Feast of St Benedict – July 11, 2022
The words of our first reading today from Proverbs sounds very much like the opening words of St Benedict’s Rule: “My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for understanding,” then be attentive to my words. The whole Rule of Benedict gives us a path to wisdom. It strongly resembles the words of Jesus in the gospel today – words which He spoke at the Last Supper, just before He was to suffer and die for us:. Even then, after three years of following Him and striving to absorb the wisdom which He gave, – yes, even then “A dispute broke out among them: which of them was to be regarded as greatest”.
One can imagine a Novice Master preparing a group of novices for First Profession. And a dispute broke out among them: which of them was ro be regarded as greatest”. The Novice Master could only cry out in exasperation: “So long have I been with you, and you still do not understand even the Prologue of the Rule. What will you do with chapter seven!? “ Jesus Himself must have felt some of that exasperation at His disciples, as Benedict must have felt when his early disciples offered him the poisoned cup. But Jesus went even further. He drank from the poisoned cup. And He even offers that poisoned cup to us as His disciples.
knowing that in death we will find life; in humility we will find true greatness; and in obedience we will find true fulfillment.
The disciples of Jesus were truly slow to understand His message. And so now He must demonstrate to them in action that the greatest must be the least, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. But it shall not be so among you.” Jesus will demonstrate on the next day that the greatest must truly be least. He who has come in order to show us that the way to wisdom and true greatness is the path of suffering and death out of love for the other.
That final message of Jesus is given to us in the Rule of St Benedict. It is there that we are to find true life and greatness. It is there that we are to find true wisdom. It is there that we are to find God Himself, by preferring nothing to the love of Jesus Christ.