and the Triumph of Monasticism
By Brother Matthew, M.I.C.M.
The world calls it insanity. Luther and Calvin labeled it superstition. But in the eyes of God the religious life is the most exalted expression of personal honor rendered to Him by mere creatures.
The value of freely consecrating one’s earthly existence for the service, the glory, the love of God alone, will be fully appreciated only in eternity. Were it sufficiently understood, religious life would be the norm not the exception. The vitality of the Church in any given period of history may be accurately judged by her children’s response to the call of Holy Orders and religious profession.
Countless men and women, from the Church’s earliest days to the present, are indebted to the saint who will be forever honored as the “Father of Western Monasticism,” Saint Benedict. Whether as members of his order or of religious communities inspired by him, they have been guided to perfection by the principles established, taught, and lived in the “school of the Lord’s service” he founded.
Times of Turbulence
In order to better understand Saint Benedict’s era, we must briefly summarize the major events which set the state for his birth in 480 AD at Nursia, not far from Rome.
The emperor Constantine, who reigned from 312 to 337, was responsible for ending nearly 300 years of persecution of Christians. It was Constantine who granted complete freedom of worship throughout the empire to the Church and the restoration of Christian rights and properties denied them by his oppressive predecessors
Among his greatest gifts to the Church was his relocating the imperial capitol from Rome to Constantinople, built on the site of the old Greek city Byzantium on the Bosphorus Sea, between Europe and Asia. As an additional gift to the Roman pontiffs, the successors of Saint Peter, Emperor Constantine donated his Lateran palace in Rome. In thus relinquishing Rome to the popes, Constantine strengthened papal authority by giving it unprecedented freedom from secular influences so necessary for the discipline of the Church and the extension of the Faith. And spread it did. Free to carry on its spiritual mission without imminent danger of persecution, the Catholic Church gained many converts and became an amazingly organized and influential power in the empire.
But the fifth and sixth centuries, the period in which Saint Benedict lived, were filled with the greatest political and religious agitation, and therefore change, Europe and the near East had ever witnessed. The migration of Germanic tribes into the Empire, beginning in the last half of the fourth century, was but the prelude to the ruthless invasions of Alaric, King of the Goth, who sacked Rome in 410, and of Attila the Hun, who would have done the same in 452, had not Pope Saint Leo the Great deterred him by threatening him with the wrath of Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles.
The Church was torn with heresy. Secular interference in theological matters often blighted the teachings of bishops close to and in many ways dependent upon the emperors at Constantinople. The protection of heretical bishops by secular authorities, for example, greatly contributed to the spread of Arianism throughout the Empire. The Arian denial of the divinity of Christ reached Rome and the Western Empire by way of the barbarian Goths, converts to Arianism, who were among the hordes of invaders overrunning the West at the close of the fourth century.
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