Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

st. benedict

St. Benedict Feast Day

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Today we Benedictine will celebrate the summer feast of St. Benedict.  Our nearby neighbor, Saint Leo University will be hosting a BBQ lunch for the monks of Saint Leo Abbey, the university staff and us, the Sisters of Holy Name Monastery.  What a grand way to celebrate our legacy and Benedictine values.

Now, those of you who follow the calendar of the saints may question did we not celebrated St. Benedict back in March?  Yes, the very same one, the twin of St. Scholastica.  You see that date usually falls during Lent when the church does not smile on a grandiose celebration with Alleluias and full festivity.  In 1981, reaffirmed in 1989, the Council of Benedictine Abbots decreed that July 11th henceforth be celebrated as the Feast of Benedict, Patriarch of Western Monasticism.

 

~Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

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Summer Feast Day for Saint Benedict

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Today we Benedictine will celebrate the summer feast of St. Benedict.   I’ll pass on the Gospel from Luke on Jesus’ lesson of the Good Samaritan and his lesson on being a good neighbor.  I’d like to share some thoughts on Benedict’s opening word LISTEN which seems like a first step to being a good neighbor.  Now, those who follow the calendar of the saints may question did we not celebrated St. Benedict back in March.  Yes, the very same one, the twin of St. Scholastica.  You see that date usually falls during Lent when the church does not smile on a grandiose celebration with Alleluias and full festivity.  In 1981, reaffirmed in 1989, the Council of Benedictine Abbots decreed that July 11th henceforth be celebrated as the Feast of Benedict, Patriarch of Western Monasticism.

Saint Benedict, in his Prologue to the Rule, addresses those who “long for life.”  His advice is “Keep your tongue free from vicious talk and your lips from all deceit; let peace be your quest and aim.” The gift of speech is one of the most powerful gifts God has given us, but it probably evokes less gratitude than any other.  We need to be aware that the habitual use of speech tends to make us unconscious of the many times our speech verges on being critical, or, to use the adjective in the psalm, “vicious” talk.  Even a benign phrase of speech can turn vicious sound like anger brewing when spoke in a harsh tone of voice.

Not many of us are humble enough to make amends for wounding words spoken.  We’d rather depend on time and the good will of the other to wipe out what has been said.  However, the truth is that the wounds of hurtful words or a harsh tone can never be totally erased.  Despite our best efforts to heal relationships, the scars remain.  In the latest issue of LCWR Occasional Papers one of the authors refers to Armand Gamache, the detective featured in a Louise Penny’s series of novels.  Gamache insists to his new detectives that there are four statements that are hard to admit, harder to say aloud.  But they are the key to opening ourselves to the truth and the beginning of effective communication.  What are they?  “I was wrong.”  “I’m sorry.”  I don’t know.” “I need help.”  But if our words do not come from a humble heart they will fall on deaf ears.  Says Benedict: “be serious, be brief, be gentle, be reasonable.”  A 20th century Russian Orthodox monk wrote: “When we listen to someone, we think we are silent because we are not speaking; but our minds continue to work, our emotions react, our will responds for or against what we are hearing.”   Oblate Rev. Donald Richmond, in his paper “The Fool with Words” offers this thought: “Living without speaking is better than speaking without Listening.”

The real silence that we must aim for as a starting point is a complete repose of mind and heart and will.  But then one wonders what happens to spontaneity if we engage in a chat without thinking? Jesus assures us that out of the contents of our heart our mouth will speak.  If we guard our hearts from evil and our minds from negative thoughts, our words will arise spontaneously without guilt, reflecting the goodness we have stored away.  God alone utters the perfect word, the speech without fault.  By pondering the perfections of Jesus, we come to own the good word of which the Psalmist speaks: “My heart overflows with a good theme; my tongue is ready like the pen of a scribe.” (Ps 45:1)

Oprah Winfrey in What I Know For Sure offers a very “Benedictine flavored” thought to ponder. When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues.  You lend your light to one person, she shines it on another and another and another. And …  in the final analysis of our lives – when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our e-mail boxes are empty – the only thing that will have lasting value is whether we’ve loved.

~Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

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Give It a Second Chance

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This weekend’s Gospel is asking us to take a good look at ourselves.  The tree in the parable is showing signs of life but it bears no fruit.  We ask ourselves: Is that me?  Am I barely managing to “hang in there?”   Am I being called to more than that?  Yes, God has higher hopes for each of us,  if we will but give grace a chance.

We can ask ourselves, for instance,

  • Am I a good or sour influence within my community (or my family circle)?
  • How do I relate with outsiders? Is my presence a positive element or do I fall into the gossip and negativity trap?  Do I pass judgment without giving God credit for knowing the whole story?
  • What is my attitude towards people I do not know or who aren’t “useful” to me?
  • What kind of contribution (including being physically present) do I make to the life of this community?
  • In general, what kind of contribution do I make to our greater society? What COULD I be doing?

We need to realize that God always and everywhere loves us.  But that love is only fully completed in us when we become a genuinely loving and caring person, one who loves both God and others in word and action.  We have the choice to open ourselves and come closer to God, to experience the gift of LOVE personified in Jesus.  The choice is up to us.  God’s love is there for the taking.  What are you waiting for?

Today we will celebrate St. Benedict’s day – in muted tones since it’s Lent.  Benedict is recognized as a man of great wisdom, compassion and common sense.  It is the spirit of Benedict’s Rule that has survived because Benedict, even in his youth, had a deep understanding of human psychology.  A glimpse into his early years lets us know he spent much time with his grandparents who lived a few miles from his home.  Along the hilly trek to their summer home, he and his twin sister Scholastica passed the huts and caves where hermits lived.  You can bet that their curiosity would have brought them back over the years to visit with both male and female hermits.  It is evident from the Rule that Benedict absorbed the wisdom and practical advice from this older generation.  He tempers discipline with compassion and he recognizes the spiritual quest as a joyful pursuit of God within the structures of ordinary life.  It is this joyous delight in everyday spirituality that makes the Rule come alive for so many.

Portions of his Rule shows us he had the cultivation traits of the gardener in our Gospel having mercy on his fruitless fig tree.  We know that after some time of living with his original Rule, he added advice based on his lived experience with a great variety of characters.  Imagine having to warn his men not to sleep with knives, to wear clean underwear on a trip.  His prudence shines through when, in so many words, he says: this is what works for us now – if our daily schedule and the details of communal living -don’t fit your situation, adapt it.

Pope Francis has reminded us more than once of something we know deep down – sometimes, especially in the midst of trouble – we tend to forget.  He says: “There are no situations we cannot get out of.  We are not condemned to sink into quicksand, in which the more we move the deeper we sink.  Jesus is (always) there, his hand extended, ready to reach out to us and pull us out of the mud, out of sin, out of the abyss of evil into which we have fallen.  We need only to ask for the grace to recognize ourselves as sinners.”

The barren fig tree in today’s reading is given a reprieve.  It is allowed another chance to respond favorably and to produce fruit.  Every Lenten season offers us a chance to fertilize our tree, the tree which is our life, and to see how it can be more fruitful.  For some of us, we just don’t know, this may indeed be the last-chance year, the last Lent to take care of our tree and coax it to produce new life.  Our God is tickling our finger tips.  What are we waiting for?

~ Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading:  Exodus 3:1-8a,13-15     Second Reading:  1 Corinthians 10:1-6,10-12
Gospel:  Luke 13:1-9
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Saint Benedict’s Day – March 21st

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Saint Benedict’s Day

 

Young Benedict was a seeker of Truth.  A well-kept, well-fed young man from a prosperous family, he attended university in his quest for the Truth.  But what he found there neither answered the questions he had nor satisfied his longings.  The life of hedonism that surrounded him there only disgusted him and left him bruised and empty.  He had searched for the meaning of life in an academic environment without success.

We thank God that Benedict did not give up on his search for life’s meaning on the day he abandoned his studies.  Instead he walked away from everything he had known to look elsewhere.  He constructed a solitary existence, far from the distractions of human society, to search for life’s purpose.  Alone, he besought God’s merciful presence, and God answered him.  When others came to him in the hope of joining him, he did not turn them away.  He recorded his experience as a spiritual mentor and his guidelines for the monastic life in his Rule.  We, the Benedictine Sisters of Florida, are the happy heirs of St. Benedict’s legacy.

Benedict’s life-long search for God required tremendous courage, faith and perseverance.  His willingness to leave his beloved solitude in order to share his wisdom with others was an act of self-sacrifice and generosity.  On this feast of St. Benedict’s passing to his heavenly home, let us ask God for a measure of those same qualities.  Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ, and may He bring us all to everlasting life.  (RB 72:11)

~by Sister Eileen Dunbar, OSB
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Summer Feast Day of Saint Benedict

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Summer Feast of St. Benedict 2021

July 11th we Benedictines normally celebrate the summer feast of St. Benedict.  However, since this year the 11th falls on a Sunday, the 14th Sunday of Ordinary time takes precedence.  So at Holy Name we will celebrate on Monday, July 12th.

A few years ago, in an issue of the journal from the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration there was a good article by Sister Bede Luetkemeyer.  What follows is an abbreviation of her words:

“Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.”  Saint Benedict, in the Prologue to his Rule, addresses those who “long for life.  His advice is “Keep your tongue free from vicious talk and your lips from all deceit; turn away from evil and do good; let peace be your quest and aim.  Once you have done this, my eyes will be upon you and my ears will be open to your prayer.”

If we were to abbreviate this quote, we might say: “God will hear our prayers when we put away vicious talk.”  This can be a surprising and disturbing thought: having our prayers heard depends on how we use our tongue.

The gift of speech is one of the most powerful gifts God has given us, but it probably evokes less gratitude than any other.  Habitual use of speech bends to make us unconscious of the many times our speech verges on being critical, or, to use the adjective in the psalm, “vicious” talk.

Not many of us are humble enough to make amends for wounding words.  We depend on time and the good will of others to wipe out what has been said, but the wounds of hurtful words can never be totally erased.  Despite our best efforts to heal relationships, the scars remain.

Perhaps the first step is admitting that we are burdened with the habit of speaking without paying attention to what we say.  Jesus goes literally to the heart of the problem.  He speaks of the words that “come from the heart.”  These are the words that are first formulated in the mind and take on the emotions that issue from them.  Hence, controlling our thoughts is our first task.  Discernment of our thoughts in the manner of the early monks cuts off the evil before it reaches the heart. If our words do not come from a humble heart they will fall on deaf ears.

One of the familiar practices from the past is the daily examination of conscience.  Recalling our conversations and labeling them as hurtful or helpful becomes habitual.  We can train ourselves to think before we speak, to take a prior account of the possible consequences of our speech.  It is better to judge ourselves than to hear Jesus’ warning, “I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment.” (Mt 12:36)

Another effective way of learning how to use the tongue is learning the virtue of silence.  The recommendations for the practice of silence are frequent in Scripture and in the ancient rules of the Desert Fathers.  Although the Desert Fathers sometimes practiced perpetual silence, we are not called to that extreme.  Rather, Scripture describes moderate speech that flows from wisdom.  Benedict lists four qualities of such speech in his chapter on humility: serious, brief, gentle, reasonable.

The teachings of Benedict are taken from the Scriptures and so are meant for everyone.  One of the reminders Benedict uses in his chapter on silence is taken from the Book of Proverbs: “In the multitude of words, there shall not want sin.”  (Prv 10:19)  One of the Desert Fathers (teaches): “A person may seem to be silent, but if s/he is condemning others, she is babbling ceaselessly.  But there may be another who talks from morning til night and yet she is truly silent, that is, she says nothing that is not profitable.”

External silence is impossible until we learn to control the unending conversation that is going on in our (heads).  A 20th century Russian Orthodox monk wrote about prayer and the Christian life, “When we listen to someone we think we are silent because we do not speak; but our minds continue to work, our emotions react, our will responds for or against what we hear …  The real silence towards which we must aim as a starting point is a complete repose of mind and heart and will.”

We might wonder what happens to spontaneity, to having a chat without having to think about every word we say.  Jesus assures us that out of the contents of our heart our mouth will speak.  If we guard our hearts from evil and our minds from negative thoughts, our words will arise spontaneously without guilt, reflecting the goodness we have stored away.

God alone utters the perfect word, the speech without fault.  By pondering the perfections of Jesus, we come to own the good word of which the Psalmist speaks: “My heart overflows with a good theme; my tongue is ready like the pen of a scribe.” (Ps 45:1)

 

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I Am Here – Waiting – Day or Night – Let’s Talk

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In John’s Gospel, the evangelist has (already before Lent) walked us through the story of the Wedding at Cana.  Jesus, at a nudge from his mother Mary, interacted with the servers who followed his directions to fill the empty stone jar with water.  Only to be mystified when the water turns into the best wine in the house.  Now, John is the only evangelist who relates this story.  And, he is exact in some details: there were six jars, each 2-3 feet tall, each holding 9-10 gallons.  That’s approximately 55 gallons of wine – making for quite a wedding!

Last Sunday, we witnessed an interaction of a different sort.  Jesus calls a halt to the desecration of His father’s house, the temple in Jerusalem.  Today’s Gospel takes a leap that skips over an interaction that sets up today’s teaching.  In that gap, we hear about the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus who came to Jesus under the cover of darkness.  Nicodemus was struggling with some big questions.  As he said to Jesus: “I know you came from God.  Maybe you can share some light on my quandary.”  Seems like they must have talked well into the night.

Puzzled by what Jesus had said, Nicodemus questions how an old man can be born again???  Jesus cautions him: “Don’t be amazed that I told you, ‘you must be born from above.’”  Here comes a sentence that I love: “The wind blows where it wills, you hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”  [Like Benedict said, “Listen with the ear of your heart.”] Reminds me of a 70s folk song: “Blowin’ in the Wind” – “How many times must we look up before we can see the sky?  How many ears must we have before we can hear people cry?  The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”

I digress from the Gospel.  Or do I?  John says in today’s reading: “In all truth I tell you, we speak only about what we know and witness, what we have seen and heard.  And yet people reject our evidence.  If you do not believe me when I speak to you about earthly things, how will you believe me when I speak to you about heavenly things?”

Keep reading…  Jesus speaks through the mouth of John, reminding us of our history.  Remember the story in the Book of Numbers, when the people were in the desert and they complained against God and Moses.  God sent poisonous serpents as punishment.  But, when the people repented, God did not leave them without a sign.  The people slinked back to Moses, like “a dog with its tail between its legs.”  They begged: “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you; (They pleaded) please intercede with the Lord, that He will remove the serpents from us.”  And Moses interceded for the people.  Sounds like Moses might have bargained with God.  The Lord said to Moses, Here’s the deal: “Make a fiery serpent, and put it on a flag pole; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, and looks at it, will live.”

Jesus calls Nicodemus’ attention to that story.  “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent … so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.  Then He reminds us: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.  God did not send his Son to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Today, I believe, God is telling us: “I did not send COVID-19 to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through my Son.”  It’s a wake-up call.  “Like I said to the prophet Isaiah yea these many years ago.  I am the designer and maker of the earth.  Remember in Genesis, at the creation of life on this earth, I looked on all that had been created, and I said: ‘It is good. …  For, I am God, there is no other.  I will not speak in secret nor from some dark place.  I did not say: Look for me in chaos.  I promise justice, ‘the public face of love’.  I speak the truth.  Turn to me and be safe.  Say: From God alone comes my strength and safety.’”

God continues speaking to us.  “You were correct, when a year ago this week, you posted that sign on the chapel door: we regret that we are TEMPORARILY closed to visitors.  All time is temporary in My eyes until you rest in ME eternally.  Today I tell you, just as I welcomed a midnight conversation with Nicodemus, I am here – day or night – for you.  What’s on your mind or weighing heavy on your heart?  Let’s talk.”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

 

Next Sunday, March 21 we would normally celebrate the solemnity of St. Benedict, however, since this year, the date falls on and Sunday, we will celebrate St. Benedict on Monday, March 22.  Join with us as we honor our wise founder … and let us not overlook his twin sister, Scholastica.  Their wise words, and worthy example have influenced our world for over 1500 years!  “LISTEN WITH THE EAR OF YOUR HEART.  And may Christ lead us all together to everlasting life.”

 

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