What a find! Matthew Boudway has mined a 1952 Whittaker Chambers essay about St. Benedict from the archives of Commonweal. Excerpt:

It has been said (by T. F. Lindsay in his sensitive and searching St. Benedict) that, in a shattered society, the Holy Rule, to those who submitted to its mild but strict sway, restored the discipline and power of Roman family life.

I venture that it did something else as well. For those who obeyed it, it ended three great alienations of the spirit whose action, I suspect, touched on that missing something which my instructors failed to find among the causes of the fall of Rome. The same alienations, I further suspect, can be seen at their work of dissolution among ourselves, and are perhaps among the little noticed reasons why men turn to Communism. They are: the alienation of the spirit of man from traditional authority; his alienation from the idea of traditional order; and a crippling alienation that he feels at the point where civilization has deprived him of the joy of simple productive labor.

These alienations St. Benedict fused into a new surge of the human spirit by directing the frustrations that informed them into the disciplined service of God. At the touch of his mild inspiration, the bones of a new order stirred and clothed themselves with life, drawing to itself much of what was best and most vigorous among the ruins of man and his work in the Dark Ages, and conserving and shaping its energy for that unparalleled outburst of mind and spirit in the Middle Ages. For about the Benedictine monasteries what we, having casually lost the Christian East, now casually call the West, once before regrouped and saved itself.

Chambers goes on to say that for those living under communism, the Dark Ages were upon them. Chambers, of course, was writing this in the depths of the Cold War. I wonder how he would interpret St. Benedict now.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker advises on how to incorporate the spirit of the Rule into family life. Excerpt:

Q: According to St. Benedict, what kind of man should an abbot — or a father — be? What sort of a community should he strive to create in his home?

Longenecker: There is a long chapter at the beginning of the rule on what sort of man the abbot should be, and point by point it can be applied to the sort of man a Christian father should be.

Essentially, the abbot is a strong, loving, mature man who is clothed in the grace of Christ. He considers his responsibilities and authority as from God, and is therefore humbled and bears the authority with great awe — never lording it over others, but treating each one of his charges with tenderness and total attention. The Christian home is “ruled” by the father, but in a spirit of total self-giving and loving attention for the needs of all.

This is a very high ideal, but it is a beautiful one, and one that we should not apologize for simply because some fathers have abused it. St. Benedict’s abbot — and therefore the Christian father in the home — should call constantly on God for help and realize that he relies on grace to sustain him at all times.

Furthermore, when we fail to reach the ideal we need to be humble enough to ask forgiveness both from God and from our wives and children.

This is very important because children need to know that their fathers are not only fallible, but able to recognize their own frailty and ask forgiveness for their failings. If children see their father ask forgiveness they will not mind when they are asked to exercise the same humility.

This is part of the Benedict Option too.

I’m planning to visit the Benedictine monastery in Norcia (Nursia) next month, built over the birthplace of St. Benedict and his twin sister, St. Scholastica. Please go to that website. What an amazing place! I can’t wait.