Blessed Schuster’s Daily Thoughts on the Rule: Passion Friday

Passion Friday
Station at St Stephen on the Celian hill

The Soldiers Return to the Sanhedrin Empty-Handed

1. The Station is on the Celian, in the Rotonda of St Stephen, next to which stood an ancient abbey. The Gospel reading tells us of the meeting of the members of the Sanhedrin to decide about the arrest of the Saviour. (John 11:47-54)

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Examine now the reasoning of these Heads of the Nation, for whom position and politics stand ahead of conscience and God Himself.

They are saying, therefore: ‘What shall we do? since this Man works many wonders. If we let Him go…the Romans will intervene and destroy the temple and the nation.’

So powerful is political passion! Faced with the evident miracles, admitted by the members of the Sanhedrin themselves, the conclusion is inescapable: let us believe, then, in the Saviour of Israel, promised in the Scriptures.

On the contrary, Caiphas and his colleagues, in order not to lose their position, resolve to get rid of the Miracle-Worker, and they even send to arrest Him as a malefactor.

O monk, be on guard against passion, which can blind even great men, even those outstanding in virtue. Against St John Chrysostom rose up St Epiphanius, St Jerome, Cyril of Alexandria, etc.

For this reason, recite with the Church the beautiful collect to the Spirit, the Paraclete: Da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere. (Collect of the Holy Spirit) The taste, one might say almost the supernatural instinct for the good, is a gift of the Holy Spirit which we must obtain through prayer.

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2. ‘Being High Priest in that year, Caiphas prophesied and said: You do not understand anything! Do you not consider that it is better that One die for all, so that the others may not die?’

Strange mixture of prophecy and intemperateness, which well characterises Caiphas, distinguishing in him all the while between the man and the High Priest, successor of Aaron. You understand nothing! Here is the man, arrogant, overbearing, who opens his violent harangue against the Saviour, beginning however by branding the entire assembly with the title of imbeciles.

This is certainly not the humble language that Saint Benedict describes in his ladder of humility.

The Paraclete Spirit nonetheless has regard for the sacred office occupied by Caiphas, and thus puts on his lips a prophecy, which he does not comprehend at all.

With superiors it happens a little bit like for the sacraments, whose efficacy is independent of the holiness of the minister.

This is the case for monastic obedience, says Saint Benedict: Et item dicit doctoribus: qui vos audit, me audit. (Rule, Ch. 5: ‘Likewise He says to the Masters: He who listens to you, listens to Me.’)

The Holy Patriarch foresees even the case where some abbot has the qualities of Caiphas, and for him he writes:

Praeceptis abbatis in omnibus oboedire, etiam si ipse aliter, quod absit, agat. (Rule, Ch. 4: ‘To obey always the orders of the abbot, even if, unfortunately, he should do the contrary.’)

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3. John the Evangelist comments on the prophecy of Caiphas, and explains that Jesus would not only die for the entirety of humanity, but would likewise gather all the dispersed children of God into one sole family.

The redemption has a double effect: one negative aspect, as it were, and another positive.

First of all, it is deliverance, in the Blood of Christ, from the kingdom of Satan and from the sentence of eternal damnation.

Once the scattered sheep are recovered, they must then be gathered within an appropriate sheepfold, which may guard them against every hostile assault. This is the Church. As mystical Body of Christ, the Church continues His work for the redemption of the world. Jesus Christ reassumes and reunites everything in Himself thanks to the unity of His Church.

When Saint Benedict moved from Subiaco to Cassino for the conversion ‘of the deceived and ill-disposed people’, he was going as ambassador of Christ: ut filios Dei, qui erant dispersi, congregaret in unum. (John 11:52: ‘To gather together the wandering children of God.’)

The unifying work of the Regula Monasteriorum with regard to western monasticism also forms part of the unifying program of the Catholic Church: instead of so many varying observances and systems of cenobitic life, the Roman Rule should prevail, so that it may gather into one—congregaret in unum—the numerous monks scattered through the globe.