SOLEMNITY OF SAINT BENEDICT
THURSDAY JULY 11th 2024
AT SAINT CECILIA’S ABBEY
RYDE
In the Rule of our Blessed Father Benedict, from the beginning, from the Prologue, we are invited to follow Christ Jesus, to walk in his steps, to ride with him, and even to run in the way of God’s commandments with eager love and ineffable delight. At the end, we are encouraged, after the first steps in virtue and good monastic practice, to hasten with Christ’s help to his Father’s home in heaven.
This race to the heights is more important than Le Tour de France or the Olympic Games that will start in Paris on the feast of saint Ann. Climbing to these heights, we must not lose heart and we need to encourage each other in our race, singing the Psalms, as saint Augustine used to say: Canta et ambula, “Sing and walk!” We need singing if we want to go in the ways of the Lord, “carried forward by love” according to the conclusion of the chapter of the Rule on humility.
Every day and several times a day, we have in our hands the book of the Psalms, which we sing together with different melodies, catching the note given by our Conductor, Jesus, our Saviour, according to the places and moments of our journey. The Psalms are very often quoted by saint Benedict, especially in the Prologue, in chapter 7 and in the little chapter 19 on the way we must sing psalms: you can have a look at these passages and see how the Psalms are present.
We try and learn already the “Canticles of the Lamb”, which the elects sing with him in the holy City of Jerusalem. Did you notice that saint Benedict never writes the name of Jesus in his Rule? He prefers to use the name of Christ, according to common usage in his time; Christ occurs nearly 20 times in his pages. We know this sentence at the end of the chapter on the good zeal we must foster in our lives: “They should value nothing whatever above Christ himself and may he bring us all together to eternal life”.
Singing Hosanna as well as Alleluia, we start experiencing some glimpses from this eternal life, we already have. We do not see the whole world comprised in a single sunbeam, but we enjoy here beautiful sunrises at 4 a.m. on the Solent and we thank God, our Creator.
Let us ask for each other the grace of contemplation, as saint Gertrude and saint Mechtilde used to pray for one another. That is what Dom Guéranger writes in his Introduction to the Exercises of saint Gertrude:
“The holy Church, when she puts into our mouths the Psalms of the King-Prophet, is not unaware that their expressions too often exceed the sentiments of our souls; but is not the way to arrive at unison with these divine canticles to recite them frequently with faith and humility, and thus to obtain the transformation that no other means would have effected? Gertrude gently detaches us from ourselves and leads us to Jesus Christ, preceding us from afar, but driving us after her” (p. XXX).