Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ
Saint Matthew 5,38-42

Today July 11In Italy is celebrated the feast of St. Benedict, Patron of Europe, who has allowed us to be who we are today, placing himself in the unconditional following of Christ.

«See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we have?»

Those who have listened to Jesus and over the centuries have followed him in this path, in his request for an irreversible and binding dedication to the mission of evangelizing, bringing the God's word Christ to the world, but also of saving and transmitting our classical culture.
They are thus the ones who allowed our very existence as Christians. Just as one cannot imagine a world without the existence of the empire that about two thousand years ago favored the lightning expansion of Christianity in the then known Western world, so one cannot imagine what Europe would have become without the monks of medieval monasteries.
They are the monks, who have evicted and cultivated entire regions, making a decisive contribution to amalgamating the Greco-Roman culture and that of the new conquering peoples..

Monks at works in the field

It is always the monks who have saved works of art, tirelessly copying every literary work without exception, and saving the savable of the antiquity works.

Monks intent on copying ancient manuscripts and documents

The monks of medieval monasteries passed on to posterity all our classical culture, and also its values ​​on law and justice. In this regard we can read the speech of Pope Benedict 16th at the general audience of April 9, 2008. Please see the following hostorical note.

The balanced relationship between prayer and work marked the days in religious communities from the Middle Ages onwards. In the silence of the cloisters, thousands of monks have contributed to rebuilding Europe with their patient work. The Latin phrase associated with the rule of St. Benedict, ora et labora, means "pray and work", or "pray and work hard".

Of course, we ordinary Christians, who aren't monks and maybe even have a family to provide for, cannot leave everything and do as they dO. However, in our sphere of life we ​​have the duty to try to imitate them in the orderly relationship that we should establish between our work, our other daily activities, and our prayers.
The Christian prayer is the personal and living relationship of the children of God with their infinitely good Father, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit who dwells in their hearts. Just as Faith, the prayer is always the gift of God who comes to meet man.

LET'S ALWAYS PRAY, CONSTANTLY, but let's do it in an orderly way, so that it is not a limit to our other professional family duties and so on. This will allow us to always live in the presence of God even when, for example, we have to devote all our attention to work. This shall be our part.

With reference to the current conflicts in progress, I recommend that everyone devote a prayer every day to the request for the cessation of all wars that today bloodied our world..

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HISTORICAL NOTE:

Benedict XVI pope from 2005 to 2013  General Audience, April 9, 2008 (Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

Saint Benedict, patron saint of Europe
Today I would like to speak of Saint Benedict, Founder of Western monasticism, and also Patron of my pontificate. I begin with a word of St. Gregory the Great, who writes of St. Benedict: "The man of God who shone on this earth with so many miracles did not shine less for the eloquence with which he was able to explain his doctrine" (Dial. II, 36). These words the great Pope wrote in the year 592; the holy monk had died just 50 years earlier and was still alive in the memory of the people and above all in the flourishing religious order he founded. St. Benedict of Nursia (it is Norcia in Umbria, Italy) with his life and his work has exercised a fundamental influence on the development of European civilization and culture. (...)

At the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries, the world was shaken by a tremendous crisis of values ​​and institutions, caused by the collapse of the Roman Empire, the invasion of new peoples and the decline of customs.
With the presentation of Saint Benedict as a "luminous star", Gregory wanted to indicate in this terrible situation, right here in this city of Rome, the way out of the "dark night of history" (cf. John Paul II). In fact, the Saint's work and, in particular, his Rule proved to be the bearers of an authentic spiritual ferment, which changed over the centuries, well beyond the borders of his homeland and his time, the face of the Europe, arousing after the fall of the political unity created by the Roman Empire a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the continent. This is precisely how the reality we call "Europe" was born.

(Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ Saint Matthew 19,27-29

New King James Version 27