Abide – Saint Benedict
Welcome, everyone, welcome to Abide.
A time of prayer where we can step away into our rooms, close the door, and seek God together. And we are in a series on the ‘Friends of Jesus.’ Last time with Augustine, and today with Benedict. And each of these friends of Jesus we study have been given a title, Saint. And you might ask, who is a Saint, or what's considered Sainthood? And Carrie Wallace, in her book, writes a few words about it, which I'll share now.
“Saints aren't born better or braver than the rest of us. Saints aren't people who are always good and never afraid. They are people who believe there must be more to life than just what we can see. This world may be hard and unfair, but Saints believe in a God who is bigger than the world, whose law is love, and whose justice is mercy.”
And that is why we are surrounding ourselves with these beautiful friends of Jesus, and friends that we would like to get to know. Because although the world is hard and unfair, and though we are people that are not always good and never afraid, we do want to believe that there is more to life than what we can see. We do want to become people that believe in a God who is bigger than the world, and whose law is love, and whose justice is mercy.
So let us draw deeper into our spaces and get settled with Jesus, and Benedict, and one another.
We're going to take three nice breaths together, to just become more present in the moment, and aware of our bodies breathing, the blood pumping, and just become more grounded in this present moment.
So, let's breathe in, together. And breathe out, together. Breathing in, together. And out, together. And last one, breathe in, together. And out, together.
Be still and know that I am God. Be still and know that I am. Be still and know. Be still. Be.
We come to this time longing to be still. And oftentimes, when we allow ourselves to become still, quite soon after the stillness settles in, we begin to allow the things of the day and the lists of what we could be doing with this half hour that would be maybe more productive than what we're doing now, the responsibilities, the frustrations, they seem to come right to the forefront of our mind, and that's very normal. And so, just as the Saints have taught us that our lives are more than what we can see, we're going to practice now, whatever those tasks are, or those unfinished projects, or those tangled up emotions you can't quite iron out, we're going to allow those things to go to either side of ourselves, right now. To the right, to the left, to the back. And we're going to allow Jesus to be center, center of our lives. More important than all those responsibilities, superior to all those things that we can't control.
So, spend a moment practicing putting those concerns to the side, and allowing Christ to move to the front, and to the center, of this time.
Wonderful.
And as these 30 minutes continue, again and again, you can just practice moving those concerns to the side, and allowing Christ to be center. Even if you have to do that 100 times during these 30 minutes, that is well practiced truth, and well needed in our lives, to know what is most important and how we can continue to remember that.
Now, as I said, we're going to spend time with Benedict today. And he was born in 480 and lived until 547. And I'm going to read, like I did with Augustine, a little story for us to sort of get a little bit more of an idea of what Benedict's life was like. And again, I'm reading from Kerry Wallace.
“One day, Benedict came home to the small house in Italy that he shared with the old woman who had nursed him as a child and discovered her crying over a broken sieve. She had borrowed it, and because it broke, she was ashamed to give it back. And moved by tears, Benedict took the sieve and prayed. And when he handed the old sieve back to her, it was all in one piece. The people in the town were so astonished that they hung the sieve up by the door of the church for everyone to see. But Benedict wanted to spend more time alone to pray and to seek God. And he was old enough now to live on his own, so he wandered out of town where he met a monk named Romanus, who led Benedict to a cave near a lake, under the cliff, where Romanus's monastery stood. Benedict moved into the cave, where he wore animal skins instead of clothes, and spent his days in prayer. Every now and then, Romanus would bring him bread. But when the abbot of the monastery on the cliff died, the monks came down to Benedict. ‘Please be our new abbot,’ they begged him. ‘You won't like me,’ Benedict told them, ‘I'll be too strict for you.’ But the monks insisted, so Benedict went with them. And just as he warned, the monks hated following Benedict's rules, so they poisoned his wine and bread. But when Benedict bowed his head to bless his meal, the cup broke, spilling all the poisoned wine, and the raven flew in to carry off the poisoned loaf. By then, Benedict had enough of that monastery, so he left it and began to found monasteries of his own, twelve of them, all around Rome. One day, a poor man came to Benedict's monastery, begging for a cup of oil. Benedict always gave anything he had to anyone who asked, so he told the monk in charge of the stores to give the man some oil. But all the monastery had left was one cup of oil, so the monk kept it and sent the man away. When Benedict heard about this, he was furious. He knelt down in the kitchen, by the monastery's big jar of oil, to pray. And as he did, a bubbling sound came from the jar. The monks all watched in wonder as the empty jar became full, so full that the oil began to leak under the lid and finally popped the cover right off so that the new oil spilt all over the floor. Another day, a boy named Placidus was sent out to draw water for the monastery, but he fell into the lake, and he drifted out into deep water. In his cell, Benedict realized something was wrong, so he called the monk Morus. ‘Placidus has fallen into the lake,’ he told him, ‘Go rescue him.’ So Morus ran all the way to the lake, but at the banks, he didn't stop. He ran straight across the water to Placidus, who was thrashing around and crying for help. Standing on the surface of the water, just as if it were dry land, Morris seized Placidus and dragged him back to shore. It wasn't until he reached the land that Morris realized that the whole time he'd been carrying Placidus to safety, he'd been walking on the water. From Benedict's monastery on top of Monte Cassino, where the temple of Apollo had once stood, he wrote a book on how to pray and work. He divided the day into three equal parts: eight hours to sleep, eight hours to work, and eight hours to pray. But prayer was the most important part. Every few hours in the monastery, bells would ring, and everyone would drop everything they were doing, no matter what it was, to pray. And the rules that Benedict wrote still guide the lives of thousands and thousands of monks all over the world today.”
Just allow this short story, of Benedict, and parts of his life, to settle in, take shape, in this space.
As we read in the story, we see that Benedict is one that longs to move into spaces of quiet. You know, after this miracle happened with the sieve, and everyone was wanting to lift him up and follow after him, he flees to a cave where he could spend more time in prayer. This reminds me very much of Jesus, who, once too much attention is drawn, they move into spaces of quiet.
And so, I'm wondering for us, if we could just think on times in our days, and in our lives, where we feel drawn to go into a space to reconnect with God, to be in prayer. Many times, these Saints lived lives of wealth, and affluence, and education. And they've been given many, many things, and they often feel loss and longing. Hence, they are drawn into this life for God. And so, maybe just take a moment with Jesus, here, to review times in your own life where life itself has not been enough, and you've longed for the deeper things of God.
It's important for us to continue to remember how the things of this world do not satisfy, and when that happens, for us to be drawn into God, into prayer, and into connection with God. And to know what that feels like, and to know where to go when things in our outer world do not satisfy. That we have a deep space, or a cave, as it were, that we can move into.
As the story of Benedict continues, there's more miracles that take place. So, the miracle of the fixed sieve, or the miracle of the bubbling oil, or the miracle of the walking on water. Now, in order to be canonized as a Saint, to be given this name, one of the qualifications is to be part of a miracle, of sorts. And here, we just have a few, with Saint Benedict. But I find it very interesting that this Saint, and all the ones we read, they never want to continue to be about these miracles. They always want to continue into humility, and into giving up honours, to continue to allow God to be first and foremost.
And so, I wonder if we want to just take this time to recognize if we are drawn to miracles, and big things happening in our lives, and being recognized as special? And that we can just honestly tell God, tell him that this is a craving we might have. And yet we know from Jesus, and we know from these new friends that we're meeting, that that is not the place of deep abiding. And so, spend some time just surrendering that desire of miracles, and honours, and achievements, and awards, that those things would become less and less important to us, especially if we want to come alongside these friends, these Saints, and if we want to follow after Jesus.
Wonderful.
We read, further on in the story, that Benedict wrote a book on how to pray and how to work. And maybe if you've heard of Saint Benedict's Rule, it is a book that has guided lives for thousands and thousands of years and has really put a structure in place for spaces of worship. And so, I'm going to read a piece of it to us all. Once again, you can check this book out of the library, ‘The Rule of Saint Benedict.’ It's 73 chapters, short chapters, but they're guides in how to conduct yourself in life, how to spend the hours of your day, how to pray, and work, and rest. Some things are very simple, like what to wear to worship, or how to be in the kitchen. And then, some more, concerning our prayer life. But what I would say most about this rule is Benedict's desire for integration, that our connection to God would not just be during our morning prayer or our Sunday morning worship, but that this would be integrated hour by hour. And that your manual work, your chores, your study, your commuting, your sleeping, your resting, that all of these hours in the day would become integrated into a connection, an abiding love for God, and Him for you, and that this is possible.
And so, I'm going to read this little paragraph of the prologue of the Rule of Benedict, for us all to spend a little more time with.
“Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from one who loves you. Welcome it and faithfully put it into practice. The labour of obedience will bring you back to God, from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience, to do battle, for Jesus the Christ.”
Now, Benedict did live in a monastery and lived with fellow brothers. So many of us think, well, if we lived in a monastery, if we had less responsibilities in the world, we could just pray all day. Well, men and women in their monasteries have plenty to do. It's just where their focus is.
And so, I just want to invite all of us to imagine our own lives as monasteries. You know, I'm in my minivan a lot, driving my children to practices and to school. And so, my monastery is my minivan, with my children as little Saints, around me. Or my monastery is my kitchen. Or my monastery is my classroom. And so, take a minute to imagine the spaces you live in as your monastery. Places for you to worship God, for you to serve God, for you to love God, and allow Him to love you, in these spaces.
So now that we've reframed our daily life, and ours as our own little monasteries, Benedict says to us, “Listen carefully, my child.”
Listen. Listen is his first word.
Listen.
And what does it mean for us to listen? You know, if you're really listening in, you have to stop, and slow down, and be quiet. I was recently at U-Getaway with the students, and we listened to a wonderful speaker, Chris Chase. And he reminded us all to make time for God, and to take time. So, as we review our physical monasteries, where can we take time and make time, to listen, to be still, to be quiet?
If you're anything like me, you are listening to music, or a podcast, or talking with a friend, or there is not much silence at all in our lives. And so, Benedict is reminding us of the very first thing: We need more silence in order to listen to God and His instructions. So, my question for us all is, where can we bring silence into our day? Maybe we can turn off the music. Maybe we can quiet the screens to practice silence. Even the other day, I walked in silence, and I saw a huge sunflower with its head bowed way low, reminding me to bow my life to God as this sunflower. And again, I think it's because I wasn't listening to any music, and I wasn't listening to any podcast, and I could listen to God, listen to the world around me. Where might you be able to bring silence and listening into your monastery, and into your day?
In this prologue, Benedict writes, “This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all.” Much of the ‘Rule of Saint Benedict’ focuses on the virtue of humility. The act of giving up your own will, over and over, and over, again.
And so, once again, as we prepare to close this time of prayer, as we sit with Jesus and the words of this friend, Benedict, let us once again envision our spaces, that we live and dwell, as our own monasteries.
May we rethink in our spaces where we can integrate more silence to listen. To listen to the love You might be communicating to us, and to listen to Your voice, even if You don't say anything. To be still, and to allow quiet to enter in. May we also, with that stillness, this brings about the act of humility that You are God, and Your voice, and who You are, is center. And as Benedict so beautifully gives us a framework of eight hours of work, eight hours of prayer, eight hours of rest, may You, Spirit, guide us into what would be a beautiful balance of how to serve, love, and honour You with our lives, that You have given us, and we want to give back to You. And so, Lord, we now just open our hands, if you want to put your hands out in front of you, if that's safe, just offer your hours, offer your spaces, offer your silences, and your full of noise moments, to God. We pray this all in His holy and beautiful name. Amen.
