by Christian Huebner
Archdiocese of Washington
Fourth Theology, North American College
This week marks the feast of St. Benedict of Norcia, the 6th century father of western monasticism, whose spiritual sons and daughters, the Benedictines, are still to be found in monasteries scattered throughout the world.
In the fall of 2016, a series of terrible earthquakes struck central Italy. I was in Rome at the time and felt the shaking terrain and swaying buildings there. Inland near the epicenter, though, it was much worse. Entire towns were leveled and scores killed. In the thick of the damage was St. Benedict’s own home city of Norcia (in his day, known as Nursia). Reports came out soon after, though, that despite all the wreckage—including the basilica dedicated to Benedict and built over his and his sister-foundress St. Scholastica’s birthplace—one particular building remained standing: a small brewery, run by a young group of Benedictine monks.
I had visited these monks about six months before the quakes struck. Among liturgical devotees, the community has a kind of minor fame. Mostly Americans, mostly young, they had come to Norcia some years ago to found a new Benedictine community that hewed to a rigorous observance of the Rule—the game plan that the saint left for his particular type of monastery—and especially in their dedication to prayer.
Prayer for Benedictines, I learned, is not something passive and ethereal. It is a great work. It is their first office, their duty, their appointed station before Christ, the Church and the world, to offer the holy sacrifice of the Mass with devotion, reverence and beauty, as well as the other attendant prayers scattered throughout the day and night. These liturgies are almost entirely chanted, in careful, pure, Gregorian tones, flexing, dropping, soaring and diminishing to the shape of the sacred words—the Scriptures, and especially the Psalms—which are the reason for the music.
The monks spend their days in prayer and work—ora et labora—following the example of their founder. They wear a simple black hooded habit with a belt, which I remember draped quite slimly across their lean frames. I recall them being quiet, unless there was a need to speak, and their faces seemed, not dour, but plain, uninterested in what would happen in the order of time, except as it mattered for their attention to eternity.
Meals were a fascinating affair. As guests of the community, my friend and I were expected to arrive punctually at the appointed meal time—there was only one, because for much of the year, the monks eat just once each day. Our first day, we were met in the antechamber of the refectory (dining room) by a monk with a pitcher of water and towel, to wash our hands for us as a sign of welcome. Dinner itself was a liturgical experience. We entered the refectory together, sat at appointed places around large wooden tables arranged in a semi-circle around the perimeter of the room. The walls around us were decorated—actually, being decorated—by a young Italian painter working in a neo-Gothic style, making gorgeous frescoes of the life of Christ. At the beginning of the meal, following the prayers, a single ting from a small bell summoned in a group of monks assigned to serve the meal. One brother asked for a formal blessing from the Prior at the head of the table and commenced to read from an edifying spiritual work, while all the others ate in silence. The food was perhaps the most delicious I’ve ever tasted. Like almost everything around us that bore the influence of the monks—the tables, the frescoes, the napkins—it was made from good material (here, vegetables, fruits, grains and fish from the region) and crafted with patience and love. The monks ate with gusto and tremendous speed; whether as a result of great hunger or as a defense against over-indulgence of the palate with such delicious tastes, I do not know. At a certain moment, the bell gave a single ting again, all rose for the post-prandial prayer and the brothers were off to their work, while my friend and I tried to finish our meal without dallying too long.
As much as the monks themselves, I was fascinated by how the town around them received their presence. The brothers were a known presence, and, it seemed, a cherished one. The guest master who guided us to our lodgings in some rented rooms around the corner from the monastery crossed paths with a young mother taking her baby out in a stroller. The monk stopped to share just a few words, and to admire the new child. So little was said, and yet the warm, familiar yet reverent affection this woman—perhaps in her late twenties, attired in a sporty Italian ragazza style—had for the silent brother radiated from her every gesture. Their brief interaction had an air of courtesy about it that seemed to bear the dignity of liturgy without diminishing any of the warmth of human friendship. Later, on the same walk, the postal delivery woman waved as she passed by, and I recognized a similar sense, the same goodness and life in this even swifter moment. The brother guest master returned the greetings, but never lingered. The monks never seemed to linger.
Norcia was then, before the earthquakes, the definition of a charming Umbrian medieval town. The historic city was set up on a hill and still girded by stone walls and marked out by irregular streets and open piazzas. Beyond this, from the base of the hill, the modern town sprawled outward, but not so very far. A short walk or jog and you were quickly out in the broad agricultural valley of farms and grazing, all hemmed in by an outer concentric ring of mountains. The town was alive with good things—commerce and handcraft and food, particularly wild boar and mushrooms. And to me, it all seemed to radiate outward from this basilica monastery off of the main piazza. People wanted to be near where men were given wholly over to God. And when people gather under a healthy atmosphere and in good spirit, new life of all kinds tends to spring up. It was, I fancied, a small glimpse of why Western civilization had regathered around monasteries after the barbarian invasions and collapse of Rome.
When the earthquakes struck several months later, and I saw footage of that same basilica as rubble, one of my first memories was of the front steps. The monks had taken over the old church in a dilapidated state and had slowly been undertaking another great work—in service of their one great work—of renovation. The parts they had visited were gorgeous, little homesteads of order and light in a wilderness of decay. On Sundays, the town gathered in droves around these areas—chiefly, the high altar—for the solemn, Latin liturgy of the Mass. Lesser areas, too, were starting to receive attention, and one of these was the ancient stone steps leading to the front portal. They were full of pocks and crevasses, filled and hardened with mud and debris over who knew how many centuries. The monks were patiently brushing away at these spaces to make the stairs spic and span once more. It looked to be a work of months ahead of them.
All that was buried after the earthquakes. News spread among friends who knew the brothers that the Italian government had decided to take back control of the basilica for the rebuilding efforts, and the monks had decamped for the foothills outside of town, across the valley, where they would begin to renovate another ancient church and build a new monastery. A friend who has gone to help with the new site reported that guests now sleep in converted shipping containers. Gone are the almost-completed frescoes; gone are the renovated altars; gone are the restaurants and businesses—except the brewery—that flourished around the monastery. And gone, seemingly for naught, are the hours of labor to clear the dust from the tiny cracks in the front steps of the basilica.
Oddly enough, I don’t feel the least bit sorry from them. I doubt they feel sorry for themselves. What I saw in Norcia was not what captured my imagination. That was simply the consequence of something more important, a treasure the monks bore away with them when they went to the hills. What I didn’t see in Norcia—because one can’t see it, except through its effects—was the only thing really worth seeing.