Luther and Benedict - God, Conscience, and the Communion of Saints

"The Protestant Reformation has contributed notably to the constitution of Europe, and it is generally accepted that this action has entailed a surrender of what one might call the Benedictine spirit.  Let us concede as much. Nevertheless, notwithstanding harsh and draconian critiques of monasticism, the priorities established by Luther - God, conscience, and the communion of saints - were also those of Saint Benedict.  Martin Luther went to the Diet of Worms impelled by the same motive that led Benedict to Subiaco: he was bound in conscience by the Word of God.  With God's help he stood fast, for he could not do otherwise.

And the emblem of the Protestant Reformation has always remained a monk struggling in prayer, hunched over his Bible, his unconscious teeming with the images and the words of Scripture, above all those of the Psalter."

(Gordon Rupp, as quoted in "In the School of Contemplation" by Andre Louf, OCSO).

St. Benedict's Day and the Cistercian Tradition

The Church remembers St. Benedict each year on July 11, and it is important to remember that the Benedictine order is not the only group that follows the Rule of St. Benedict.  This past year, I've had the chance to visit two Trappist monasteries, New Melleray in Iowa, and Gethsemani in Kentucky. 

(Abbey of Gethsemani, June 2015)

Trappists are formally known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OCSO) - the Cistercians are Benedictine reformers whose history dates back to the Eleventh Century, and the Trappists represent a reform group within the Cistercian tradition.  Despite their different charisms, each order continues to represent a faithful way of living according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The living reality of Benedictine life, as reflected in the Cistercian Order, was noted by a modern Trappist monk, Michael Casey, OCSO:

"The Cistercian Patrimony is not a matter of lifeless stones, but a living reality incarnate in the lives and labors of innumerable brothers and sisters and expressed explicitly by a substantial body of doctrine developed by Cistercian authors of all centuries.  We inherit from the past not only buildings and artifacts, not only a lifestyle that many romantically believe has changed little from the Middle Ages, but a tradition of life communicated in a thousand humble ways from one generation to the next.  Beneath the Cistercian reality lays a network of beliefs, values and core practices that embody the energy of the charism.  The heart of the Cistercian Patrimony is a philosophy of life as validly applied to the twenty-first century as to the twelfth"

(Quoted at p. 20 of Come and See: The Monastic Way for Today by Brendan Freeman, OCSO).