Christine Vladimiroff, OSB

Proverbs 2:1-9; Ephesians 6:10-13; Matthew 19: 27-29

We usually celebrate the feast of Benedict in the midst of Lent.  It is extraordinary that we have the celebration of the feast in the light and joy of Eastertide.  Today’s gospel clearly shows the disciples pre-Resurrection, looking out for themselves and hearing a promise, a possibility that might be theirs in the future.  For me, I celebrate our discipleship today in light of Easter knowing more clearly than the apostles in Matthew’s Gospel the price and the reward of following Christ.

We celebrate this feast of Benedict framed by Sunday’s Gospel of the disciples assembled in community in the upper room and Jesus appearance in their midst.  He gifted them with peace and the Holy Spirit.  This was part of the promise that Jesus spoke to the disciples when Peter asked what they could expect if they followed him.  This coming Sunday we have the story of the road to Emmaus.  Both accounts tell us what a life changing event it is to recognize the Christ in our midst.  The accounts of Christ’s appearances after the Resurrection reveal much of what Christianity is.  These are intimate encounters but they are shared encounters.  Discipleship is a calling, but it is a shared calling, not a solitary relationship with God.  It is a calling lived out in community, and the story of Emmaus, where the disciples finally recognize Christ as he breaks bread, is a reminder that Christianity is lived out in a Eucharistic community.  To be a truly Eucharistic community requires not only love and worship of God, but recognition of and love of, one’s neighbor, love of the sister with whom you share life.

Benedict, in his Rule, sets out to shape a community of disciples in which Christ is the very center.  Christ is the very unity of the community.  For Benedict, community is a guiding and formative experience.  The strength of the community’s life is dependent on the intensity of its relationship with Christ.  The community envisioned by the Rule is one saturated by attention to the presence of Christ, in the sick, in guests, in the weak and in the entire community.  In everything that is done, all look to Christ.  It is the love of Christ and that love’s power for healing and for leading us from darkness and death to eternal life that draws men and women toward Benedict’s vision today.  We have to be able to say, as Peter said in today’s gospel:  “We have put everything aside to follow you.”

Fidelity to the monastic way of life is a daily learning to put everything aside to follow the Christ.  We profess stability of heart with a specific group of women who will teach us to be that Eucharistic community loving God and neighbor in one act.  In the Rule in Chapter 72 we read:  “Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.”  This expresses the centeredness of Christ in the life of Benedictine women and at the same time, it stresses the fact that preferring nothing to Christ means following him on a journey that will lead us to everlasting life—and all together since we are cenobites. 

The monastic person hears the divine call in a very specific way.  It is a summons that reveals, at one and the same time, the ultimate inadequacy of everything offered by this world and the need to seek and find the transcendent one.  The impact that Jesus had on his immediate circle of acquaintance was to awaken in them a consciousness of their own spiritual potential: fishermen were no longer constrained with the limits of their craft or social standing; they became disciples, apostles, missionaries, preachers, miracle-workers and martyrs.  Others who lived at that time and did not encounter Jesus or follow him remained fishermen all their lives.  What made the difference was the Jesus roused in the Twelve a boldness to be something more than they had been in the past.  The deep self had been awaken and was ready for action.  The same happens to us when we spend time with the scripture in lectio, Jesus begins to emerge from the pages of the Gospel as a real person who engages us, then something begins to stir in our hearts and we live differently.

Hear today’s Gospel in the light of the Resurrection—and our call to follow the Christ together as a community.  View the Rule and Benedict’s call to community as a shared experience of discipleship with the Christ in our midst.  We are sent into the world, as Jesus was sent, but with the Spirit of Jesus to sustain us, enlighten us, give us courage, and speak and work through us.  Like Peter let us say:  “We have put everything aside to follow you.”

Sister Christine Vladimiroff has served as prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie since 1998. She is a past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents more than 73,000 U.S. Catholic sisters. A voice for change in the Church and in society, Sister Christine's articles have appeared in National Catholic Reporter and SALT Publishing. She was CEO and president of Second Harvest from 1987 until 1998 and continues to be one of the nation's leading authorities on the issues of hunger and poverty.