Animal House

This was not the higher education that the young man from a small town had expected.

Nobody really cared about studies. All they cared about was partying (and there were more than a few togas).

So the young man left school and went to spend a little quiet time in the country.

He ended up spending a long time there and he became very close to God.

His holiness became so well known that when the abbot of a nearby monastery died, the monks begged him to become their new abbot.

It was not a happy house: some of the monks sometimes acted like animals and they ended up trying to kill him. The young man was saved only by a miracle.

He knew there had to be a better way to run a monastery, so he gathered some likeminded men around him and wrote a rule for monastic living.

It turned out to be a tremendous success. Many, many more monasteries would be established, following that same rule. These monasteries would not only become spiritual havens for the monks, but when the civilization of the outside world came crashing down, these monasteries preserved the light of knowledge and education as well as the Gospel of Christ.

The memory of St. Benedict, founder of Western Monasticism and Father of Europe, is celebrated on this day.