Anne and Barry, thank you for persevering and coming to this feast of St Benedict to be welcomed as oblates. You will now become part of the more than 25,000 Benedictine Oblates throughout the world. It is also part of God’s plan that you are sitting next to Cristobal and Vicente, Oblates from the Manquehue Apostolic Movement. What a very special joy it is to have you with us. Barry and Anne, you will now join the growing number of Oblates who are spiritually associated with this monastic community. In the last two years we have received 10 new Oblates, one Associate, nine candidates and at this moment in time, we have received 60 expressions of interest. In August I will be receiving three more Oblations. What does all this indicate?
Brethren, if nothing else it ought to encourage each one of us to renew our own vocation to ‘prefer nothing whatever to Christ’. A phrase that easily, perhaps all too easily trips off our tongue, but does not so easily translate into our daily living. People are hungry, they are hungry for more; they want spiritual food that nourishes their walk with Christ, that challenges them to mature in their discipleship and they look to monasteries, to be real guides in a world that often appears to be spiritually empty. How clearly the writer of Proverbs puts it in the first reading:
Take my words to heart
Turn your ear to wisdom
Apply your heart to the truth
Cry out for discernment
Search for it as for a buried treasure then you will know what the fear of the Lord is and discover the knowledge of God
Then as the Gospel proclaims if we heed this advice, we will inherit eternal life.
Anne, Barry on this feast of St Benedict you take this step in your discipleship. You have discovered through your acquaintance with this monastic community that the Gospel and the Rule will not merely help you to be good Christians but will take you to heaven because that is where God wants you to be. Inscribed within in all of us as baptised children of God, inscribed is the invitation to eternal happiness, to life everlasting and that is a wonderful truth.
Benedict found in his search for God, that God’s will for us is to experience hearts that are expanded by love – His love – He simply desires to love us into the kingdom. He wants us in heaven with Him because that is why He created us, to enjoy an eternal relationship. Your oblation, like the vows that we, as monks, profess is not so much about what you are going to do for God, but rather an openness to receive from Him all that He wants to give. The greatest tragedy is to refuse the gift and the way to embrace this gift is to enter the wisdom, the truth, the buried treasure, that holiness is within our grasp.
Your oblation, like our vows, is a clear indication that you want what God wants. When we surrender to God, then we grow in His holiness. For never forget that holiness is who we are, not what we do. This is so important for all of us to understand. We are holy because of our baptism, because we are taken into the life of the Trinity, because God dwells in us, not because we are nice people or even good people, but because we are God’s people. What did the penny catechism teach all those years ago. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever.
Benedict experienced that truth. St Gregory tells us that rising early one day Benedict came to the window of his chamber. Standing there, suddenly in the dead of the night, as he looked, he saw a light that banished the darkness of the night and glittered with such brightness that the light was far clearer than the light of day. Benedict himself reported, that the whole world, gathered under one beam of the sun, was presented before his eyes. While he looked at the brightness of that glittering light, he saw the soul of Germanus, Bishop of Capua, in a fiery globe, carried up by Angels into heaven.
This sense of the monastery, of the Christian life as the gateway to heaven, permeates the Rule that he has given to us. God created us to be happy with Him forever. That’s the meaning of life. It is the purpose of our monastic vocation, and it is at the root of your desire to be part of our monastic family. Today on this feast we are faced with one question: How hungry for God, for heaven are you?
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
11 July 2024