Fontgombault Sermon for the Feast of Saint Benedict in Summer: "We should take note of our social regression: God has been eliminated from the States and societies."

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

Fontgombault, July 11, 2021

Gaudeamus.
Let us rejoice.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My dearly beloved Sons,

On this Sunday, from the very first word of the introit, the Church invites us to rejoice. Is that so astonishing? Sunday is quintessentially a day of joy. After a week of work, man is invited by God Himself to rest. Such is the commandment, or more exactly the word, a word of love, which God addressed on Mount Sinai to the people He had just brought out of Egypt:

"Six days shalt thou labour, and shalt do all thy works. But on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou  shalt do no work on it, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them, and rested on the seventh day: therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it." (Ex 20:9-11)

God had just set His people free from Pharaoh, and He did not want greed for lucre to shackle it, and lead it through a ceaseless frenzy of work to forget its Maker. The seventh day therefore became the day on which man would remember that he had been freely liberated by God from bondage.

For Christians, Sunday has been enriched with a new gift. Man, who from the very beginning had rebelled against God, had to be liberated from another form of bondage, a deeper, more universal, and multifaceted one, that is, sin. Man needed to be reconciled with God, with the design God had prepared in His immense love for His so puny creature: eternal beatitude, that is to say, life in communion with God, the vision of God for eternity. Such is the reward of rewards, to which God in His goodness calls us.

Fontgombault Sermon for the Feast of Saint Benedict: "God embraces the whole universe. Nothing escapes His Providence."

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau 

Father Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault 

Fontgombault, March 21, 2021

Centuplum accipiet. 

He shall receive an hundredfold. 

Mt 19:29 

Dear Brothers and Sisters, 

My dearly beloved Sons, 

Saint Gregory, in his Life of St. Benedict, evokes an astonishing event: the vision of the whole world under a single ray of light that was granted to the Father of the Western monks. Servandus, a deacon and the abbot of a nearby monastery, had come to pay a visit to the patriarch. As Benedict himself, he was a man of God. 

As a sort of current flowing from one another, they gave to each other the sweet words of life, and, yearning with sighs and longing desires, tasted of that delightful food of the celestial country, the perfect fruition of which they were not as yet permitted to enjoy. 

Once the time for rest come, the two monks parted. Yet, Benedict prayed, standing before his window, whereas the brothers were resting. Suddenly, in the deep of night, he saw a light glancing from above, driving away the darkness of night, and shining with a splendor far beyond the light of day. In this light, Benedict saw “the whole world, compacted, as it were, under a single ray of sun.” 

Wishing someone to witness his vision, St. Benedict called Servandus, who “saw a little remainder of the light.” 

Fontgombault Sermon - Feast of Saint Benedict: "The Foundations of European Civilization are being destroyed by the liberally-minded."

FEAST OF SAINT BENEDICT

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau

Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault

and Administrator of St. Paul of Wisques

(Wisques, March 21, 2015)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

My dearly beloved Sons,

We celebrate today the day on which our Blessed Father St. Benedict was called to God, and we give thanks for the blessings that this life has brought, and for the gift that through him and his sons has been granted, and is still granted, to mankind.

St. Benedict’s undertaking has by far gone beyond the limits of the houses that he founded and of the times in which he lived. By the network of monasteries that were sown on our Old World countries, St. Benedict has made a major contribution to the foundation of Europe on the rock of Christian values. Come hell or high water, the Old World has stood fast and has even spread this civilisation,

especially in the African and American worlds.

St. Benedict does indeed deserve the title of “great confessor”. We have just sung: Blessed is the man that fears the Lord, that delights greatly in His commandments. His seed shall be mighty upon the earth: the generation of the righteous shall be blessed. (Ps 111:1-2)

How can we explain such an influence? The sequence of the Mass calls him magni ducis, a great chief. Monks call him their Blessed Father. More than a chief, St. Benedict has been a Father. If he is the Father of Europe, it is because he has been first Father of his monks.

What is then this fatherhood that is not derived from the bonds of the flesh, and yet seems to hold fruitfulness, as can be seen in the monastic Order? The Apostles have forsaken all to follow Jesus. The same applies to monks. Monastic fatherhood is a living relationship, which conversely entails a living “sonship”. If St. Benedict has become the Father of Europe, it is because he had sons who passed on the heritage that they had received from their Father.