Family life inspired by the Rule of St Benedict
We do not speak great things: we live them (St Cyprian)
"How wonderful is your dwelling place..."
When came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing
When came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing
The parable of the Prodigal Son presents us with a young man alone, starving and desperate who, after a long period of insensitivity, senses the birth within himself of an agonising nostalgia and a sweet hope: the memory of his father's house which, after so many illusions and delusions, offers him the image of a warm and welcoming home. "How many paid servants in my father's house have enough to eat, and here am I dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father..." How many prodigal sons there are in the world today, but how few warm and welcoming homes respond to the longing of their disillusioned hearts! Visiting an old family home, be it aristocracy, middle-class, or rural, abandoned or reduced to a museum, has there never re-awoken in you a secret yearning, accompanied perhaps by the thought: "Today we are no longer worthy to have such welcoming homes"?
Listen carefully, my son...
Listen carefully, my son...
Do you want to be able to offer your children a home which is not a hotel room they're passing through, a free dormitory, a gathering place for people who are strangers to each other, but rather a home of peace and love, a safe harbour where comfort after the storms of life can be found? Fifteen centuries ago, when every trace of civilisation seemed about to disappear in a world shaken by barbarians, invasions, wars and plague, a man left a document full of wisdom to teach how a community can live in harmony and peace and thus form a real "house of God", where "no one may be disquieted or distressed": Saint Benedict. Today, couldn't his teaching prove to be valuable not just for men and women consecrated to God, but also for young and not so young families?
Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service
Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service
So what is special about the teaching of St Benedict? Isn't everything already in the Gospel? And aren't missionaries, the servants of the poor or sick or even politicians and revolutionaries more important than monks enclosed in their monasteries? Benedict does not directly create missionaries, nor servants of the poor or sick, and even less politicians or revolutionaries: however he creates concrete conditions so that human life in a community – human life which normally cannot be but communal – can be lived out in a Christian manner in all its daily detail without any obstacles, and even with a continual stimulus for improvement. So it is about establishing how one sleeps, eats and works, how time, silence, common and private prayer are all respected, how the house must be built so that it may "be in the care of wise men who will manage it wisely." From the abstractions of spirituality or plans for social improvement one comes down to the level of incarnating the Gospel in the flesh of the everyday. Then the monks will do all the good works demanded by love of neighbour, but without ever omitting the most immediate duties towards the community in which they live and which gives them material and spiritual support, and so makes them also capable of bringing help to the world, not just with ingenious ideas or extraordinary activity, but also and above all through the example of charity exercised in everyday life.
The monastic family a model for the natural family
The monastic family a model for the natural family
So in the light of the Rule of St Benedict and subsequent Benedictine tradition, the modern family should ask itself: What time do we get up? How and when do you pray together? What does the building look like? Is there space for worship? How do you eat? How are set times respected? What are the work rotas so that everyone learns mutual service? What use is made of modern means of communication so that they do not take over everything nor wipe out every human and natural relationship? What should be the times of rest and silence? What books are circulating round the house? What is the function of the library? What type of music, what songs are liked and sung? What type of clothes are worn? What pictures, what sort of art decorates the house?