In short, therefore, it can be said that St Benedict’s message is an invitation to interiorness. Man must first of all enter himself, he must know himself deeply, he must discover within himself the aspiration to God and traces of the Absolute. The theocentric and liturgical character of the social reform advocated by St Benedict seems to follow exactly the famous exhortation of St Augustine: “Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in interiore homine habitat veritas” (Vera rel. 39, 72). St Gregory, in his famous “Dialogues” (Migne, P.L. 125-204), in which he narrates St Benedict’s life, writes that he “lived alone with himself under the eyes of the one who observes us from above: solus superni spectatoris oculis habitavit secum” (Lb. II, C. III).
Let us listen to St Benedict’s voice: from interior solitude, from contemplative silence, from victory over the noise of the external world, from this “living with oneself”, there is born the dialogue with oneself and with God, which leads right to the summits of asceticism and mysticism.
Pope John Paul II
Address to the Monks of the Abbey of Monte Cassino
Friday, 18 May 1979
