Student Reflections from Quarantine: June
We asked some of our students to reflect on their experience of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each month this summer we will share one of those reflections with you.
In his Rule, Saint Benedict assigns certain roles to his monks. First, the abbot, the father figure who stands in the place of Christ. Then the cellarer, who cares for the goods and tools of the monastery, treating them with as much reverence as he would the vessels of the altar. Finally, the kitchen workers, who prostrate themselves in front of the community before (and after) their week-long shifts in preparing meals for their brothers.
Benedictine spirituality firmly associates Christ with all the everyday and embodied reality of ordinary life. This means that the Rule is not just for monks: each of the roles Saint Benedict describes are present in our own families. A time of quarantine, when we are all enclosed, is then the perfect time to reflect with Benedict on the holiness possible in our homes.
Saint Benedict teaches that all life is liturgical. When the Rule discusses punishments for those late to the Divine Office, it deals with those late to dinner in the same chapter! Work, family, and prayer are inseparable because a life is a whole, not a sum of its parts. Benedict challenges us, therefore, to live family life with all the purpose and dignity of contemplation, even if we can only pray for a small part of our day.
Thomas Merton calls the monastery a tabernacle in the desert. Quarantine is, perhaps, a call for the family to remember that it should be one as well.
Andrew is a junior majoring in Religion with minors in Computer Science and French. He currently lives with his family in Libertyville, IL.