Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

How many golf? A golf friend told me, “life is too short....so stop fretting...make the best of each day.” He then emphasized his point, “in 1923, Charles Schwab was president of the largest steel company in America; Edward Hopson, president of the largest gas company; and Jesse Livermore, the “Great Bear” on Wall Street. What became of them,” he asked? “One died flat broke; the second lost his wits and the third committed suicide.”

My friend went on to say, in the same year, 1923, the greatest golfer was Gene Sarazen. The winner of both the US Open and the PGA Championship, Sarazen enjoyed golf into his 90s and had a keen intellect until the day he died at age 97. My friend then concluded: stop fretting and start playing golf. I said, “ok, I'll take up golf again.”

The word of God focuses on a prophet in the eighth century before Jesus (the 700s). Isaiah denounced a royal official who abused his office. He most likely compromised his integrity. The king replaced him with someone who had integrity, an ethical conscience. The author challenges us to try always to do the right thing.

Paul in his letter to the Christian community at Rome marvels at the awesome wisdom of God whose saving grace abounds everywhere. Our God, Paul proclaims, is a God worthy of our worship. Paul invites us to stand in awe at the wonders of God--for example, the recent solar eclipse--and to thank God for the gift of our life and our many other blessings, especially family, faith and friends.

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus asks: who do people say I am? Peter recognizes who Jesus is: the Messiah, the fulfillment of the hopes of ancient Israel, the anointed one, the Christos. Jesus then makes Peter the rock, the leader of his community of disciples, the church: today a 1.2 billion + global faith community made up of saints and sinners. Jesus gives Peter a special role that became known as the primacy of Peter. Pope Francis is the 266th successor to Peter.

This global faith community has many heroes and heroines who teach us about true purpose, the spiritual life and our relationship with God. Through their lives and writings, these saints can lift us up out of ourselves into the awesome mystery we call God, to paraphrase Paul’s letter.

Today I would like to highlight one of these heroes, Benedict of Nursia, whose life in the sixth century has inspired hundreds of thousands to commit themselves to seeking God, especially in a faith community, in common liturgical prayer and in service to their fellow human beings.

Benedict, well educated in Rome, sought God initially in silence at a hermitage and then established a monastic community at Monte Cassino, now a UNESCO world heritage site, near Naples in Italy.
Benedict crystallized the best of the monastic tradition in his Rule of Life for men and women. His initial followers gathered eight times a day for liturgical prayer. They ate meals together, often in silence. The “Rule of Benedict” can be summed up in a Latin motto: Ora et labora (“Pray and work.”)

Benedict's style of monastic life spread so rapidly throughout Europe that the sixth and seventh centuries became known to some as the Benedictine centuries. In the midst of chaotic times, the abbeys began to take on the functions of education, government, trade and health care. Some abbeys excelled in evangelization and liturgy.  By the ninth and tenth centuries, the Benedictine abbeys were essential pillars of early medieval life, with all of its related problems.

With the founding of the abbey at Cluny in France in 910, a reform movement began which reemphasized the spiritual life for men and women, as found in the Rule of Benedict.

Today a confederation of Benedictine abbeys continues the essential features of the sixth-century Rule, seeking God in a common life of prayer and service.

Benedictine spirituality in particular invites us to enter more fully into the liturgical life of the Church by participating in the Eucharist, praying the psalms and re-experiencing the story of our salvation in the liturgical calendar.

First, Benedictine spirituality invites us to enter more deeply into the Eucharist. The Eucharist communicates two realities. One: Jesus gives his body and blood, his life, as a sacrifice of reconciliation between God and us and as proof of God’s love for us. Two: Jesus then commands us to renew this sacred action by making present that once-and-for-all sacrifice through the bread and wine.

Jesus instituted the Eucharist because he wanted to be with us until the end-time, not only through the presence of his Spirit but also through his transformed body.

Bread and wine mystically become the living Christ, transformed from mortality to immortality, corruption to incorruptibility. How can this be? It is a mystery of faith. We believe in the all-powerful and ever-creative word of God.

But what is the purpose of the Eucharist? To form us into one faith community. St. Paul wrote: “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1 Cor 10:17) And this bread we eat and this blood we drink should not only form us into a community of deeper faith, but also should empower us to reach out compassionately to the people around us. Yes, we go forth from the Eucharist to “wash the feet” of our brothers and sisters, so to speak, in daily life.

Second, Benedictine spirituality invites us to pray the psalms, so central to their life of prayer. The psalms are songs and prayers, mostly attributed to King David and gradually formed into a biblical collection of five books in the 2nd century before Jesus. Intended to be sung, these 150 poems express a range of human emotions, from depression to joy. They are hymns of praise to God, community laments in light of a national disaster, royal psalms for a special occasion and individual laments and thanksgivings.

Third, Benedictine spirituality invites us to re-experience the story of our salvation through the liturgical calendar.  This cycle begins with Advent (where we re-experience the hope of our forebears for a Messiah), then moves to Christmas or the actual birth of the Messiah, then through Lent to the dying and rising of Jesus at Easter, and finally, after the Sundays in Ordinary time, to the end of the liturgical year where Jesus Christ comes in glory in the feast of Christ the King. In this feast, we reach the end of the human story as we know it, when Jesus Christ will hand over the kingdom to God our Father at the end-time.

Yes, Saint Benedict, a hero like so many other holy men and women in Christianity, inspires us to seek God in our daily lives, especially through the Eucharist, the psalms and the liturgical calendar. Why?  So that we, re-energized in the life of God, may become the “hands and feet and voice and ears” of the living Christ in our everyday lives.