Today is the Feast of Saint Scholastica, the twin sister of Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order that resides at Saint Anselm Abbey and other monasteries throughout the world.
Even though very little is known about her, and there is only quote attributed to her (more on that in a sec), her feast day today is treated with great solemnity by Benedictines around the world. Special vestments, special prayers, extra incense, gourmet feasts (by monastic standards), you name it, all of that and more comes out today in Benedictine monasteries everywhere to honor this relatively unknown, hidden woman.
She lived from 480-530 AD. She lived her adult life as a consecrated virgin. Once a year, she would meet up for a day with her twin brother Benedict near (but not in) his abbey to discuss spiritual things. Legend has it on their last visit before she died, she did not want him to leave, and so she folded her hands in prayer, and asked God to send a storm so that he could not go home that night, which happened. Benedict asked, "What have you done?", to which she replied, "I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can; leave me and return to your monastery.” He stayed with her that night.
That was the only quote ever attributed to her.
It always struck me as a student to see the monks at Saint A’s celebrate her with such solemnity, even though we know so little about her. Her life, and how she is honored can teach us a few lessons:
1) Talk and speech are less important than prayer and witness.
2) But when we do talk, we need to make our words count! We should not waste too much time talking about trivial stuff that important stuff gets neglected.
3) We should always honor and respect our families of origin , even if they are less famous than we are. If we have been blessed with positive fame and notoriety, we should always remember where we came from!
Saint Scholastica, pray for us.
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