Monastere Saint Benoit

14/06/2026

A Homily for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

+ There are three ways in which a just man can relate to the unjust. Firstly, with the indignation that “I cannot speak to you for you are a sinner.” Secondly, as an accuser of those sins, driving the sinner to resentment if not despair. The third manner is to lead the unjust to justice—to show them their sin so as to lead them to repentance without losing the fraternal bond of charity.

In truth, however, there is only one manner in which the just man may treat the unjust. We are not conceived immaculately nor are we God. The first two approaches serve only to heighten pride and increase ill will. The latter can bring the sinner to God.

Our Lord demonstrates not only in His words the extent to which He will go to bring back the sinner to God, He also took the form of a servant and died the death of the lowest criminal to bring us back to God (cf. Philippians 2:7-8). And not only to bring us back to God, but to break the power of sin over us. How then could he fail to eat with the sinners of his day so as to turn them from their sin? He sought, and commands us to likewise, to make the kingdom of God available to all who would listen to the words of eternal life. Yet many, even most, turn their back on those same words. (cf. John 6:66-67)

Yet not all those around Him were prepared to listen. The Pharisees and other religious authorities, believing themselves to be just, refused to take up His words and example. They would not be parted from their own sinful ways. And they despised and rejected those who thought and preached to others that they can put their sins behind them. Having no recognition of their need for salvation, Our Lord’s admonitions were of little avail and were often received as if an insult. It is not that they did not have need for correction, but only that they refused any acknowledgement of their imperfection.

So likewise, it is with us. It is easy to know that the converted and repentant sinner is far more pleasing to God and the angels than the continuation of the just. Yet the recognition of the thorn in our own eye is not so easy (cf. Matthew 7:3-5). We also must convert from those sins and vices we have not fully driven out of our own persons. We are, nonetheless, entirely dependent upon the grace of God to avoid evil and do good.

We live, however, in a world where it is often not those who are seeking God who boast of their justice, but those who are hardened in their sin. There are many who boast of their evil doing and rejoice to see sin. Often they even claim that this sin is justice. Bringing them the Gospel in all its implications is all the harder for that reality. Whilst the seed must still be scattered and sewn, it will often land not only on shallow soil but even on concrete (cf. Matthew 13:3-8). Yet even then it might pe*****te a crack somehow and put down roots unto eternal life.

Finding such an opening that the seed can pe*****te takes much patience and perseverance. Nor can the good, but unsown, soil be ignored in the hope of finding the slightest crack in a sheet of concrete. Yet the charity demanded of us by Our Lord requires this work is undertaken. It is not by accusation of sin that the truth of God shall come to be known; rather it is through encountering His goodness that the evil of sin becomes self-evident. +

10/06/2026

Oremus pro unitate Eccclesiæ!

09/06/2026

Corpus Christi 2026

07/06/2026

A Homily for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

+ Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. The Gospel is full of them: “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it’…‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them’…‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’

Such excuses may seem reasonable enough: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with committing matrimony or purchasing property or cattle. Indeed, they are goods ordered to the sustenance and prosperity of human life and its procreation. But some goods, some good things or endeavours or choices, are subordinate to higher ones. And this is the Truth that is being taught to us by Our Lord through the Sacred Liturgy of His Church this morning. Even good things that are not evil in themselves can be used to excuse ourselves from the demands that higher goods make upon us.

We see this frequently enough in respect of the duty all Catholics have to be present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation throughout the year. Apart from the sheer avarice of using Sundays simply as another day for non-essential paid work, from the demands of children’s sport or family celebrations or the indulgence in favourite recreations, or the pressure to get some work or study done at home, or simply from sloth, all too many Catholics excuse themselves from the Lord’s Banquet, thereby turning otherwise good activities into idols and relegating the worship of Almighty God to second place.

We must never forget the third commandment: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day” and the demand that it contains to worship God above all and before all, without making pathetic excuses. Certainly, the Church teaches that serious reasons such as grave illness or prolonged travel that make our attendance at Mass impossible are sufficient excuse for being absent, however buying a field or marrying a wife or five yoke of oxen—or any of the contemporary excuses we like to use—are not amongst them. The worship of God must come first.

So too, we see the use of lesser goods to excuse from higher ones quite often when a young man or woman begins to think that the Lord may be inviting them to follow him in a particular vocation as a monk or a nun or a priest or religious. Certainly, the invitation is always challenging, if not truly frightening and the range of excuses one can employ in running away from it are myriad. There are so many apparently good things one could and can do otherwise! But, in the face of the Lord’s invitation they are mere excuses—excuses which in fact loose what goodness they may have enjoyed when they are employed to procrastinate or avoid and turn down the Lord’s call, and which can thereby become evils. A car remains a car: but when it is used to flee from a duty that is owed it loses its neutrality and becomes an instrument of wrongdoing. Fugitives are fugitives, even when they hide in seemingly good places.

Such running away from God’s will is not the sole preserve of people ignoring His call. How many people flee marriage vows, ordination, or religious vows because, as the saying goes, the grass is seemingly greener on the other side of any given fence? Excuses are the diabolical antithesis to that perseverance to the end through which we are saved. (cf. Mt 24:13) The Lord’s invitation must be accepted on His terms and must not be diluted or dismissed according to conditions we impose.

Preaching on this Gospel St Augustine interprets the excuses used thus: “I have married a wife, is the concupiscence of the flesh; [the] five yoke of oxen, the concupiscence of the eyes [or of the five senses]; I have bought a farm, the pride of life [or of power and of possessions].” Most, if not all, of our excuses fall under one of these categories. Again, much that falls under these categories is not necessarily evil in itself, but in the light of the Lord’s invitation to higher things, if they occlude that to which we are being invited they lose their erstwhile goodness. Evil, is, after all, defined as the privation of a due good. If fleshly desires, the delights of the senses and the attraction of power and of possessions are not subordinated to the life to which we are called by our very Baptism, and later to the particular vocation that is ours, they can become millstones around our necks.

We might, then, describe this as “no excuses Sunday,” for Our Lord calls us this morning to a radical honesty in respect of the fundamental duties of our baptismal vocation and of those of the particular vocation He has given to each one of us. For His ‘invitation’ is not to some ephemeral social event in which we may or may not wish to participate. It is the invitation to enter the door that is in fact the gateway to eternal life; it is the invitation to the Supper of the Lamb (cf. Rev. 19:6-9), and if we make excuses we shall be counted amongst those spoken of at the end of this morning’s Gospel: “None of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”

An examination of conscience is in order and, where we have hidden behind excuses, due repentance and amendment of life is necessary if we are to take our place at the Lord’s Eternal Banquet to which we are invited. For the grace so to do, let us beg Almighty God at this foretaste of that Banquet in which we now participate. +

06/06/2026

03/06/2026

Oremus!

31/05/2026

A Homily for Trinity Sunday

+ In this morning’s Gospel we hear Our Lord’s final instructions to His disciples given as He ascended into heaven: to baptise all peoples and to teach them all that I have commanded you. The two can never be truly separated, nor neglected. Europe, now being mission territory, requires us to take up this command anew with zeal and vigour. The unchanging truth of the Gospel, the Good news of our Redemption, imperatively demands proclamation.

It is only through baptism in the name of the Most Holy Trinity that we can be saved. Precisely because baptism is a once and for all event in our lives, we must guard the purity of that baptism ever more closely intact. It is for this reason that Our Lord so pertinently repeats that association of teaching with baptism. And what is it that is be taught? “To observe all that I have commanded you.” Without any doubt this includes the final command to baptise, in the name of the threefold persons who are one God. But this is far from all. It includes all the precepts assuring justice and charity before God. This is sacramental and ritual demand just as it is a moral one. Keeping the Lord’s Day holy, for example, requires the rightful worship of God and doing what good to one's neighbour as may be found needful.

No commandment, divinely given, can be explained away or be manipulated or inverted through some sophism. God has given these commands because they are pertinent and good for us. We cannot find some excuse to shake them off. Nor, however, can we observe them so pharisaically so as to destroy the reason for their being given. This is precisely the fault of the Pharisees. There are, moreover, times when, without obfuscating the truth, some tact is necessary in order to convince the world of the truth of the Church before revealing the fullness of that truth to them. Never can this be done in such a manner as to imply an acceptance of their sin, but rather in offering a delicacy which does not drive them ever further from the Church.

The command to instruct and baptise offers the highest form of charity to neighbour. Living integrally within the Church is the first fundamental choice that is necessary for somebody’s eternal good. All temporal goods are fleeting and as nothing in comparison, but they are nonetheless goods. This is a reality.

The apostolic mission requires all to work together. No individual person is sufficient, yet all are nonetheless required to play their part. The laity can reach those places and persons to whom the clergy do not have easy access, especially in schools and universities. But the clergy are needed to offer the necessary formation, and above all the sacraments. Neither can work in isolation or distance from the other.

Let us allow, therefore, this Holy Mass to infuse within us an ever more fervent love of the Trinity. Praising God ever more fully, let that fervour pour out from us to those around us, in all scenarios. Working with all the vigour of a true Apostle in the modern world, ever must we proclaim the reality of the Holy Trinity more clearly through our words and actions. +

31/05/2026

An appeal - Un appel

30/05/2026

Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus

Nous avons la bénédiction d'avoir parmi nous des oblats et des amis du monastère qui se consacrent à embellir l'église du monastère et son autel avec de magnifiques compositions florales, en fonction des fêtes et des saisons de l'année liturgique ; nous leur en sommes profondément reconnaissants. Cette année, les fleurs préparées pour la fête de la Pentecôte sont d'une beauté exceptionnelle.

We are blessed to have oblates and friends of the monastery who dedicate themselves to beautifying the monastery church and its altar with exquisite flowers according to the feasts and season of the liturgical year, for which efforts we are profoundly grateful. This year, the flowers provided for the feast of Pentecost have a particular beauty.