One of my favourite places in Central Italy is the small hillside walled town of Norcia.  The Town Square has two churches which is surprising in a town of its size but the reason for one of them dominates the centre of the square.  It is a larger than life statue of St. Benedict who was born in the town in 480AD.  So , as well as a Parish Church there is the monastic Church of the Benedictines who follow the teaching of St. Benedict.

It has been my privilege to join them for Sunday Mass.  It was beautifully sung to Plainchant and there was a real sense of being raised towards heaven – a kind of portal opened from this world to the next and when I read the words of today’s Collect that God should guide us through the temporal things of this world so that we lose not our hold on things eternal , the Sunday Mass at Norcia sprang to mind.  It is one of those thin places where the division between earth and heaven is so thin that you can feel the nearness of God’s presence in a very special way.  The reason for it being so, is of course, St. Benedict himself and the holiness he showed in his life.  The Church commemorates this holiness next Saturday when we keep his feast day. 

Benedict was destined to change the face of Western Christianity when he founded a monastic community  which was followed by eleven others and eventually the great monastery of Monte Cassino.  Other foundations followed after his death and the Benedictine way of life swept through the Western world with great abbeys, churches and monasteries being founded throughout  Europe and beyond.  In England the Benedictine form of Christianity was established after the arrival of William the Conqueror and quickly dominated our religious life.  Because of this widespread establishment of religious houses of prayer Benedict has often been called the father or founder of Western Christian monasticism.  The surprising thing was that he never intended to found such a monastic movement.

As a young man, following the thought behind today’s Collect, he abandoned life in the world – the temporal life – and for three years he lived alone in a cave in order to learn the way of obedience to God and so seek the things eternal.  As is often the case with holy men and women, particularly those who abandon the world, he attracted the attention of other seekers and as his fame spread throughout Italy, many came just to be near him and hopefully to learn the things of God from him.  It was because of this that he decided to form his first religious community.

For these communities he wrote a Rule – as a guidance for those who would live together in a community devoted to worshipping and serving God.  There is much in the Rule which is of a practical nature – dealing with how monasteries are to be organized and the common life followed, but within it there are many gems of spiritual insight which have helped many Christians to a richer spirituality and not just those who live in monastic communities.

One of the reasons why Benedict is important for us is that English Spirituality owes a great deal to this Rule and to the Benedictine way of Prayer.  In the monasteries this was based on the day being punctuated by seven Offices or Prayer services so that life was woven on a continual round of prayer which was itself rooted in the revelation of God found in the Bible.  When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer gave us the first Anglican prayer book in 1549, he used the 7 Offices of Prayer and turned them into  Mattins and Evensong which, together with Compline or Night Prayer preserve the essential parts of Benedictine Prayer.  Morning and Evening Prayer became the daily heartbeat of corporate prayer in the Church of England, as indeed, they still are.

Our Personal prayer flows from this corporate prayer of the Church.  Personal prayer can depend upon a whim – whether to say prayers and what to say.  Corporate prayer is the continuous prayer of the Church which simply goes on whether we join in or not.  In times of stress and darkness when words may fail us, it is a comfort to know that the prayer of the Church is on-going and we can simply plug into it and allow it to pray for us.  In word form, it becomes like a votive candle – its light  burns for us when within us there is turmoil or uncertainty or needs we find difficult to express.  All this is thanks to St. Benedict and his Rule.

The Rule itself has been widely printed in almost every language and it has shaped individual devotion and spirituality as much as it has shaped the Church.  It is worth quarrying for the gems and insights it contains.  Here are just three of the gems we can find and they are relevant to our life as a Church today as well as to our own personal spiritual understanding.

In one section of his Rule, Benedict speaks of the need for Reverence in prayer.  He says that:

when we want to bring a proposal before men of influence, we do not presume to do so except with lowliness and respect. How much more then should supplication be made to the Lord god of all the universe with utter humility and the purest devotion.

There is a modern trend to see God as a kind of mate who we treat rather casually and as a kind of equal.  Whilst it is very important to have a living relationship with God that is real and intimate we need always to be mindful to whom we are speaking.  No one addressed God more intimately and naturally than St. Teresa of Avila but she always called him Your Majesty and she never forgot who she was – God’s daughter- nor who He was – the Lord of her Life.  Humility before God and a recognition of his Lordship over our lives is the way we should approach Him.

On Friday we kept the Feast of St. Thomas.  You will remember that Thomas made a big demand on Jesus to show him the wounds of the Crucifixion so that he might believe that Jesus had truly risen from the dead.  It was not enough for Thomas that he had spent three  years with Jesus who had prepared him for his death and resurrection.  He needed proof and when Jesus gave it to him it was one of the most intimate moments in the Gospel.  What clinched it for Thomas was that God in Jesus was willing to stoop down to his level of misunderstanding and it drew from him the humblest and most reverent prayer ever uttered in Christendom – My Lord and My God!  To acknowledge Jesus as his Lord did not destroy the intimacy.  In fact it increased it but it also kept Thomas from behaving as if God was in his pocket.  A proper Reverence for God does not diminish our relationship with him.  It enhances it.

Another area in Benedict’s Rule is that of Hospitality.  Apart from the Chapel, the heart of any Benedictine Community was the hospitium or Guest House.  For Benedict, every visitor or guest should be welcomed as if they were Christ..  Benedict laid down strict procedures about how such guests should be welcomed.  In his Rule he wrote that, in every guest let Christ be worshipped, who is indeed received in their person.

Receiving Christ in others ought, of course, to be the hall-mark of any Christian Community and the ministry of welcome should reflect this.  Whether people join us for worship or simply come here privately during the week we should be concerned to treat them as if they were Christ.  We should welcome them in His Name.

Likewise, we should treat each other as if we are meeting with Christ.  Recognizing God in each other can only have an amazing effect on what we are like as a Church.  It would remove, at a stroke, any gossiping, backbiting and unkindness we might be tempted to show to each other but much more importantly it builds up a community of real Christianity.  Recognizing Christ in each other is a wonderful way of developing reverence, respect and love with one another and through that, with God.

Living a common life gathered together around  Christ  is what brings Stability. In his Rule, St. Benedict was very harsh on those who spend their lives wandering from one religious community to another – whether it be monasteries or churches.  Those who looked for places where the grass is greener are, in Benedict’s view, unstable.  They are always on the lookout for something better but they never stay long enough to really discover the strengths of a Christian community nor do they contribute to those strengths because they are often consumed with dissatisfaction.

Church-hopping – seeking a Church which fits into a particular image we might have – will always bring dissatisfaction.   Trying to make the Church fit our own image of what it should be is but a step away from trying to make God in our own image.  Such a Church and such a view of  God takes no account of the fact that actually, it is God who calls us together and our stability, our security, rests in a recognition that God has called us together to shape us into Christ’s community living under his Rule of love.  As in Benedict’s community this means that we are to place ourselves under the Rule of Christ and  it is this which gives us true stability.   When Christ and His Will for us is at the heart of what we do, and are, then we allow ourselves to be formed as His Gospel Community sharing a common experience of His Good News for us.

In a changing church and changing world, God is our constant – He never changes in his desire to love us into His Kingdom.  That’s the Good News of Jesus Christ and the work of every Church Community is to share that Good News with each other and with those in the world beyond our doors – in the Society to which we must bear witness.  In this way we grow in love for God and for each other.  Our true Stability rests in knowing that we are loved by God come what may and in that knowledge we live together in that love as we journey together, strengthening each other; encouraging each other and being deeply concerned for each other as together we seek to reflect the love of God.

At the end of His Rule Benedict commends, with the deepest humility, the things he has been writing about, as a framework on which to build a devout life personally and as a community.  At the heart of this is Benedict’s real desire that Christ may bring us all together to life eternal.  The real Rule for all of us is to so fashion our lives that we follow Christ and allow him to guide us on our journey to heaven – a journey in which he prepares us for life lived forever with God.  If we follow the Rule of Christ and if we aim to travel together to the heavenly fatherland…then one day under God’s protection we will arrive .. We will indeed, as our Collect for today prays, have passed through things temporal and reached the things that are eternal.