Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Station at St Trypho

Spiritual Readings

1. ‘In Lent, from morning until the end of the third hour, let each one attend to his own studies or readings; let them go out then to work until the tenth hour sounds…’

‘In these days of Lent, let each one receive a volume from the library and read it in order and entirely. These books should be distributed at the beginning of Lent.’ (Rule, Ch. 48)

Saint Benedict, who among the instruments of good works had included also the maxim, Lectiones sanctas libenter audire (Ibid., Ch. 4, ‘To listen willingly to holy readings’), and who in the epilogue of the Rule returns again with insistence to the discipline of spiritual readings, desires that in Lent we should dedicate a little more time to this.

In the 6th century, in the episcopal churches the living voice of the bishop would be heard giving the catechumens and the faithful their Lenten instructions. In the monastery there is no bishop. His place is held by the collections in the books of Homilies in the library, which the monks will therefore read with all devotion.

By means of these volumes, it is the Holy Fathers who speaks to us, instruct us, and transmit faithfully to us the Apostolic Tradition.

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2. One must admire the discretion of the Cassinese Patriarch in ordering the Lenten horarium of his community. In the first hours of the morning, since in March it is still cold on Monte Cassino, one stays at home, in the library or in the Chapter room, to study, read, or meditate.

Around 10:00, when the spring sun is already high, one goes outside, to the labours of the fields, lingering at them until two hours before sunset. It is obvious that the Office of Sext and None is also sung there, at the place of work, and under the blue vault of the sky of Campania felix [‘happy Campania’, the region in which Monte Cassino is located-tr.].

When the sun is already declining towards its setting, one returns home for the singing of Vespers and for dinner.

What wisdom and discretion in this horarium! In the government of the monastery one should have ever present the Holy Patriarch’s axiom: Ut et animae salventur, et quod faciunt fratres, absque iusta murmuratione faciant. (Rule, Ch. 41: ‘So that, while souls are saved, that which the brethren do they may accomplish without motive for murmuring.’)

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3. Before all, one or two seniors must be charged to go about the monastery during the time in which the brethren should attend to spiritual reading; that there not be anyone so lazy as to lounge about in idleness or to waste time in chatting, thus rendering himself useless to himself and a disturber of the others….At unsuitable hours, let one not meet with another.’ (Rule, Ch. 48)

Saint Francis used to say that there is not lacking in community some brother fly, lazy and troublesome, from whom it is necessary to defend oneself, lest he cause disturbance.

The precautions taken here by Saint Benedict for the exact guarding of silence in the monastery indicate well the importance which he attached to it.

If from a Benedictine cenobium you take away religious silence, you no longer have the domus Dei, where everything around is silent so that God may speak, but simply a barracks.