Welcome to the end of Week 3! It’s a special day at St Benedict’s today as we celebrate the Feast Day of St Benedict (which actually occurred on July 11).  As this date falls in the holidays, we have used Catholic Education Week as a time of also celebrating the saint who our school is named after - and what an inspiration to us St Benedict has been!

I found the following article by Sr Joan Chittester, a Benedictine nun, who writes of the importance that the Benedictine community had in Europe earlier this millennium.  From reading extracts from this article, we can see many similarities to how our school aims to run;

There are few institutions that did as much for any geographic region as Benedictine monasteries did for Europe across the centuries. They brought a Rule and a way of life that was balanced, ordered, realistic and, most of all, humane. This was a Rule, a monastic lifestyle, that could be trusted to build community that fed the people, educated them, healed them, even protected them in their round towers in case of siege

…

Four major characteristics marked the new order then and mark it still. Hospitality, productivity, community, and immersion in God gave Benedictines what no other religious groups of the time could provide. They were stable. They were agents of social change. They lived a communal—a family—life. They had one major commitment: “To Seek God.” Not only was God the center of their personal lives but God was also the center of the community life itself. Benedictine lives were a model for all the world to see—and come to expect. Why? Because it was socially productive and self-sustaining, internally well-organized, and spiritually rich.  Benedictine monasteries were at the center of every village and fast becoming assets to the larger society. Monastic communities became the hospices, the hospitals, the educators, the scriptoriums, the public mediators, and the judicial systems of the village square. Finally, of course, the monasteries became the spiritual centers of the local communities as well.

Our special liturgy this morning, presided over beautifully by seminarian, Will, asked for us to be inspired by St Benedict’s spirit of hospitality and generosity, and that we may be able to listen with the ear of the heart, respond with kindness and be people of love.  

I write this today after we’ve finished our liturgy.  Our students are now moving into activities with their buddy classes around St Benedict, Catholic Education Week and our St Benedict’s Way of Peace, and of course we finish this afternoon with our very popular, Benny’s Got Talent.  It’s wonderful to get the opportunity as a school community to come together and celebrate what makes us who we are!

Pax,

Nick