What We Can Learn From the Benedictines

It was a mild December night in Minnesota as a hundred Catholic adults converged upon the beautiful house of a lovely young couple in order to meet a monk. They entered the house and, having been welcomed with a smile, dove right into the fudge and wine and entered into conversation with the other like-minded acquaintances present.

After and hour of socializing, the monk, Fr. Cassion Folsom, O.S.B., the founder and Prior of a new community of Benedictines, began to speak.
He told us about his order, which established themselves in a monastery in Norcia, Italy, the birth place of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica, in 2000. Benedictines had been in Norcia for hundreds of years until they were suppressed by Napoleon in 1810. This group of monks has been growing well and is nearing 20 monks.

It is not a coincidence that the Benedictines are drawing new vocations. The work in which St. Benedict engaged, preserving the Church, community life, knowledge, and virtue, is a work that is again of immense importance today. Fr. Folsom shared this quotation from Alasdair Macintyre, from a book published in 1981, which is still relevant today:

“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are.
A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead — often not recognizing fully what they were doing — was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness.

 If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope.

This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict.” (After Virtue, p. 263)

Macintyre and Prior Folsom both believe that people seeking to live virtuous lives need to build communities that foster their virtue. We need to do something now, while society deteriorates around us, to preserve all that is good in Western culture. Now maybe things are not as bad and secularized here as they are in parts of Europe, but the possibility is looming. We see the need for better local communities in recent events, such as the recent Michael Brown shooting and the reaction to it in Ferguson, Missouri. A good community preserves morals, teaches them to our children, and never stops seeking to become better.

Prior Folsom spoke of the importance of the pockets of Catholic community that we already have in the United States. We need to cling to them, be formed by them, and allow our wider communities to be transformed by them. Having a good Catholic community is more and more essential to being able to actually live a Catholic life in the modern world. It is also easy enough to find online community support, but the real, live, in-person community matters the most.

I don’t have a ton of practical advice on how to build community, but probably the best place to start is in your home life. Monks model for us a real community built on rules and a schedule that requires prayer, work, and community. When I first read the Rule of St. Benedict, I realized how helpful it was to planning a good family life. There is a beautiful book The Little Oratory that gives great advice on establishing a life of family prayer. The routine of family meals, family prayer, and extending hospitality to others are basics of community life that are not hard to incorporate.  We can imitate this in our own families, bring it to our community of friends, and to the wider communities we live in. We need to be making conscious efforts to bring the goodness of our Catholic communities to those around us. Transformations must begin at the most basic level. So, we must begin with ourselves, transforming our own minds and our own lives of virtue and then grow out from there.

Originally posted at Truth and Charity.

A Cookie Kind of Day

The kids have a cold over here, and as a result they have all been a little bit more cranky and screamy than normal. It has been pretty rough on all of us. I know it is just a cold. I do wish we could just have the sick people lay in bed for the duration like they did back in the day, but that does not normally work with little kids and why don't we do that anymore?

Anyway, when I managed to get my pregnant self out of bed this morning to see M off to his last day at work for the semester, tried to sneak in coffee and breakfast before the kids woke up, and failed at that, I decided it was time to sit on the couch and look at the lit Christmas tree in the dark of the morning. So, G, L, and I put on some Nat King Cole, snuggled together and did just that. F somehow slept through it, so, she missed out.

Then I decided to do minimal school: G read us her reader from the library (Fred and Ted Go Camping), and then we had breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning making Christmas cookies.

Before cookie girls.

I don't know if you have ever made cookies with a 5, 4, and 2 year old all wanting to help, but it is certainly interesting and a test of patience. This is actually an area I could do better as a mom. I would much rather do it all myself than have to guide children through "helping" me. I prefer not to do the activities that take a lot of time or make a huge mess, but I also realize that those are the kind of activities that they love. They are the ones that make me grow in patience, and they are the kind of ones that the kids will remember.

They will remember that I let them use crazy amounts of sprinkles on their Christmas cookies, even if I sent them out of the kitchen so I could sweep.

G will remember that I let her stand at the stove and melt chocolate in the double boiler, and L will remember that I let me form her own peanut buttery filling balls all by herself.

That is the recycling bin, not the trash can, I promise.

I write about these things because it reminds me that I need to do this more. Sometimes we just need to skip the mom's group at church, stay home with our colds, and make cookies, no matter how big the mess. And the best part? When we were done making the cookies, the children played happily until lunchtime, without fighting, and giggled the whole way through lunch over silly things little girls say and think.

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Bonus Baby Bump picture (for my sister who asked):

16 weeks along.

I think I must be growing.

Seven Quick Takes: Friday, December 12

1. This is my first time linking up with the new hostess of the Seven Quick Takes, Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum. Last week quick takes did not happen, but I was on writing and publishing overload. I posted most things to my blog Facebook page, but in case you missed them, I will go ahead and link things here.

At Church POP:
10 Reasons Some Women are Wearing Veils in Church Again
12 Secular Christmas Songs that are Actually About Advent
The 20 Best Religious Advent Songs

At Crisis:
Popularity of the Latin Liturgy is Not Unfortunate

2. The reason I have not been writing this week is largely due to Jane Austen. I am using the pregnancy excuse to read all afternoon while the kids rest...

I always come back to Jane Austen and St. Francis de Sales. Pure insight into humanity.

3. I can't believe we did this, and I promise I am not an Advent sell out. My only defense is that it was St. Nicholas day, a party at M's work, and the kids wanted to see the "man dressed like St. Nicholas."

4. Someone turned four two weeks ago.

L had the time of her life at the crazy, bounce house filled, Christmas party last weekend. She may have also had a major emotional crash later that day... She also had a nice birthday after Thanksgiving with breakfast with Daddy, the science museum, and grandparents and an aunt visiting.

5. Here is a math problem for you: What do you get when you mix together 42 packets of Kool-Aid and 15 white silk scarves?

15 colorful play scarves! And if you want to know how I did this: I bought the scarves here, and used this and this tutorial. I managed to make them for 1/3 the cost of buying pre dyed play scarves. It took about 3 hours to do the whole thing: two evenings of dying and one of ironing.

6. Today is M's last day of classes for the semester, and finals are next week. While this means a lot of grading, it also means that his 6 week winter break has almost arrived! We will do the normal tour of the Midwest to see family, a lot of staying at home, home schooling, and M will do research, writing, and class prep.

7. Oh, Jane Austen is calling my name, do I have anything else to say? Only that we have discovered a new to-us band. Gungor. We like their album Ghosts Upon the Earth the best and only a few songs from the other albums. This has been my favorite lately: