the meaning of your term “guests” to include all searchers for truth, and even the whole world, I think your injunction of humanitas can be an animating lifeline for all people, whether fervent Christians or secular seekers.
What do I have in mind? Only a tiny portion of men and women are called to dedicate themselves to the Lord in religious life. These have the humbling privilege of channeling the waters of wisdom and faith that nourish them in their monastic oasis to thirsty travelers, images of God who are disoriented by the mirages of happiness and hope which compose the world. Our humanitas is what we have been blessed by God to receive: the goodness of a mind capable of recognizing the imprint of its Creator, and a heart able to love someone other and greater than itself. The guests of our monasteries are seeking a retreat from an increasingly inhumane world which denies that beautiful link between creature and Creator, and they need to be reminded of their natural desire “to long for life, and to see good things” (Ps 34:13). What a monastery can provide such seekers, I think, is a refreshing way to approach their work within a world created good but distorted by sin and selfishness. Perhaps in the course of our liturgy, our learning, and our prayer, we can point them to the ruins of Nero’s house which need to be occupied by Christians and transformed into “schools for the Lord’s service” (from the prologue of the Rule).9 The world needs such souls to remind it of something more glorious than ego-centered feelings and fleeting pleasures; those souls, in turn, need to be supported as they face battering and hostile winds.
The value of a monastery for the broader culture certainly extends beyond its humanitas and hospitality. The medieval monasteries served to domesticate the barbarian hordes with agricultural techniques. Your monks preserved the great ideas of pagan and Christian culture through the copying of manuscripts, which were often works of stunning artistic genius. Their life of work and prayer, as the title of Jean Leclercq’s famous book illustrates, harmonized “the love of learning and the desire for God.”10 The unparalleled beauty of Gregorian chant—taking its name from St. Gregory the Great, your biographer—unites angelic psalms and human voices, and even today calms souls listening with the ear of their heart. As Gregory’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, said so eloquently in a speech during his 2008 visit to the former Cistercian house of studies in Paris,
The monastery serves eruditio, the formation and education of man—a formation whose ultimate aim is that man should learn how to serve God. But it also includes the formation of reason—education—through which man learns to perceive, in the midst of words, the Word itself.11
From our monasteries, that word, studied and contemplated in lectio divina, should be dispersed through spiritual direction, education of the young, and writings.
Despite my biased hope that monasticism can contribute to the rebuilding of a more Christian (and therefore more human) culture, holy father Benedict, I have no rosy illusions about the future of American and Western civilization. The final section of my “Subiaco” poem reflects a certain pessimism of mine regarding our secular culture:
Tomorrow boasts of godlessness and ghosts
Which walk in mem’ried quarters, telling tales
In ruined stone, in silent bells, in church;
And we alone are left as reliqued souls
To note the setting suns and Christian shades.
But must we make our graves of hallowed space,
Exchanging fire for frost, the pearl for dust?
For I am not a dying man, not yet,
And we have stood, still stand, on living ground,
Convinced, with proof, that death can yield a dawn
And Love still dares to sow in arid earth.
When places pass, and hearts aflame grow cold,
Please grant us now a faith begot of hope,
Assured that we have not believed in vain.
I wrote those lines several years ago, before I came to think of humanitas as the great gift monasticism can offer souls ignorant of their own glorious humanity. They present a bleaker outlook than the one I hold now, but their sobering perspective is still instructive. Christians must not abandon their ship to the stormy waves simply because they cannot control the winds or waters, and I consider monasticism a rudder steering the ship of the church (indeed, of all humanity) on a Godward course. I take very seriously my privileged duty to share with our guests, and channel to others through them, the rivers of living water which I have found in my monastery. Saint Gregory the Great wrote that you once received a singular grace in contemplation: the whole world was presented before your eyes as if it were collected in a single ray of the sun. May your illuminating example and powerful prayers intercede for me, and all the monks and nuns living under your patronage, that we might be faithful collectors of your inspiring rays and refreshing aqueducts to all who come to us seeking God.
5. Saint Benedict of Norcia (ca. AD 480–ca. 540) lived as a hermit for a short time before establishing a cenobitic community of monks at Monte Cassino in Italy. He is considered the founder of Western monasticism, and his Rule is still the governing document of many monastic orders, including the Benedictines and Cistercians. He is also one of the patron saints of Europe. The opening greeting is a play on his name: Benedictus in Latin means “blessed,” and therefore he is “blessed in grace and in name.”
6. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 263.
7. “Letter to Diognetus.” In Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, 218.
8. Fry, Rule of St. Benedict, 258–59.
9. Ibid., 164–65.
10. See Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 1–7.
11. Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Representatives from the World of Culture,” para. 3.
Saint Thomas More12
To Saint Thomas More, the king’s good servant, and God’s first:
Above my desk is a print of your silhouette, taken from the famous Holbein portrait, set against the text of one of your prison letters to your daughter Meg. A monastic confrere of mine created it for me, and I have placed it in my university office to guard and guide me in my work. Gazing at it now, the thought of penning some scribbled musings to you strikes me as silly. I have often succumbed to the temptation to write nothing at all to you, rather than organize a vast array of half-baked inspirations arising from your life and writings. With much hesitation, then, do I address myself to you, a man so eminently endowed with that rare combination of learning, humor, and holiness. Given your delight at the fact that your last name means “foolishness” in Greek, you would likely chuckle as you chide me for flattering you at the outset of this letter. How can I properly express my debt to your intellectual
