Feast of St. Scholastica

A homily

Happy Feast Day! How many feasts of St. Scholastica have you celebrated? Quite a few! How many homilies for the Feast of St. Gertrude have you heard? Quite a few! And the thing is, we know so little about Scholastica it’s kind of hard to say anything new. But maybe that’s just because we don’t have enough imagination. Benedict gets all the press because he wrote a Rule. Don’t get me wrong, that’s wonderful. But have you ever noticed that he’s portrayed as the founder of Western monasticism but Scholastica, his twin sister, was, according to St. Gregory, “consecrated to God from an early age.” That means she was busy living monastic life when Benedict was supposedly discovering it. Yeah right…

I’d like to imagine what Scholastica might have said to her sisters, maybe shortly before her death, as she passed on her wisdom from many years of monastic life. So this is an imaginary conference of Scholastica to her sisters:

“My dear sisters, as you know, a couple of days ago I had my annual visit with my dear brother Benedict, and I sense that it was my last. So, I want to share with you some thoughts about this monastic life that we have chosen to live.

Ben and I had a wonderful discussion on the spiritual life. And we also reminisced about growing up in Norcia. He thinks it’s very funny to remind me that his nickname for me was “Scholy, Scholy, rolly polly” but I just remind him that he made all his monks adopt a tonsure so that his baldness wouldn’t be as noticeable. Siblings…

But I digress. We also talked about the monastic rule that he is editing. Now, Ben needs lots of reassurance, so I tell him it’s amazing, and it is. But I also tell him, you know Ben, all this stuff about asking permission, how many psalms to sing, who should be in leadership, what to do about guests, Psssh! That’s the easy stuff. On the other hand, loving the unlovable, that’s hard. And here’s a hint, sisters, sometimes even the nicest of us is pretty unlovable. Is that shocking? Are you thinking “is it I Lord?” A little examination of conscience can be a good thing.

But hopefully we all know by now that the goal of this life we have chosen, that we are committed to, is to get to the point where we can say, “yeah, I’ve got days when I’m nobodies role model, but I’m going to keep working at it and I hope my community loves me and forgives me.” Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? We love, we forgive, we screw up, we are forgiven.

Now, I also know that Ben said keep death daily before your eyes, and that’s a very good idea, unless I missed a news bulletin this morning, we are all going to die. But maybe the more important task is to keep gratitude daily before our eyes. And, especially to have gratitude for the people we have to forgive, and gratitude for the people who forgive us every day. We’re called to be grateful that we are not entitled to anything and yet we have everything we need. How’s that for mind blowing?

Now Ben, God bless him, tends to get hung up on how things are supposed to work. So I’ll tell you what I told him, I said “Ben, honey, chill, you are loved by God, what else is there? Everything flows from that!” In our last meeting I told him, well, I showed him! That trick with the prayer and the rain, yeah, oh that was good! But really, it’s all about love, that was my last gift to him. I mean we did have some great head cracking discussions of theology, but that wasn’t the important part. That night I told Ben, “Honey, I love you, you’re my twin brother, but I’m not sure that guys understand what women know, that it’s all about relationships.” I said, “I’m certainly not saying that women always do it well, I mean the cat fights that I’ve had to break up in this monastery – Whoo! But we know that ultimately, it’s all about how we live with each other and how we love one another because how do we say we love God and tear each other apart with our words and attitudes?”

Well, Ben was properly chagrined when I said that. Now I won’t say that I always got the last word in our conversations but, I thought that was an important last word. And sisters, this is my last word. Ben is working on the section of the rule about humility and I suggested that that the top of the ladder be the passage from 1^st John that says we finally arrive at the perfect love of God that casts out fear. Isn’t that the ladder we’re climbing, to get to the point where all the fear that drives us is replaced by love. That’s the point of our monastic life, that’s the point of the hard work and perseverance, so that we can truly love God, know that we are loved, and are able to love others.

So, I will end our talk by saying, keep climbing that ladder of humility, and together we will come to everlasting life through our common practice of transformative love. Amen.