The Final Word

Each 11 July we celebrate the feast of St Benedict.St Benedict has still much to teach us.In his early adulthood in Italy, Benedict became so disillusioned and disgusted with the affluence and decadence of his society that he withdrew to an isolated cave to live a solitary life of prayer. Other people soon joined him for many of the same reasons, and a monastic community began to grow.St Benedict was to become one of the fathers of monasticism, and built small ‘islands of light’, monasteries where communal prayer and scholarship, work and spiritual practice could be...