Cultivation Blog

From time to time I like to offer particular saints as sources of inspiration and models of virtue. And since this is the Feast of St. Scholastica, I just can’t pass up the opportunity to take a peek at her story today. After all, she’s St. Benedict’s beloved twin sister, and at Belmont Abbey College, she has a special place in our Benedictine hearts.

The founder of an order of nuns based a few miles from her brother’s monastery in Monte Casino, Scholastica spearheaded the women’s Benedictine movement alongside Benedict’s masculine order. In fact, my favorite story about St. Scholastica hinges on her proximity to Benedict, in more ways than one.

Once a year, the twins would meet to spend a day at a farmhouse between their communities, where they prayed, discussed spiritual matters and shared what amounted to an annual retreat. It was a blessing to which they always looked forward, a period of refreshment and fellowship.

On what would be their final meeting before her death, Scholastica asked Benedict to stay and continue their prayer and reflection through the night. But her brother refused, reminding her that this contravened the rule of his order, by which monks weren’t permitted to spend nights outside the monastery.

I like to imagine the scene that followed: Scholastica bowing her head and folding her hands quietly, as Benedict walks to the door and stops, stares out at the sudden storm, which is rapidly gathering in what had been, up to then, an immaculate sky. Turning back to his sister with consternation, he demands, “What have you done?” But she looks up and smiles, shrugging that “I asked for something and you refused, so I asked God and he granted it.”

I always enjoy the gutsy mixture of trust and love in that story – and the tenderness and sense of humor in her relationship, not only with Benedict – with whom she models the kind of Platonic friendship that embraces a shared journey toward the Good – but also with God. She asks without presuming, and the response she receives is a seamless expression of merciful love, through which she enjoys a few more hours of Benedict’s prayerful companionship before their earthly separation. St. Scholastica reminds me that God is playful and kind, and that when He seems to be thwarting my intentions – as Benedict may have felt, looking out at the storm – He’s actually offering a different gift.

St. Scholastica, pray for us!

Last Friday, January 27, brought a new, transformative light to Belmont Abbey’s Haid Ballroom.

As the audience sat in rows at the back of the room, a group of student artists prepared to begin “Dance in The Light,” the inspiration they’d brought to Kristin Hayes, Dance Program Director and Performing Arts Department Chair, just weeks before. In fact, although Mrs. Hayes had choreographed some of the evening’s performances, “Dance in The Light” was an essentially student-driven “evening of faith expressed through the arts.”

It seems particularly appropriate that students in a Benedictine, liberal arts college showed both the agency and the creativity to place art – whether music, dance, or word – in the service of divine praise. After all, loving praise is our highest vocation, and the Benedictine way illuminates the sacramental relationship between divine life and our tangible, everyday rhythms in community. Ora et labora, prayer and work, are not mutually exclusive or alternating acts. They comprehend and enrich each other in synthesis.

I love the profoundly sacramental reality inherent in this, which embraces all human creativity, artistic or otherwise. Those students who choreographed or danced, sang or recited during last Friday’s performance embraced the material, sensory reality through which they hoped to communicate the spiritual. They knew implicitly that, in the world of human encounter and experience, we rely on the earthly to mediate he heavenly.

Watching and listening last Friday, the audience applauded a variety of thoughtful performances, but even more beautiful than the deft motions and melodies was the fact that human creativity could, by the grace of God, articulate supernatural inspirations – like “the limitless love of God” or “the incomprehensibility of standing before Jesus” – in material form.

So this weekend, if you’re tempted (as I sometimes am) to impatience with the opaque, difficult, and even resistant physical world, I hope you’ll remember to “Dance in The Light,” where Christ waits to embrace our very humanness with His incarnate Love. For beauty – and its expression – will save the world.

Most of us probably recognize Our Lady of Guadalupe: that miraculous image which appeared on Juan Diego’s tilma as a sign that Mary herself had spoken to him. The portrait is all but ubiquitous, not just in Mexico, but across the United States as well, and to a certain extent throughout the world. It’s a beautiful image, but this past Monday, December 12, as we celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I started thinking about why she seems to have captured our cultural imagination to such an extent.

And I think, for those of us in the Americas, the key might lie in the Our of Our Lady.

That Christ’s mother, whom he gave, also, to us, would appear to the simple, the poor, and the utterly, vulnerably human, is a wonderful comfort. But that she would do so in our own clothes, as it were, and our own, recognizable culture – that Our Lady of Guadalupe takes on the Nahuatl speech, the traditional dress, and the knowledge of place particular to that corner of Mexico – is somehow more wonderful still.

It reminds me that receiving her as our mother is not a mere gesture. She takes on our patterns and colors, the textures of our experience, embracing us, not as if we were an abstracted mass of peoples, but as individuals and families immersed in animating culture. In a beautiful echo of her Son’s incarnation, she comes to meet us with the familiarity of our “Little Mother,” even turning what is native to us – whether roses or robes – into a miraculous gift and a sign of her nearness.

Soon we will begin the fourth and final week of Advent. We’ll light all four candles in our Advent wreaths and make the last preparations for welcoming Christ into our homes at Christmas. As we near this beautiful feast, let’s imitate the gentle Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady, by reaching out to know and love others in the language native to their souls.

For those of us living in the United States, today is a federal holiday. It also happens (not by accident) to be the feast of St. Martin of Tours, patron saint of soldiers. November 11, 1918 saw St. Martin’s Feast named “Armistice Day” to commemorate the end of World War I. Twenty years later it would become “Veterans’ Day” in the U.S.

When I think of St. Martin of Tours, two images compete for space in my brain. One is the soldier, using his sword to cut his cloak in half so that he can share it with a beggar. The other is a gentle-looking man in bishop’s robes, looking down at the goose who shares his stained glass window in Mary Help of Christians Basilica.

In the famous story with cloak and sword, St. Martin has not yet left military life, but his weapon nevertheless assumes an unexpectedly constructive role, reminding us almost of the biblical swords being beaten into plowshares. What was made to be an implement of war and violence becomes a tool allowing him to equip the poor man – who later appears to him as Christ – with warmth and comfort.

I have to admit, however, that I had to look up the goose. I’d been puzzled by its presence in the window: it seemed so mischievous to me, peering around St. Martin with its sharp, cheeky eye. And as it turns out, this impression is actually fairly appropriate. According to the story, St. Martin hides himself in a barn to avoid being named bishop – at least until a goose sprints out to the square, flapping and squawking to alert the townspeople of Martin’s whereabouts.

The cloak story, whether apocryphal or not, does at least harmonize thematically with the change in St. Martin’s life, from earthly soldier to soldier of Christ. But the goose story has almost a flavor of the prophet Jonah to it, inasmuch as St. Martin is running from God’s will. And although no large, marine mammal shows up to swallow Martin, an uncooperative animal does demonstrate God’s irrepressible sense of humor. And in both stories, the wayward messenger ultimately finds his way: St. Martin of Tours would, in fact, become a bishop, serving in the unsought role with faithfulness and love. It’s comforting to know that even a great saint like St. Martin needed a nudge, from time to time.

The soldiers we honor this Veterans’ Day understand something about the courage it requires to face what has been asked of you. As we remember their sacrifices and struggles this weekend, let’s pray, also, for the grace to accept God’s will in our own lives; to trust that God doesn’t abandon us, even when we hide from Him; and to hope that He will bring an end to war and violence, that we, too, may turn our resources to caring for Christ in our midst.

We’ve had a late start to the autumn weather here on Belmont Abbey’s campus, but this week has finally found the crisp anticipation that marks my favorite season. I know our students will be eager to take advantage of this during their mid-semester break: hiking in the glorious Blue Ridge and generally enjoying all the bracing loveliness within reach of our North Carolina campus.

Of course, even before this belated temperature shift, I’d noticed the level of animal activity (and boldness) increasing – as the urgent impulse to prepare began overriding timidity. And now the campus squirrels are everywhere. A mockingbird has been singing long, communicative songs from the lampposts and treetops outside Stowe Hall. Leaves are falling in earnest, first from the crepe myrtle, then slowly from other trees. And cardinals and chickadees pepper and glow overhead with an energy I can’t help sharing.

I love the autumn, as so many people do: the robust colors, the scarves and sweaters, the nutmeg and cinnamon that find their way into every dessert and specialty drink… but it does seem strange to feel so much excitement and joy over a season oriented, ultimately, toward preparation for the cold, dark days ahead. Then again, maybe it’s not so strange, considering who we are as Christians, and the Word in which we live and hope.

Watching the grass dim and all but stop growing, the trees become stark, and the last wildflowers brown and brittle, we can still breathe the clear, cool air and the tannin spice of fall with joy. Because the truth is, we are fallen people, who need cycles of renewal, of giving up to God all that we are and have. Dying to ourselves, we trust in God to build us back more beautifully than ever.

The oak, maple, and crepe myrtle shed their leaves in preparation for the weight of snow and ice, the punishing cold and the short days, but we recognize even in their barren forms a kind of patient beauty. In a way, autumn shows us prudence and generosity: prudence in preparing ourselves for cold and meager times; generosity in flaming out with the beauty of sacrifice and repentance, of dying to ourselves, that we may be transformed to new life in the coming year. Both prudence and generosity require and embrace trust. They make lovely and meaningful what might otherwise seem bitter.

Because winter is not the end of the story, we can place the loss, even seeming death – so vividly embodied in the drift of dry leaves – within a larger narrative of hope, life, and resurrection. The seasons may bring change and challenge, but Benedictine stability reminds us of the abiding presence of God, Who endures beyond change. Let us relish our autumn days in the promise of life beyond our failings and our struggles!