Pope Benedict XVI had been quoting St. Benedict of Norcia under whose patronage he had put his Petrine office. From the very first talk he gave as Pope, he already quoted from the writings of the Patriach of Western monasticism. And he had not stopped.
One of the mottoes of St. Benedict is “Ora et Labora.” Three simple words and yet it contains the entire theology of the spiritual life. “Ora” is the whole theology of prayer life, specially contemplation and “Labora” is the foundation of the theology of “Rerum Novarum.”
“Ora et Labora” is the marriage of the spiritual and the natural. With the spiritual invigorating the natural while the natural defending the spiritual. It is, in fact, a combination of Mary and Martha; the mystery of the Incarnation.
“Labora” is not work as we ordinarily understand it. In Christian asceticism we do not work to sustain ourselves. We do not get a job so we can eat. We depend completely on the providence of God for our sustenance, for He had promised to provide all our needs if we seeked His kingdom first. In Christianity, we work to be able to provide for the needs of others. Christians do not work to sustain themselves, they work so they can do good works or works of charity for their neighbors.
“Ora” is the more important part. “Ora,” or prayer is love of God; “Labora,” or work is love of neighbor.
When Prayer invigorates Labor, the land is transformed into a garden and a city becomes a city of God. Labor, on the other hand, raises a soul to the heights of contemplation. This was the movement that created the most splendid civilization in the world…Christian Europe. . . something Our Holy Father hopes to re-create in a smaller degree.
The central point of St. Benedict’s Rule of Life (which is the New Testament summarized and simplified) is the Divine Office, the Liturgical prayers. And in between these prayers are schedules of work which were not meant for the sustenance of the community, but for the deepening of the monk’s spiritual life. The moments of prayer were the leaven that sanctified their work. Of course, when they worked, they had produce. Well, might as well consume them. But that was not the purpose.
See a similar illustration in Exodus. The jews left Egypt to go to the desert to worship God through prayer. In their journey, they did not have to work for their sustenance, though they brought their cattle. God fed them along the way.
Picture this in a sort of extra-terrestial vision; through “Ora” God beams on earth graces from heaven. Then the beams of graces transform the earth into an earthly paradise. That is how things are supposed to work. And that was what precisely happened to Western Europe except that everything went crashing down before it was completely transformed into a City of God. Today, our present Pope is content to have a little suburb of God. And there is no other way of going about it than through “Ora et Labora.”
Most religious movements contain the element of sanctifying the workplace. A movement closer to “Ora et Labora” is the return of the converts to the fields. It is happening in the U. S. It happened in England during the springtime of Catholicism in the beginnings of the 19th century in the Dichtling community. It bloomed during the time of the guilds in the middle ages shown by the fact that the laborers were freer, more contented and had more food than now. Attempts to revive it were made by the Distributist movement of Belloc and Fr. Vincent McNabb O.P. This movement had the right idea of what “Ora et Labora” should be. Definitely it would never enrich any national economy. And as Chesterton, one of its proponent, quipped: it was not tried and found wanting, it was found too difficult and never tried again. But it was definitely very successful when tried at first.(Painting above is St.Benedict’s sermon to the inhabitants of Montecassino by Stefanelli)