The Saint Who Fled the World to Save it
There is something wonderfully backwards about St. Benedict that modern minds miss entirely, though it stands before them like a mountain blocking out the sun. He was the man who preserved culture by fleeing from it, who saved civilization by turning his back upon it, who kept the light of learning alive by walking away into the darkness. The whole mystery of his life lies in this magnificent contradiction, and like all true contradictions, it contains a truth too large for our little categories.
When Benedict first went into his cave in the cliffs of Subiaco, he was not trying to found Western monasticism or rescue the heritage of Rome. He was trying to escape from a world he saw crumbling into decadence and chaos. The young noble from Nursia looked upon the ruins of the Roman Empire - that great machine that had ordered the known world - and saw only disorder masquerading as order, only death painted to look like life. The gaudy entertainments, the political intrigues, the sophisticated philosophies that justified every vice - all of it seemed to him a kind of elaborate tomb where civilization lay decaying.
And so he did what any sane man might do when the world has gone mad - he fled from it. But here we come to the delicious twist in the tale, for in fleeing from the world he created a new world. In seeking solitude he gathered a community. In rejecting the old order he established a new one that would last a thousand years. The cave of Subiaco became a fountain, and from it flowed rivers that would water all of Europe.
What Benedict built in the wilderness was not merely a monastery but a complete way of life - indeed, the only complete way of life left in the West after Rome fell. His famous Rule combined things that we moderns laboriously divide: prayer and work, community and solitude, authority and freedom, tradition and innovation. The motto of his monks - "Ora et Labora" (Pray and Work) - would become the foundation of European civilization, though he thought he was only laying out a path to heaven.
Consider the marvelous reversal that these men who had renounced the world became the world's teachers. These men who had given up property became Europe's farmers and preservers of ancient learning. These men who had embraced poverty became the rebuilders of economic life. These men who had fled from society became its pillars. The monasteries they built became the schools, hospitals, libraries, and universities of medieval Europe. They copied the ancient manuscripts, preserved the classical learning, developed new agricultural techniques, and kept alive the very idea of peaceful, ordered community in an age of violence and chaos.
But we miss the whole point if we see Benedict merely as a sort of spiritual Henry Ford, efficiently organizing medieval production. The heart of his achievement was not economic but mystical. He understood what our efficiency experts never grasp - that the highest things come not from frantic activity but from contemplative rest. His monks worked because they prayed; they did not pray in order to work better. Their goal was not productivity but sanctity. Yet precisely because they sought first the kingdom of God, all these other things were added unto them.
The modern world, which understands efficiency but not sanctity, has completely reversed this order. We work feverishly but do not know how to rest. We produce endlessly but have forgotten what we are producing for. We have gained the whole world and lost our souls. Benedict would look upon our gleaming cities and sophisticated technologies with the same horror with which he looked upon decadent Rome - as elaborate mechanisms of spiritual death.
Yet there is hope even in this, for history moves in circles as well as lines, and what has happened before can happen again. When Benedict fled to his cave, he thought he was leaving civilization behind forever. Instead he became, in the words of Pope Pius XII, the "Father of Europe." He thought he was rejecting culture; instead he saved it. He thought he was turning from the world; instead he transformed it.
Perhaps we too must learn again what Benedict knew - that civilization is renewed not by frantic reform but by radical return to first principles. That culture is preserved not by desperate activity but by contemplative wisdom. That the world is saved not by those who love it too much but by those who love something else more.
For Benedict built his monasteries on an idea that seems simple but contains depths we have not yet fathomed - that nothing should be preferred to the love of Christ. Everything else in his Rule flows from this one principle. The careful organization of time, the balance of prayer and work, the disciplines of community life - all of it was designed to clear away everything that might compete with or distract from this central love.
And perhaps this is Benedict's most important lesson for us today. For we too live in a time of civilizational crisis and decay. We too face the collapse of an old order and the birth pangs of a new one. We too must choose between the gaudy entertainments of a dying culture and the hard disciplines that might build something lasting.
Benedict would tell us that the choice is ultimately between two loves - between loving the world so much that we lose it, or loving Christ so much that we gain both Him and the world He made. He would tell us that civilization is not saved by those who anxiously try to preserve it, but by those who peacefully pursue something higher. He would tell us that culture is renewed not by reform programs but by saints.
This is the final divine jest of Benedict, and perhaps his final gift to us - that in showing us how to flee from the world, he shows us how to save it. In teaching us to prefer nothing to Christ, he teaches us how to truly love everything else. In calling us to leave civilization behind, he shows us how to build it anew.
And so this remarkable saint who fled from Roman ruins still speaks to us who live among different ruins. His voice comes to us across fifteen centuries, not with programs or policies, but with an invitation - to prefer nothing to Christ, to seek first the kingdom of God, to find in flight from the world the only way to truly save it. It is an invitation that makes no sense to the modern mind. But neither did it make sense when Benedict first offered it amid the collapse of ancient Rome. And that is precisely why it worked then, and why it might work again now.
-The Seeker's Quill
