Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Holy Monday
Station at the titulus ‘de fasciola’
The Banquet at Bethany
1. The Station today is at the Titulus of Praxedes, on the Esquiline, and the Gospel pericope narrates the banquet at Bethany (John 12:1-9), which happened precisely six days before the Pasch.
This Roman computation of the six days does not agree, however, with that of the Orientals, who have long since celebrated the anointing at Bethany on the preceding Saturday.
One cannot blame them. Given that for them the Christian Pasch [Pasqua] occurs on the evening of the Thursday in Coena Domini [of the Lord’s Supper], there are precisely six days which separate it [i.e., Saturday] from the supper in the house of Simon the Leper.
The Romans, instead, were concerned with the Resurrection of Christ on the morning of Easter [Pasqua], and therefore Holy Monday occurs precisely six days before Easter [Pasqua].
In the pericope from John there are described today two contrary sketches, as it were: the loving disciple, and the apostle who has become an apostate and a traitor.
The loving and grateful souls prepare a banquet of honour and farewell for the Divine Master at Bethany. Lazarus, notwithstanding that the Jews are seeking to kill him, takes his place among the Apostles. Martha watches over the services, Mary reserves for herself the honour of perfuming the hair of the divine Guest.
Jesus converses willingly and in a homely manner with those who give Him a good welcome: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens to Me, I will go in to him and I will sup with him and he with Me.’ (Apoc 3:20)
The Abbey can be compared to an inn, where Christ, the divine Guest, is welcomed.
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2. The house which should be fragrant with the perfume of the nard is the Church, where the Saviour celebrates His Supper. The nard symbolises the Christian virtues, each according to his proper state, and costs three hundred denarii, that is, many sacrifices which must be carried out.
Mary, that is the contemplative soul, pours the nard on the Lord’s head, unlike the other anonymous sinner commemorated by St Luke, who had scattered it on His feet. When sins are redeemed by the works of mercy, the Saviour’s feet are washed. When contemplative spirits rejoice in that supercomprehensio [deep understanding] of Jesus Christ about which the Apostles Peter and Paul so often discourse, they are pouring the nard on His head. This is a matter of a charismatic gift, which enlightens the mind and at the same time inflames the heart with love. Let us listen to what Saint Paul says:
‘So that you may grasp with all the other Saints the breadth, the length, and the depth of the mystery of Christ.’ (Eph 3:18)
Saint Benedict was certainly caught up to this mystical knowledge of God, in that famous rapture of his in October 540, when he contemplated the entire world grasped within a simple ray of the divine glory.
Animae videnti Creatorem angusta est omnis creatura, Saint Gregory comments here. (Dialogues II, 35: ‘To the soul that contemplates the Creator everything created thing appears small.’)
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3. The Holy Gospel today describes for us the unfaithful treasurer of the Apostolic College. Three accusations are brought against him. First of all he is a murmurer; he is also a thief, and, graver still, he has no care for the poor.
As for murmuring, which is the true plague of religious communities, Saint Benedict writes:
Ante omnia, ne murmurationis malum pro qualicumque causa in aliquo qualicumque verbo vel significatione appareat. (Rule, Ch. 34: ‘Above all, let accursed murmuring never appear for any reason, neither in words, nor in gestures.’)
Judas is at the same time a thief. The Cassinese Patriarch [St Benedict], in Chapter 57 [of the Holy Rule], strikes terror into all those who, in treating of the temporal affairs of the monastery, defraud it for their own advantage. He sees them near indeed to the peril which Ananias and Sapphira incurred in the first days of the Church. ‘Let them remember Ananias and Sapphira, so that the bodily death which struck these should not instead strike the soul of those who shall have defrauded the monastery in anything.’
The other fault of Judas: not to have had a tender care for the poor: Non quia de egenis pertinebat ad eum.[John 12:6]
Saint Benedict recommends to the Cellarer in a special way the care of the poor, who at every hour knock at the door of the monastery.
Infirmorum, infantum, hospitum, pauperumque cum omni sollicitudine curam great, sciens sine dubio quia pro hiis [sic] omnibus in diem iudicii rationem redditurus est. (Rule, Ch. 31: ‘Let him have solicitous care for the infirm, the children, the guests, the beggars, thinking that on the day of judgment, he will undoubtedly render account for each of them.’)