“Seek always the face of God.” That sentence that we hear in the psalm refrain today really struck me in today’s readings. We live in a world where a lot of people think that there is no God if you don't have tangible proof, that it does not matter if you go to church or not, that it is cool to say that you are spiritual, but not religious, as if being religious is a bad thing. Many in our society think that no matter how hard you search, you are never going to find God anywhere. And yet people go on searching for something: searching for happiness, searching for meaning, searching for an ending to their pain, their frustration, and their suffering.
We seek the face of God in different ways in our lives. St Benedict, who lived back in the 6th century, was a man who changed the face of Christianity and the face of Western society in the Medieval period and beyond. Like Jesus, Benedict looked out at the reality around him and was concerned at what he saw. Benedict was a young man who came from a wealthy family in Italy; he went to Rome to study and to make his way in life. Even though Rome was the center of Christianity, beyond the surface Benedict saw the city’s sinful and chaotic nature. The Early Church that was persecuted and struggling had become a Church of the empire. By the sixth century, many Christians were yearning for the Church’s humble roots, trying to recapture something that was lost from the Early Church. So, Benedict left Rome and became a hermit. However, his first experiment in attempting to found a monastery was a failure; that first group of monks were upset at Benedict’s high standards. Some even tried to poison him. He went on to found 12 different monastic communities that not only survived, but flourished, before founding in 529 what would become the famous monastery of Monte Casino, seen as the shining light of the monastic movement in Europe. The rule of Benedict that he developed became the paradigm for monasticism: living in community, sharing work responsibilities together, studying the faith, and praying together.
No matter what our status in life, no matter our lifestyle and our vocation, may we all seek out the face of God.
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