[00:00] My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we remember the great founder of Western monasticism, St. Benedict Abbot, and because one of the enduring phrases associated with him comes

[00:32] from his rule of life, ora et labora, that's what you'll see written in many of the Benedictine monasteries, and it's a reminder that the life of the monk is one based on prayer and work. Ora is prayer, labora is work, and it's also significant that prayer comes first in that order of things.

[01:04] But it really is a, I don't know if symbiosis is the right word, of these two ideals, it's more like a harmonization of these two realities. There's the temporal reality, which is governed by work, but all of that is subordinated to the eternal order, which is more associated with prayer. But our prayer has to be made real, and that's what happens in the good works that we do. So ora et

[01:42] labora, which also, you know, made me think of St. Francis, who also prioritized prayer, and who also in his lifetime had to discern, at one point he was persuaded that he should devote himself entirely to prayer, contemplation. Up to that point, his life had been, you know, a combination

[02:13] of work and prayer. In fact, he began his vocation with manual work, reconstructing churches. He had heard our Lord command to him, "Go and rebuild my church, for it's falling into pieces," which he, in his simplicity, at first thought meant there's the church of San Damiano, and it's literally crumbling, and gathered bricks and stone and started rebuilding the church,

[02:45] which is very symbolic then of what his true vocation, his deeper vocation was, to rebuild the spiritual foundations to reaffirm and solidify, you know, the Gospel. And then he dedicated himself to living the Gospel in a radical way, and in a way that's quite different from St. Benedict's. St. Benedict, as I mentioned, is the founder of Western monasticism, and, you know, he was an

[03:23] educated Roman who, you know, began his early life as a tutor, but in Rome, he witnessed the way youth conducted themselves, and it disturbed him. He saw the wantonness, and it wasn't what he wanted, and so he fled and went up into the hills and lived in a cave for a few years,

[03:53] basically no one knew where he was except an older monk who sustained him, brought him food, and so that was the beginnings of St. Benedict's dedication to working for God, doing the work of God, and his holiness is what attracted others to him, and he ended up founding a number of monasteries before he went to Monte Cassino and established the, you know, father house or mother house of

[04:29] that order, and worked on the rule and established the Benedictine lifestyle, and that was very, you could say, solid and permanent in its way of life. Monasticism requires the monk to basically stay rooted where he is and not even leave. It's the concept of fleeing from the world

[05:01] to dedicate oneself to God, to preserve oneself from the contamination of worldly ideals and sin, and that's sort of, some people call it a fortress mentality, and thanks be to God that he had that grace and that intuition because right about that time, the Roman Empire was falling into disarray and so-called dark ages ensued, and it was thanks to the work of Benedict and the

[05:37] establishment of monasteries and his intuition, his genius of preserving civilization within the walls of the monastery, so thanks to the monks we have great works of literature that would have surely been lost had they not been preserved and copied and passed on within the monastic life, and then through the spread of, through the evangelization of various lands,

[06:14] much of which was thanks to the work of the Benedictines who sent out missionaries and established monasteries in various places. St. Francis had a different way of building the Church and a different way, oh, I should come back to this idea of prayer and work in Benedict. In Benedict, it's preserved through a very regimented lifestyle. We've already talked about

[06:45] the fact that he established monasteries where the rule was permanence of residence, and the day was regulated by prayer, what we know as the Liturgy of the Hours. All these various hours of the day were sanctified through prayer, and it was through communal prayer, and that was the axis of life in the monastery, that was the center of life, was the common prayer coming together at various hours, suspending everything else and dedicating oneself to prayer,

[07:16] and then interspersing that prayer with the work of the monastery. It was not just even merely for the sustenance of the monks, but the monastery system is what established European prosperity after the dark ages. All of these society came to the center of prayer and learning, and even the lands that were managed by the monks and loaned out to the peasants, whose only

[07:47] payment was to offer a portion of their crops to the monks, and it was a very orderly and harmonious and fruitful way of life, whereas St. Francis had this ideal of being an itinerant, and actually the early friars even would work manual labor jobs in exchange for the food that they and

[08:18] their community needed, but St. Francis underscores that while working they are to preserve the spirit of prayer above all things, and so more so than the regimented alteration between work and labor, St. Francis infused everything with prayer, and the work that they did, particularly then the work of evangelization and ministry, always the primacy of prayer

[08:54] is present in both of these great, you could call them patriarchs of the Roman Catholic faith and spirituality, just different ways of living it, and so that's something present in the life of all of us. You know, St. Francis, as I started to relate, at one point was persuaded that maybe he should give himself entirely to simply just prayer, to retire into a hermitage somewhere and

[09:27] dedicate himself to prayer, but he discerned with Sylvester, one of the brothers, the original brothers, and St. Clare, and asked them to pray with him, and the two companions in prayer both received the clarification spiritually that he was to do both, to maintain both contemplation and action, and so brothers and sisters, for all of us Christians, for the most part,

[10:02] we are all required to balance these two realities, these two necessities of life, prayer and work, but if we're to take from both of the saints that I'm speaking of today, St. Benedict, who we're celebrating particularly today, and St. Francis, who in an unusual, very special way, we're remembering this entire year, the jubilee of St. Francis,

[10:32] these two saints both indicate to us, as do all the saints I believe, that we must focus primarily on prayer. Prayer is what sanctifies the work that we do, and the light that we receive through prayer and contemplation then direct our action, and because our action is rooted in God through this vital communication through prayer, then it becomes fruitful,

[11:04] and our Lord's work is accomplished. So whether we lean Benedictine to a very regimented lifestyle, or Franciscan to a more, you could say, natural rhythm of life, where prayer is infused in everything we do, all Christians are called to remember to keep prayer in the first place. Most of the problems we have, at least I have, come from not prioritizing prayer,

[11:36] and then everything else suffers as a result. So let us ask St. Benedict to inspire us to remember to sanctify the hours, to stop our busyness at various times during the day, and dedicate ourselves to merely putting ourselves in the presence of God, and giving Him our full attention, at least for a time, and then carry that with us throughout the day as we go about our business closer to God, and able to do His will better. Praised be Jesus and Mary.