February 1981 Print

Our "saint of the month" is honored by the Universal Church on February 10. This article originally appeared in the French periodical Itinéraires in October 1980.

Saint Scholastica was the sister of Saint Benedict, and their lives were so closely interwoven that a tradition got started that they were twins. They spent their youth together until the time when, following the law of the Roman Empire, the young man was required to go to Rome to pursue the studies which would fit him for some useful occupation. In that totalitarian State the government decided everything. The young Martin (in another case), the son of a soldier, was obliged to enter the army. The "directors" of our own day perform feats of valor of the same kind.

Meanwhile, history relates that the young Scholastica was vowed to God in her childhood; the two children, very devout, no doubt talked the matter over, and Saint Benedict gave expression to his sentiments by fleeing from Rome and its schools with the help of his governess, at the age of fifteen or sixteen—"untaught though wise," as his biographer says. He ended up at the grotto of Subiaco where he spent three years in the life of a hermit without his miracles attracting to him any disciples. He also founded about twelve small monasteries.

The times were more troubled even than ours; in the fifth century, when Benedict and Scholastica were born, there was no lasting peace, no tranquillity, no assurance of a peaceful tomorrow, and no stability except in the Catholic Church. But the Church was weak, and the heretical party had the greater numbers and forces. It was the time of the great invasions; and the invading barbarians were Arians.

In 406 the Vandals, the Alani, the Suebians and the Visigoths burst into the Roman Empire. Alaric, chief of the Visigoths, captured and sacked Rome around 410. Saint Augustine died in 430 in Hippo while it was being besieged by the Vandals. Attila, defeated in France (on the Plains of Chalons), turned toward Italy; he was stopped before the gates of Rome by Pope Saint Leo the Great, as he had been stopped before the gates of Troyes by Saint Lupus; which proves what power the leaders of the Church then had. This was the age when Saint Scholastica and Saint Benedict were born. In 476 Odoacer, chief of the Heruli, sacked Rome and took the title of king of Italy. It was the end of the Roman Empire in the West; but this barbarian was defeated and assassinated by Theodoric, king of the East Goths (Ostrogoths) around 492, when our two saints were fourteen years old. All these barbarians, converted to Christianity during their sojourn in the Eastern Empire, were Arians and denied the divinity of Christ. Some of them persecuted Catholics violently.

It was the time also of the heresy of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople; he viewed Christ as a perfect man to whom divinity was somehow attached; and the Ostrogoths ravaged all of Italy, since their king wanted to test the sanctity of Saint Benedict, then at Monte Cassino.

One looked out on the world and beheld it full of violence and murder; with the invasions of a new structure of society was forming; the newcomers were not numerous, but they had all the power and a very deficient concept of justice. They realized they were incapable of administering a society much more diverse and civilized than the one whence they came; so they took Roman officials, like Cassiodorus and Boethius. This was putting one's life at the mercy of the master's whim, as Boethius found out.

The Church had to form these barbarians and to hand on to them Christian thought purified of what Roman society had kept from its pagan origins, such as slavery and totalitarianism of the State. In modern times, the Church would have to purify itself and us of the neo-paganism of the Renaissance (and the rationalism of the Reformation); of the individualism of Liberalism, which invests money with power, and its opposite (which is born from it), socialist totalitarianism.

How did the Church go about this? By means of her saints; she has no other means.

Such was the time when Saint Scholastica and her brother lived; Saint Benedict is well known; his sister lived in his shadow, and it is in the life of Saint Benedict that the sanctity of his sister shows its character; here is what Saint Gregory the Great says about her: "Scholastica, sister of our blessed Father, vowed to God in childhood, was accustomed to come once a year to see her brother. The man of God came down for the occasion to a small house belonging to the monastery, not far from the gate. The day came when, according to custom her venerable brother came down with his disciples to meet her. They spent the whole day in praise of God and holy conversation. When day faded and night fell, they took supper together; while they were still at table and it was getting late and the holy talk continued. The saintly nun said to her brother: 'Please do not leave, but let us spend the night discussing the joys of eternal life.' He said in reply: 'What are you asking, my sister? I cannot in any way remain outside the monastery.'

"The sky was still quite clear and there was not a trace of cloud in the sky. But the holy woman, at her brother's refusal, crossed her fingers on the table and, putting her head on her hands, repeated her request to Almighty God. And when she raised her head, the thunder and wind and such a rainstorm came up, that neither the venerable brother, nor the brethren who came with him, and who now studied the weather from the safety of the threshold, could set foot outdoors.

"Because the saintly nun, her head on her hands, released a flood of tears and changed a peaceful evening into rain. The response followed the request in an instant; and the prayer and the downpour coincided so perfectly, that Scholastica had scarcely lifted her head from the table when it thundered and the rain fell.

"So, in the midst of the flashes of lightning, of thunder and of torrents of rain, the man of God, seeing that he could not return to his monastery, became sad and said: 'May Almighty God forgive you, sister, what you have done.' And Scholastica replied: 'I asked you and you did not wish to listen to me. I asked God and He understood. So go now if you can, leave me and return to your monastery.' Saint Benedict, who had refused to remain, now could not leave the protection of the roof, so he remained in spite of himself. They spent the night awake and regaling each other with spiritual talk.

"The next morning, the venerable woman went back to her monastery and the man of God to his. Three days later, lifting his eyes to heaven in his cell, Benedict saw the soul of his sister leave her body and enter into the heights of heaven in the form of a dove. Rejoicing in the glory of his sister, he gave thanks to God in hymns of praise and announced her death to the brethren. He sent them to find her body and to bring it to the monastery, so that he could bury it in the grave which he had prepared for himself."

The Church today sings: "Who is she who flies like a cloud and like a dove returns to her nest? God has given me wings like a dove: I will fly away and be at rest." Again: "Rise and come, my sister, my dove, my beautiful; come and take the crown which the Lord has prepared for you for all eternity." Is this not the Christian poetry which some wish to suppress? Let us profit from it, if there is still time: "Under the form of a dove, the soul of Scholastica appeared. The soul of her brother has rejoiced. The soul of Scholastica has appeared. Glory to the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. In the form of a dove, the soul of Scholastica has appeared."

This is the antiphon for the Magnificat of First Vespers: "The crowd of the faithful exults in the glory of Scholastica, especially the virgins who celebrate her feast; because, relying on her tears and in prayer to the Lord, she obtained more from Him because she loved much."

She loved much! As God sent into the world at the end of the nineteenth century Sister Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, to offer herself as a victim to merciful love, so He sent, amid the miseries which followed the fall of the Roman Empire, a holy woman vowed to holy love.

We know nothing, or little enough, of the mystical life of those far distant ages; they wrote nothing about it: they were content to live it. Saint Benedict wrote his rule for beginners as an ascetical method. After describing the twelve degrees of humility, which seem to us a perfect summary of sanctity, he says in substance that the monk, when finally free, can then enter into the spiritual life; and then he doesn't describe it. It is in effect both divine and personal at once. Scholastica followed the teachings of her brother. Nothing indicates that she founded a monastery. Saint Gregory says: when she returned to her own cell; "cell" can mean simply her room. Consecrated virgins often remained with their families. When Saint Benedict, around 525, founded Monte Cassino, she came to take up residence nearby. Who knows whether in that last night they had together, it was not her who, without meaning to, instructed the patriarch of Western monks?

Such are the arms of the Church; in the impossibility of healing a society as disturbed as ours—except little by little—the Church gathered souls that are far-seeing and careful of the "one thing needful" and established tiny Christian communities, as perfect as possible on earth and maintained unity by the influence, as properly founded on Scripture, of her popes. It is probable—according to the opinion of Dom Schuster—that it was the pope himself who sent St. Benedict into the Campagna; Saint Benedict settled on the edge of this plain, very rich but at the time depopulated and without clergy, since it had been pillaged more than ten times in a century. Saint Benedict preached evangelical doctrine to the peasants of the area—"with zeal and constancy," says his biographer. The role of Saint Scholastica was to be a heroine of love, as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus is in ours.

In our age, the true response of the Church remains the same as in the sixth century. The evil is still greater, as it is not simply a question of civilizing brutes and showing them how to conduct themselves as Christians. We live in an apostate society and the intellectual and moral disorders affect even Christians. The response is an appeal to the sanctity of all. This appeal will first reach only a small number of souls; sudden transformations are impossible. Cataclysms like the great invasions show us what follows: four centuries of governmental anarchy and social troubles, somehow compensated for by four centuries of sanctity; and a sanctity such as exists presently on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a sanctity of martyrs.

Today as in that time, the true Christian life consists in living in the holy hope of heaven, in doing what we must to get there, and in trying to do the will of God. Nothing is to be gained by social transformations whose success and consequences are always risky; one must immediately take the side of God.

Little natural societies which should give the example are, first of all, families: they are the instrument destined to save the small remnant which must hold on. Here it is easier than elsewhere to lead a Christian life in a unit founded on love. In our appeal to Christian women, we have shown that the future of humanity depends on the formation of small children; and this formation is entrusted to their mothers directly by God.

How beautiful, this fraternal bond between Scholastica and Benedict! And of the Martin sisters, all four of whom were religious, three of them remaining together as Carmelites. Families have prepared for the birth of saints; and the story of saints' mothers is as long as that of the saints themselves. Saint Gregory ends his narrative of Saint Scholastica by saying that her brother had her buried in his own grave and concludes: "So it happened that, as their souls were always joined in God, their bodies likewise were together in the tomb."

There are ways of working for the peace of the Church and for the conversion of souls; that which applies most to Christians generally is to imitate those parents who, in Nurcia, raised Scholastica and Benedict, or Mr. and Mrs. Martin. The latter's life we know; they sought above all the kingdom of God; and it was not without pains. But can Jesus be born in your soul, or in those of your children, except that a sword pierce your heart?