Spreading the Gospel: A Monastic Perspective, by Abbot Patrick Moore, OSB
For nearly 100 years the monks of this community have operated Benedictine
High School. The goal of the school has always been to instill into the young men we are privileged to educate a practical faith and Christian-Biblical values with which to form their adult lives. With these tools our graduates have gone on to become successful and influential leaders in their communities and in their fields of endeavor, while, hopefully, bearing witness to their faith and the practice of the moral and religious principles learned while at BHS. In addition the monks of the Abbey have recently expanded the operation of our retreat center and created a new religious gift shop that specializes in monastic books and gifts thereby creating other avenues for disseminating the truths of the faith.
Finally, monks from the Richmond monastery have, since 1860, been involved in parochial work in the Richmond area and throughout Virginia and we continue to do so to this day by preaching the Word of God, administering the Sacraments and serving the spiritual needs of the faithful in a variety of ways as parish pastors, weekend substitutes in parishes, chaplains in nursing homes, hospitals and military bases. Thus Mary Mother of the Church Abbey is making a small, but hopefully significant, contribution towards the betterment of the spiritual and temporal life of the people of this area and world-wide.
I mention all of this to stress the role that all Christian believers have in spreading the knowledge of Christ and building a better world – we all must do our part commensurate with our talents and abilities. In these times our Judeo-Christian values and beliefs are being threatened by secular and atheistic influences all around us. those who, citing the separation clause in our U.S. Constitution (which is a wonderful thing in itself), try to squelch any reference to God and religious principles in the public forum as being contrary to the separation of church and state. Thus, for instance, we are no longer supposed to call our biggest and most beautiful holiday by its traditional name, Christmas, since it has the words Christ and Mass in it.
The anti-religious forces, that demand a strict, literal separation of anything that smacks of God and religion from the national life, don’t seem to recognize that our nation was built on Judeo-Christian, biblical principles and if we were to loose them it would undermine one of the basic foundations of our government and our American way of life. In the monastery we have public table-reading during some of our meals. Currently we are reading an excellent book, One Nation Under God: The History of Prayer in America, by James P. Moore, Jr. (who happens to be a friend of this Abbey). The book traces the prayer practices of our founding fathers (and mothers) in the development of this country and its government.
The present interpretation of the separation clause that some are proffering would be incomprehensible to the likes of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. For men and women of faith (and all our founders were) it makes no sense; in their minds you could not separate them. Virtually all the early leaders of this republic were people of faith who engaged publicly and privately in frequent, devout prayer according Moore’s research and they often mentioned the need for divine help and blessing in their political statements and proclamations. No one found that unconstitutional or in any way incompatible with being a good American citizen.
So it is that we who have faith in God and ascribe to the teachings of the Bible have an obligation to stand up for that faith and its moral principles against an increasingly anti-religious, atheistic society – the health of our nation depends on it. We have the same task, in some ways, that the twelve men that Jesus chose as his Apostles had. They were sent out with Jesus’ message of truth and salvation to spread it throughout the world despite incredible odds and opposition. And they were remarkably effective! It is interesting to parallel the progress of Western civilization and democratic ideals with the growth of Christianity.
Without the impulse of the Gospel message Europe would have stagnated in monarchical totalitarianism and barbarism. Once the gospel was firmly established Europeans were inspired to spread that gospel, without it they would have been far less motivated for the explorations of the 16th century. This means that the ships the came to America for “God, gold and glory” probably would not have sailed, which means this country would not have been colonized when it was and by whom it was, which means that the values of Christianity would not have activated democracy as we know it and therefore who knows what kind of a nation or nations would have developed here – certainly not what we know and love today.
In addition, although it is not very evident in North America, the effects of monasticism on Western society can hardly be exaggerated. As the barbarians dismantled the Roman Empire during the lifetime of St. Benedict in the 5th Century, the monks took up the task of copying and later disseminating the classics of antiquity, thus preserving much of the old civilization and laying the foundations of the new. It was the monks who founded the first European universities in cities like Paris and Bologna as a means of spreading gospel truth. With the impulse of this rich and ancient tradition and background, then, we here at Mary Mother of the Church Abbey strive to spread the Good News of the Gospel here in the city of Richmond and throughout the state of Virginia and beyond.
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