Born in 480 to a distinguished family in Nursia, Benedict as a young man abandoned his studies and gave up his inheritance to pursue a monastic life. He lived for several years as a hermit in Subiaco, where he was joined by a group of monks seeking a spiritual leader, but after an attempt on his life moved to Monte Cassino and founded an abbey, considered the birthplace of the Benedictine order. It was in Monte Cassino that Benedict wrote his Rule, and died in 547. Benedict required of himself and his monastic brothers a life of work, prayer, and spiritual reading a pattern that each of us may reproduce in some form today. Benedict asks us to listen carefully and look for God, to practice obedience, humility, and renunciation, and finally to lose ourselves in the liturgy, in the Scriptures, and in prayer. Not everyone is called to the monastic ideal of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but even the busiest person among us may draw nearer to God and live humbly and prayerfully, in the spirit of Saint Benedict.
