Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Wednesday after the First Sunday of Lent
While we monks observe today the feast of the great Benedictine Pope St Gregory the Great, we also commemorate the ancient Mass of Ember Wednesday, with which St Gregory himself was familiar. Blessed Cardinal Schuster’s commentary focuses on three different aspects of the Ember Wednesday Gospel: 1) the privilege of being taught by God the Son Incarnate; 2) the devil’s more intense attacks on those drawing near to God; and 3) the need for religious to prefer the love of God to that of their families, in imitation of Christ.
In addition to being the feast of Pope St Gregory the Great, today is also a special day for the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration. 12 March is the anniversary of the placing of the foundation cross at the first monastery of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration in 1654. It was on this occasion that Queen Anne of Austria made the first public Act of Reparation with Mother Mectilde and her nuns. We recently posted about the events of this day.
Ember Wednesday of Lent
Station at St Mary Major
The Artifices of the Devil
On each Ember Wednesday the Station is at the Esquiline Basilica of St Mary Major, where in ancient times were made the ‘proclamations’ of the future candidates for the sacred ministry.
The Gospel reading, as a rule, must therefore make mention of the Most Holy Virgin, titular of the temple. This is the Roman style.
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1. The scribes and the Pharisees—the intellectual class of Jerusalem—are insisting with Jesus that He should prove His divinity with miracles. The Lord replies by observing that the pagans, such as the Queen of Saba and the citizens of Nineveh in ancient times, had believed in the word of God and been converted with much lesser wonders.
And yet, there was One there Who showed Himself much greater than Solomon and Jonah, and Who in a little while would even declare Himself to all Israel, thanks to the miracle of His own Resurrection.
Saint Benedict, in the Prologue of the Rule, shows himself very moved by the condescension which God shows to us in teaching us personally, no longer by means of the prophetic ministry, but by the mouth of His very same Only-Begotten Son.
Quid dulcius nobis ab hac voce Domini invitantis nos, fratres carissimi? Ecce pietate sua demonstrat nobis Dominus viam vitae. (Rule, Prologue: ‘What can be sweeter to us, O dearest brethren, than this voice of the Lord Who invites us? Behold how God compassionately points out to us the path of life.’) Saint Ambrose explains that the authority of the magister confers greater credibility on his teaching.
2. As a penalty for not having made the Gospel preaching bear fruit in its own country, Israel will fall back under the dominion of the Demon, from whom the Messiah had come precisely to liberate it.
‘Seven devils will enter to inhabit that house, and it will be worse than before.’ (Luke 11:26)
The warning is very important for monks too. It is nowhere said that, in entering the monastery, they can consider themselves secure from Satan’s aggressions; nay rather, the devil is accustomed to assault with greater fury the friends of God. About people of the world he considers himself surer.
Saint Benedict too knows something of this; at Monte Cassino the demon sometimes appeared to him visibly, vomiting waves of flame against him.
The Patriarch alludes precisely to these struggles against Satan in the Prologue [sic] of the Rule:
‘The anchorites…are those who from the comforting example of their companions have learned to engage in combat against the demon, and well trained, from the ranks of the army, they pass finally to the hand-to-hand [lit., ‘body to body’-tr.] struggle in the desert.’
Writing thus, Saint Benedict was certainly thinking of the life and the temptations of Saint Anthony, and he appealed also to his own experience, especially in the cave of Subiaco.
When a soul is lifted up by God to the mystical states, as they are called, Satan usually intervenes to give them a good dusting and purify them.
3. While the Saviour is preaching, they inform him that outside is His Mother with His relatives, who have come looking for Him. Jesus replied: ‘My kindred are My disciples and whatever others carry out the will of My heavenly Father.’ (Luke 8)
The Lord wants to teach monks and priests that they should consider themselves like so many Melchisedechs, sine patre, sine matre, sine genealogia [Heb 7:3, ‘without father, without mother, without lineage’—tr.], to dedicate themselves entirely to God and to the Church.
The Cassinese Patriarch [Saint Benedict], in Ch. 59 of the Rule, recalls his sad experiences regarding some young monks, whom the love of their relatives and their goods had caused to lose their heavenly vocation. Hence he writes: ‘Let everything be so arranged that all enticement might be closed off from the boy which could draw him into deception and lead him to ruin; as we already have come to know by experience.’
He who sets himself to plough, and then looks back and thinks about it, is not a good ploughman.
