Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Scholastica, who was the sister of St. Benedict.
She and her brother were very close, and after her brother founded the Benedictine Order,
which was one of the first orders where the whole community lived in common,
what would be known as a monastery, she began a comparative community of women,
following the same rule.
And she would visit her brother every once in a while at the foot of the mountain.
Her brother would come out of his monastery. This was a casino.
And she would come to a place they had.
And he would meet her there, and they would speak on heavenly things for many hours,
and then return to their monasteries.
Finally it occurred, near the end of their lives, they died one after the other,
and were buried together at Monte Cassino.
But certainly before, she came once again to visit him.
And he came out to that place on the foot of the mountain there,
the base of the mountain, and they spoke for many hours together
about heavenly things, the things of heaven, the things of God,
which by this they had come to know very well, and they came to love God very much as well.
And when it came time, Benedict made ready to leave.
He had companions outside waiting for him, and he made ready to leave.
And she, his sister, asked him to stay longer,
to continue talking of these celestial things.
And he insisted that now it was time for him to go. He couldn't stay.
And all St. Scholastica did was, she placed her hands on the table,
and she laid her head down over her hands and prayed.
And suddenly there was a great tempest, a great storm,
and St. Benedict could not advance a step.
And he merely sat there and said,
Sister, what have you done?
But she said, Now go if you think you can go.
He said, Sister, what have you done?
And I can't remember if she actually responded or it's the author,
I believe it was St. Gregory the Great, who wrote of their lives.
But she who loved more was able to gain more.
She prayed she might have that time with her brother one more time.
And God granted it to her through the tempest,
such that Benedict could not even pass through the door.
And they spent the rest of that evening together,
immersed in a heavenly conversation.
And it was not much longer afterwards after when Benedict went back to his monastery,
and she went back to hers.
A short time later, he saw her soul going to heaven.
It was only a short time later that she died,
and he had her body brought to the grave.
They already had prepared for both of them.
And he died a short time later,
and they were buried together in Monte Cassino.
In any case, the key word is love.
She who loved.
She who loved more.
Not that St. Benedict didn't love God too,
of course he did.
But evidently she was more concerned with the love of God than other things.
Benedict was more concerned,
not that he didn't love God, of course he did,
but he was certainly intent upon following the rule.
And when the time came, it was time to leave.
It meant it was time to leave.
But she was granted something, perhaps you might think, remedial.
But yet, because she loved that much, it was granted her.
That's the key word, love.
Do we love God in that way?
So much that nothing else matters.
We need only trust in Him.
Not that we sit back and say,
Here I am, Lord, and now you do whatever you want.
It doesn't work that way either.
We have our part to do too.
And we have to work towards that love.
God can infuse it and just move us if He wants to.
But He doesn't.
Precisely because He doesn't want us to go against our free will,
which is what our capacity to love is.
He won't go against it.
So, of course, He waits for us to choose Him.
So we must choose Him.
That, of course, comes with our prayer,
and we must exercise it every day.
Our will is something, first of all,
given that we have to give it back to God.
That it's something that requires something from us.
Sacrifice.
We have to move that.
We have to do it.
It requires exercise.
What we call spiritual exercise.
Prayer.
In order to do that.
To sincerely do that.
To truly do that.
We have to pray.
We have to mortify ourselves.
We have to sacrifice of ourselves.
In order to achieve that love.
And we are all called to it.
Every one of us.
Every one of us.
Let us seek that every day.
To immerse ourselves in His love.
God's love.
To seek only Him.
That we can trust Him for everything.
And let Him lead us and guide us.
Above all,
to our everlasting union with Him in Paradise.
Praise be Jesus and Mary.