Archbishop Enrique Benavent Vidal of Valencia in Spain encouraged the faithful to take advantage of summer vacation to read and delve deeper into the Rule of St. Benedict, as it contains “insights ...

Why is the name Benedict so important? Some commentators point to the last pope named Benedict, Pope Benedict XV, in an attempt to understand why the new pope chose the name. The previous Benedict ...

I could hear the news broadcast outside my door this morning as I sat down to talk to you about the Rule of Benedict's ninth step of humility. For the first time in my life, I not only understood the ...

The resort was as posh as they come: all-inclusive, tucked away in a pristine corner of the Arizona desert and boasting stunning vistas of sun-drenched mountains around every bend of its adobe ...

Monastics from diverse religious traditions the world over face similar opportunities, challenges and frustrations. Shortly before his death in 1968, Thomas Merton met the young Tenzin Gyatso, the ...

Problem: Time is ruthless. It plods on with no regard whatsoever for our own pace of change. It plants tomorrow and uproots yesterday to such a degree that if we live in one city all our lives, we ...

I am a 40-something mom of teenagers in modern America—possibly the furthest thing from a father of Western monasticism or a Renaissance-era Spanish theologian. Yet Sts. Benedict of Nursia and ...

In the early 6th century, when St. Benedict of Nursia wrote his Rule for living together in community, I doubt he could have imagined that 16 centuries later, a college and university on a continent ...

Very few of us will be historic figures. We are not famous now, nor will we be. It’d be nice if some folks come to our funeral some day, but after that most all of us join the long slow parade into ...

THESE volumes form the first instalment of a work in which one of the great lights of the Romish Church in our day proposes to recount the glories of Western Monasticism, and to narrate the lives of ...