The Solemnity of Scholastica – Who are my mother, my brothers, my sisters?
February 9, 2025
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark has always seemed harsh to me; an unfair judgement and rejection of family and friends doing their best to look out for someone they love. In some interpretations of this Gospel, Jesus’ family has come to speak to him and, perhaps, bring him home. They are worried; his teachings – the stand he has taken for the outcast, the poor, the sick, the lame, and even sinners, has caused a stir and upset religious and political authorities. Jesus’ family could easily be worried about his safety; his reputation; his sanity. And by association, they are probably, rightfully, worried for themselves as well. We know, from our own, contemporary life experience that these are reasonable fears. And it seems disrespectful and honestly, a little out of character, when Jesus says, “Who is my mother and my brothers and my sisters?” Well, the easy answer is – they are the people who birthed you, who grew up with you; who loved you into being – right? What happened to the commandment to honor your father and your mother? This Gospel has always been an uncomfortable conundrum for me.
Tomorrow, February 10, is the Feast Day of St. Scholastica the patron saint of Benedictine women and the twin sister of Benedict of Nursia, the author of the Rule of Benedict; this monastery and those of us who benefit from its work owe a debt to the life and works of Scholastica and Benedict. And, in her honor today, we hear the Gospel Mark with its challenge to traditional family bonds juxtaposed with a reading from the Rule of Benedict; rule #72, to be exact, next to the last; the penultimate rule, where Benedict describes the “pure love of sisters and brothers” living in a monastic community formed by the Rule of Benedict. Rule 72 gives some clear relationship directives that are personally challenging; and, when put into practice, provided a form of resistance to the relational norms that shored up the positions of the powerful who benefitted from the creation and maintenance of oppressive systems. For example, Rule 72, exhorts members of the monastery to be the first to show respect to each other. Don’t demand or wait for respect based on your perceived power but be the first to show it. Followers should support, with great patience, one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior. Be a supporter, not a critic. Followers should earnestly compete in obedience to one another. Excellence in a posture of obedience is a goal for everyone, even the most powerful, including the prioress. And no monastics are to pursue what they judge better for themselves but rather what they judge to be better for someone else. Joan Chittister, in her book The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages, says that here, in Rule #72, “is the crux of the entire Rule of Benedict. Benedictine spirituality is not about religiosity….” She says that the bitter zeal Rule 72 warns us against is “that kind of religious fanaticism that makes a god out of religious devotion itself. [She says] bitter zeal walks over the poor on the way to the altar…. [It} wraps us up in ourselves and makes us feel holy about it. Bitter zeal renders us blind to others, deaf to those around us [and] struck dumb in the face of the demands of dailiness”; in the face of the everyday demands of our neighbors in need. Rather, Chittister says Benedictine spirituality “is about caring for the people you live with and loving the people you don’t….” She says that “we must learn to listen to what God is saying in our simple, sometimes insane, and always uncertain daily lives;” lives lived in relation to brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, given and chosen, as well as neighbors known and unknown (178). And then, she says, “Good zeal, monastic zeal, commits us to the happiness of human community…. [It] is the foundation for [a] spirituality of the long haul”; a spirituality that serves us and guides us when things look bleak and the going is tough. And there it is– tucked at the end of the Rule – the commitment to communal happiness; the core to resistance against the bitter zeal that has and will always be lurking in wait.
The Rule of Benedict comes to us from the 6th century and cannot honestly be portrayed as some feminist, anti-racist or postcolonial manifesto meant to dismantle the hierarchal systems that governed the people of that time. Yet, in its rules which govern the day-to-day patterns of being together as monastic brothers and sisters, it does lean into a counter-cultural, relational shift away from systems where honor, authority, respect, and well-being have to do with hierarchal patterns of lineage that confer authority and wealth based on familial accumulations of power. The Rule of Benedict bends us toward a framework where honor, authority, respect and well-being have more to do with living into values like hospitality, simplicity, care for the earth, and justice; and doing this in the context of a community where, as Chittister says, we are immersed “in the love of Christ, minute by minute, person by person, day after day after day.” And this creates a shift – at least potentially, if we are listening with the ear of our heart, — from a patriarchal, hierarchical organization of power that asks (taking us back to the Gospel of Mark), “Who is your father?” “Who is your mother?” Who is your brother?” Who is your sister? to a value based relational way of being that affirms our commonalities and our communality modeled on the inclusive love and teachings of Jesus.
We live our lives in a time of intense division – us vs. them; Christian vs the unsaved; black vs white; woman vs man; queer vs. straight; citizen vs illegal human; and the list goes on – perhaps all times are such. But by walking in the doors of this monastery we make a choice – the choice to be formed by a Benedictine values-based way of being in community – counter to the division created by the dominant systems that rank and divide people to the benefit of a few and the suffering of many.
In today’s gospel, the people in the crowd, sitting at the feet of Jesus, made a choice as well – to listen and to be formed and for some, to follow Jesus and spread his message of love. And that is the connection Joan Chittister makes when she says “good zeal, monastic zeal, commits us to the happiness of the whole human community in every moment in relation to each and every person. Benedictine spirituality – the way of being in relationship, the way of love, that Rule #72 calls for – isn’t just a way of being in community meant for those inside monastic walls – rather it is a values-based way of being meant to be shared and lived in the wider world – a living, tangible experience of the love Jesus proclaimed to the people in today’s gospel. Rule #72 is simple a guide; a path of resistance; a way of love; and an answer to Jesus’ question – “Who are my mother and my brothers and my sisters! Whoever [loves like Jesus and thereby] does the will of God….”