San Benito el joven, Francisco de Zurbarán. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“God can be found in Subiaco and in the Madrid metro,” claims the prior of the Benedictine monastery of Leyre. His founder did so in a cave and today teaches us about the balance between work and prayer.
If St. Jerome of Stridon is considered the father of Eastern monasticism, St. Benedict of Nursia is regarded as the founder of monastic life in the West. However, both made the same decision at a certain point in their lives: to leave Rome, the embodiment of superficiality and empty life, and seek solitude to find God.
Most of what we know about St. Benedict comes from the biography written by Pope Gregory the Great about 50 years after his death, when the saintly founder of the Benedictines had already become a monumental figure for the Church of his time. He was born around the year 480 in Nursia, in Italian Umbria, and in his youth, his parents decided to send him to Rome to study the arts and humanities. However, at that time, the capital of the Empire was a shadow of its former self. Barbarian invasions had wreaked havoc on social life, although the corruption of morals and cultural erosion may have begun much earlier.
We do not know exactly what Benedict saw and experienced in the Eternal City, but Pope Gregory recounts that “seeing many go along the treacherous paths of vice, Benedict withdrew his foot, fearing that in pursuing worldly knowledge, he too might fall into such a horrible abyss.” Thus, “he left his father’s house and possessions, and, wishing to please God alone, sought the habit of monastic life,” says his biographer.
While many hermits went to Egypt and Asia Minor to join other hermits and form communities in the desert, Benedict simply walked for several days until he found a cave in Subiaco, 70 kilometres east of Rome, where he began to lead a life of solitude and prayer. There, he lived for three years, assisted only by a monk friend who occasionally brought him food.
The Poison of the Monks
Despite his secluded life, his presence began to be felt in the region, and some monks who had just lost their abbot asked Benedict to take his place. Overcoming his initial resistance, he agreed and moved in with the monks. Soon, his rigorous and strict lifestyle clashed with the moral laxity of those religious men, who ultimately conspired to kill him. One day, they poured poison into a cup of wine intended for their abbot, but when Benedict blessed it with the sign of the cross, the cup shattered into a thousand pieces.
This was one of the first miracles mentioned by St. Gregory in his biography of the saint, but there were many more—from the resurrection of a boy crushed by a wall during the construction of one of his monasteries to the exorcism he performed on a possessed man who could find no peace.
His fame began to grow so much that, gradually, men from all over the Empire who heard of his exploits joined him, as did monks who desired to lead a holy life but could not find it in their respective communities. Over the years, he developed a rule of life that serves as a guide for all Benedictine monasteries to this day. In the year 529, Benedict left Subiaco and founded a new community in a place between Rome and Naples called Cassino, where he lived until his death, 18 years later.
For posterity, St. Benedict left a motto that is applied to the order he founded: ora et labora, “but he never said it just that way,” insists Óscar Jaunsaras, prior of the Benedictine abbey of Leyre. “That can be said to be a summary of his rule, a way to express that the life of a monk consists of work and prayer, and that there is a balance we must maintain,” he adds.
In this sense, St. Benedict teaches us that between the desperate search for a beach where we can lie in the sun doing nothing and the labour slavery in which many of our contemporaries live, there is a middle ground: “We flee from work towards hedonism because we do not understand the purpose of work well. We must perceive it as a way of collaborating with the Creator, who needs our help to keep this world moving forward,” says the monk.
Reflecting on the life of his founder, the prior of Leyre argues that St. Benedict “did not flee the world to hide or avoid difficulties. He took refuge in Subiaco to escape sin and find God, and that is something that can be done in Subiaco and also in the Madrid metro. Carrying God in one’s heart can be done by anyone, regardless of where they are. And in the end, that is all that matters.”
