Blessed Cardinal Schuster reflects on reverence for God as displayed in the monastic tradition. The translations in round brackets are Schuster’s own; the material in square brackets is added by the translator.

Tuesday after the First Sunday of Lent
Station at St Anastasia

Respect for the House of God

1. Today the Station is at the church of St Anastasia, at the foot of the Palatine. The Gospel reading recounts and describes the driving out of the profaners of the Temple, five days before the Lord’s Passion: ‘Take away from here all these things, and do not seek to turn My Father’s house into a cave of thieves and robbers.’

The Cassinese Patriarch [Saint Benedict], in addition to enjoining on us respect for the church of the Monastery, considers the entire abbey as an extension of the same temple, and calls it in fact: domus Dei, that is, House of God.

Chapter 52 of the Regula Monasteriorum is entitled: Of the Oratory of the Monastery.

‘Let the oratory be what its name indicates, nor let anything else be stored or done there. The Divine Offices being finished, let all go out from it with the greatest silence, and let reverence be shown to the Divine Majesty; in such manner that, if some brother should wish to pray on his own, he be not disturbed by another’s indiscretion. Rather, whoever longs to give himself on his own to the exercise of prayer, let him enter with all simplicity and pray, not with a loud voice, but with fervour of heart and compunction.’ (Rule, Ch. 52)

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2. Sancta sancte tractanda sunt. (Holy things should be treated in a holy manner.) Therefore, not only agatur reverentia Deo [reverence should be shown to God] by entering, remaining, and departing from the house of God in perfect silence; but this same reverence should also embrace the internal and external dispositions which accompany us at the Divine Office and at the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

When the Holy Patriarch consigned his Eucharistic Particle to the parents of the young fugitive monk who had suddenly died at home, he enjoined: Ite, atque hoc Dominicum Corpus super pectus eius cum magna reverentia ponite. (St Gregory, Dialogues II, 24: ‘Go, and with great devotion place on his breast this Particle of the Body of the Lord.’)

For the sake of greater reverence towards the same Eucharist, the Rule prescribes for the reader at table to take a little watered-down wine: propter Communionem sanctam (Rule, Ch. 38); or rather, as the Regula Magistri [Rule of the Master] interprets it: propter sputum Communionis [on account of (the danger of) spitting out the Communion].

In Chapter 19, De disciplina psallendi, Saint Benedict sums up thus his teaching regarding the respect which ought to accompany us in church and in the sacred functions: ‘Let us consider, then, how one should stand in the sight of God and of His Angels, and let us so dispose ourselves for the psalmody that the mind may accord with the word of prayer.’

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3. In the monastic Order, the decorum and the splendour with which the Sacred Liturgy is carried out daily in the temple are a matter of tradition. This spirit comes down to us from the Rule of the same Holy Patriarch, who set down this principle: Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur. (Rule, Ch. 43: ‘Let nothing be put before the Divine Service.’) All that pomp of silks and of golds which the holiest Abbots of the early Middle Ages gathered in their basilicas was not intended to be a vainglorious outward show, but indicated an outstanding spirit of faith.

At Cluny the hosts were prepared in sacred vestments and while singing psalms. Even the cord on which the linens of the Sacrifice were stretched out to dry was the subject of special devotion.

Saint Hugh erected the basilica of Cluny with such splendour that it was called: deambulatorium Angelorum: the avenue of the Angels.

Abbot Desiderius did likewise at Monte Cassino, and brought Alexander II there to consecrate it.

Nicholas II did the same at Farfa and Urban II at Cava. They [i.e., these Abbots] were all people of great faith, who had the artistic genius: Pulchritudinis studium habentes [Ecclus 44:6, ‘Studying beautifulness’]. But the splendour of art was, in them, the irradiation of their consummate spirit of religion.

Saint Benedict could not have been displeased at this. His sons had interpreted his canon: Domus Dei a sapientibus et sapienter administretur. (Rule, Ch. 64)* [‘Let the house of God be administered by wise men and wisely.’] Among the wise should be reckoned also the saints and the artists, because ‘art is the grandchild of God.’

*The text in fact comes from Chapter 53 on the reception of guests, although it has resonances with Chapter 64 on the appointment of the Abbot.–Tr.