Br. Luke Ditewig

Scholastica

Matthew 6:5-8

Young children often call out: “Look at me! See me play. See what I can do.” Adults don’t often yell it out so directly, yet we want to be seen. We receive love by being seen and known. This this core need can get distorted. A good desire to participate, help, and lead as well as to be seen can become overly focused on attention.

Eugene Peterson wrote: “Hypocrisy is slow-growing. In its early stages it is difficult to detect. And that is why no one is conscious of becoming a hypocrite. . . . Distraction from intended good ends up as hypocrisy.”[1] Distraction. Jesus says: The world is not a stage for you to show off good deeds. Beware of practicing your piety in order to be seen by others. Don’t announce your compassion. What you could receive can distract from the good you do. Doing good can distract from being.

Jesus commends praying in secret, not seen by others. We brothers pray a lot together in public. We work to do it well: to listen to each other and sing together. We also pray in secret, that is alone in solitude. This private prayer sustains and is the well-spring from which we pray much together in public as well as all our other work and ministry. Private and public, personal and communal. As monastics we are alone together, solitary in community.

Today we remember St. Scholastica, sister of St. Benedict. After he founded a monastery, she founded a convent of sisters. Gregory the Great tells the story that Scholastica and Benedict annually met for conversation and worship. Once when Benedict was about to return home, Scholastica asked him to stay. Benedict said he could not because of his community’s norm. Scholastica prayed, after which there was a sudden storm, and thus Benedict stayed with her that night for further conversation. We remember Scholastica for strong community leadership as well as holding up love and friendship amid the keeping of norms.

There is opportunity and tension for all of us, whether as religious in monasteries or convents or not, in cultivating both solitude and community, in being alone and together with God. For balance in life, serving, resting, and praying, we need times alone as well as together. In solitude and silence, we hear afresh our Divine Parent and Friend: I see you for who you truly are. You are my beloved, fully known and welcome.

Come show yourself, laugh and cry, be held and hugged, and simply be. Be yourself with the One who truly sees. From such prayer, look with love at friends and community like Blessed Scholastica whom we remember today.

[1] E. H. Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids, MI, 2008), 140.