Feast of All Benedictine Saints
13/November/2007 Filed in:
JottingsIt is fashionable to laud "diversity". One has only to look at some of the saints who have been formed by the Rule of St Benedict to see a spiritual diversity at work which knocks the secular equivalent hollow (but I speak as a partial observer). And if one widens the scope of the definition "saint" to embrace those who have not been formally canonized but whose lives are an inspiration to others, the diversity is more striking still. We can place a cloistered nun like St Gertrude or St Mechtilde beside the oblate Dorothy Day; a cloistered monk like St Aelred or St Bernard (Cistercians, of course) beside a wanderer like St Benedict Joseph Labre. There's even a chance God might make saints of you and me.