Today’s Gospel text provides a key for interpreting the spirit in which the abbot is to carry out his charge. ; nor is he to use his office in order to carry out his own preferences except in so far as they are cherished precisely because they are in harmony with the Father’s plan.  As St. Pachomius taught, the abbot is to be the eye of the community in that he is to look for the various indications that reveal to him that which is the will of God. That this function makes heavy demands upon the abbot’s conscience and requires that he be versed in the things of the Spirit. A further requirement is that he have common sense and a degree of penetration into human affairs, for he must make his dispositions and apply his decisions in the service of a community of men with diverse characters and histories.  

Moreover, though seen from the outside the monastic life may appear as a rather steady flow of predictable events so that the days are joined end to end by the bonds of piety, the fact is that such a view is superficial in the extreme. Every human person, and each monk no less than any one else,   passes through ever changing situations, meeting unexpectedly with opportunities and challenges that can become occasions for growth or for evasion or even falling. Life as actually lived out in the monastery, like all truly human life, is characterized by a wide variety of circumstances. To remain truly human entails our meeting these ever varying realities with sufficient sensitivity to what is new in them. That is the first condition; the second is rightly  to interpret their significance in the light of faith. Only then can one make a decision that is at once faithful to the rights of the tradition and in continuity with the past as well as one that is responsive to what is fresh and unique in the present. 

The general consensus is that Benedict excelled at this exacting task. One of the lessons to be learned from his life as St. Gregory the Great depicts it for us is this: even for the best of men and the most gifted of abbots, endowed with great discernment and possessing special gifts of prayer, matters do not always work out as he intended.  After all, Benedict’s first attempt to begin a community failed. Later his efforts were so frustrated by opposition to his way of life that he decided to pick up and leave. Any number of the events recounted by Pope Gregory of the abbot were unforeseen and untoward happening that befell him or his monks. If he was in the end judged to be successful, it was because he dealt with reality as it evolved and did so, in a spirit of faith, with courageous trust in God. He did not complain, he did not quit or grow impatient, he remained steady and faithful. This was his first and most essential service he rendered to his monks and to us who follow in his teaching. 

There is a further form that his service to the monks who entered his school of divine service assumed. He undertook to share the fruit of his experience with others. This is not a trifling favor, nor is it an insignificant labor. It is a gift of love. Indeed, perhaps the most useful gifts a man can bestow on another, the greatest service he can render, is so to live as to attain to wisdom and to share that wisdom in an effective and practical way. True love for other persons desires what contributes most to their best interests.  To understand just what that is requires a practical love of those truths that are divine and govern the world’s workings. The way to discover this wisdom is hard for men to find. Job learned this through suffering.  

But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living. … It is hidden from the eyes of all living… God understands the way to it, and he knows its place…and he said to humankind, ‘Truly the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom: and to depart from evil is understanding.’ (Job 28:12 ff)      

Benedict attained to the wisdom hidden in God from all eternity but revealed in Christ. He chose to labor to share this wisdom in service to those of us who would seek it by entering the monastic school of divine service. He wrote a Rule in which is condensed the fruits of his years of experience in the service of Christ and the brethren. And thus he labored to serve all of us as well as the monks he lived with in his time.    

These are the reasons for which we honor Benedict of Nursia today as a man of God, a saint., This is why we call him our Father Saint Benedict. His life was a life of service for the kingdom of God. By his fidelity to the Gospel, his love of Christ and the wisdom he embodied he continues to serve us today. And so, it is only right and just that we honor him today as among those who are first in the heavenly kingdom. He took to heart in a creative way the teaching of today’s Gospel. And living among his followers as one who serves. May the Eucharist we offer today in his honor and in gratitude to God for his gifts, bestow on each of us the grace to imitate him in the  holy dispositions of his soul and attain, with the help of God’s grace to that eternal wisdom become our salvation in the person of our Lord, Jesus Christ.