole life (vow of stability).
Therefore one got to know the patterns of the weather, the way that the ground smelled in spring, and the types of birds that visited the monastery.
The Benedictines
The motto was Ora et Labore or Work and Pray.
One would eat, sleep, pray, and work, all while living with other human beings in community.
The Benedictines
The chief Benedictine virtue is humility, or self-knowledge.
Prayer-meditation helps one in achieving it…although it takes a life-time.
Of course interacting with people helps one to achieve it also.
You are living with the same group of people, day in and day out, week in and week out, year after year.
The Benedictines
Benedictine Churches emphasize an incarnational type of spirituality. They are beautiful, indicating that beauty can lift one’s heart up to God.
They may include some icons, or a beautiful pipe organ, or nice architecture.
The Benedictines
Like any other group of people, however, the Benedictines became corrupt.
After awhile their monasteries were huge and wealthy.
People began to see that it was no longer about poverty…. so much as it was about the amassing of vast tracts of land and a lot of wealth.
So a reform movement arose to “purify” the Benedictine way of life.
The Benedictines
This reform movement occurred in the 1000’s.
The Cistercians opted for a more simple lifestyle, and a sparser, less luxurious physical plant.
Eventually they also needed to be reformed…and the cycle continued.
