Venerable Benedict

Life

Benedict was born in the region of Nursia in Italy in the year 480, of wealthy and distinguished parents. He did not remain long at school, for he himself saw that through bookish learning he might lose "the great understanding of his soul." And he left school "an unlearned sage and a knowing ignoramus." He fled to a certain monastery where the monk Roman tonsured him, after which he withdrew to a steep mountain where he remained in a cave for more than three years in great labor over his soul. Roman brought him bread and lowered it down the sheer cliff face on a rope to before the cave. When he became known throughout the region, he withdrew from that cave in order to avoid human glory. He was very severe with himself. Once when an unclean spirit of bodily lust seized him, he stripped himself naked and rolled in nettles and thorns until he had driven away from himself every thought of a woman. God endowed him with many spiritual gifts: he saw into hidden things, healed the sick, cast out evil spirits, raised the dead, and appeared to others both in waking and at a distance in dreams. Once he perceived that a cup of wine had been served to him with poison in it. He made the sign of the cross over the cup, and the cup shattered. He founded twelve monasteries, each with twelve monks at the outset. Afterward a particular order of Benedictines was established, which exists to this day in the Roman Catholic Church. Six days before his death he ordered that his grave — prepared in advance — be opened, for the saint had foreseen that his end was near. He gathered all the monks, counseled them, and gave his spirit to the Lord, Whom he had faithfully served in poverty and purity. His own sister, Scholastica, lived in a women's monastery, and following her brother's example she also struggled greatly in the ascetic life and attained great spiritual perfection. When Saint Benedict gave up his soul, two monks — one on the road and another in some distant cell at prayer — simultaneously beheld the same vision: a path from earth to heaven covered with costly fabrics and lit on both sides by rows of people; at the summit of that path stood a man of indescribable beauty and light, who told them that that path had been prepared for Benedict, the beloved of God. Through that vision those two brethren learned that their good abbot had departed from this world. He reposed peacefully in the year 543 and departed to the eternal Kingdom of Christ the King.

From the Hymn of Praise

### VENERABLE BENEDICT