The academic schedule ruled my life as student and teacher
for so long that September still makes me itch to start a new project. This year, it will be an exploration of St.
Gregory the Great’s Life and Miracles of
the Blessed Father Benedict and the Rule
of St. Benedict placed in conversation with one another. My goal is to get to know both St. Benedict
and the Rule in a different light.
I invite you to come along via the blog and newsletter! But I also invite you to explore for
yourself. The primary resources I plan
to use are two modern translations of the Life
and two of the Rule, both with
annotations and commentaries: St. Gregory the Great: Life of St. Benedict,
translated by Hilary Costello and Eoi de Bhaldraithe, with commentary by Adalbert de Vogüé (Petersham MA: St. Bede
Publications, 1993), The Life of St.
Benedict by Gregory the Great, translation and commentary by Terence G.
Cardong (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press 2009), RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English, with notes
(Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press, 1981), and Terence G. Kardong, Benedict’s
Rule: A Translation with Commentary (Collegeville MN: The Liturgical Press,
1996). (These annotated translations of the Rule are expensive. Try used book search sites!)
St. Gregory the Great (Pope 590-603 CE) concludes his Life and Miracles of the Blessed Father
Benedict with this advice: "If
anyone wishes to have a closer knowledge of [Benedict's] life and habits he
will find all the points if his teaching [his] rule for this holy man could not
possibly teach other than as he lived." (XXXVI, de Vogüé 174) The Life serves a very different purpose
than the Rule. Written as one section, Book II, of Gregory's larger
hagiographical work The Dialogues (so
called because Gregory wrote in the popular form of dialogues between himself
and a listener addressed as Peter), The
Life and Miracles of Blessed Benedict looks to demonstrate St. Benedict's
holiness by way of an impressive array of miracles no one could have performed
unless favored by God. Until modern
tastes challenged the genre, most hagiographers since have followed the same
principle: miracles demonstrate holiness.
Besides, they were very entertaining to readers as yet blissfully
unaware of action comics and other kinds of modern heroic tales.
The Rule is a more sober work altogether. Written in the sixth century by the holy man himself—though
authorship has sometimes been disputed-- as a "modest rule" for those
who aspired to follow the monastic life as he himself had tasted and learned
from it, it provides principles and directives for living to his followers then
and now.
But St. Gregory points to the intersection of Rule and Life in the person of St. Benedict
himself. The pope, himself a former monk snatched away from the quiet of his
monastery for the work of Church administration, maintained that as St.
Benedict wrote, so also he lived; as he lived, he wrote. It's as likely a hypothesis as the dearth of historical
data permits.
Putting the two works in dialogue with each other has
provided me with a fruitful source of reflection on the principles of
Benedictine life. I am happy to share
this exploration-in-progress with all of you as an invitation to follow the
imperative voice that tumbled St. Augustine into a lifelong reflection on the
Bible: “take and read, take and read,”
the voice said. So: take and read both
the Rule of St. Benedict and the Life and
Miracles of the Holy Father Benedict in tandem as dual lenses through which
to write the story of God's work in your own life.
Sister Genevieve Glen, OSB, Oblate Director
Copyright 2015, Abbey of St. Walburga
