Association of
Benedictine
Colleges and
Universities

Contents

Announcement 2007

Member Institutions

Essays
    Nowell, Pt. 2 >>>

Occasional Papers

Links

Contact

Home

Benedictine Interpreters
of the Word of God

by Irene Nowell, OSB

(Continued from Part I)

Hildegard of Bingen and Gertrude the Great

My examples up to now have all been men. There are certainly women Benedictines interpreting Scripture throughout the tradition also, and, even though we know less of them, we cannot discount their influence. Hildegard of Bingen and Gertrude of Helfta top the list.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) is one of the most complex and interesting people in our tradition. Barbara Newman calls her "a prophet in the Old Testament tradition."²⁴ At the age of sixty, she set out on the first of four preaching tours. (Even then Benedictines didn't retire.) Newman says her purpose was to do "what professional clerics had failed to do with their priestly charism: teach, preach, interpret the Scriptures and proclaim the justice of God."²⁵ We can guess at her preaching from her writings which are interwoven with biblical citations and allusions.

In Scivias, for example, after describing each vision, she interprets it through the words of Wisdom or Hosea or the Gospel of John. Book Two begins with a wonderfully cosmic vision of God's creation of the universe. Hildegard moves immediately to the "words of Job on this subject": "Who is ignorant that the hand of the Lord has made all these things?" (Job 12:9).²⁶ Proceeding from there to explain that God created by means of the Infinite Word who was present from the beginning, she alludes to the Prologue to John's Gospel and then moves easily to the creation of Adam in Genesis 1-2. She has the same habit of linking texts that we find in Gregory. Throughout this flow, Hildegard interprets the biblical passages in a creative, sometimes unorthodox, fashion.

For example, she portrays God offering obedience to Adam as a sweet white flower. But Adam refused to smell or taste or touch the flower and thus "by the Devil's counsel . . . sank into the gaping mouth of death."²⁷ This is certainly a different twist on the scene where the serpent offers Eve the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. But the concept remains the same: By refusing obedience human beings became subject to the power of death. How much influence has Hildegard had on the interpretation of Scripture? I think perhaps her influence is only now beginning.

The interpretation of Scripture itself is not a primary concern of Gertrude of Helfta (1256-1301). Precisely in that, however, it is evident that her consistent practice of lectio divina has allowed Scripture to permeate her whole life. In the best monastic tradition, she can hardly put two sentences together without some biblical allusion. Even a glance at the Exercises of St. Gertrude will confirm this observation. Gertrude has absorbed Scripture throughout her monastic life and it flows through her prayer and her writing.

One further observation regarding women and biblical scholarship: Only in our own lifetimes has academic study of the Bible been available to women. Mother Katherine Sullivan, RSCJ, a major influence in the mid-twentieth century, could not study Scripture at any major institution but was tutored by John E. Steinmuller. (She became the first editor of The Bible Today -- along with Eugene Maly and Barnabas Ahern, who were almost immediately summoned to Rome as periti for Vatican Council II, leaving Katherine to carry on alone.) In 1947 Katherine Sullivan became the first woman member of the Catholic Biblical Association, a group whose membership was originally only priests.²⁸ So women are still newcomers to "official" biblical study. Watch for the contribution of Benedictine women to biblical interpretation in this new millennium!

Columba Marmion

Now for the third core sample, the end of the second millennium, we turn to our newest beatus, Abbot Columba Marmion. Marmion (1858-1923) was abbot of Maredsous in Belgium from 1909 until his death in 1923, through the stressful years of World War I. He was beatified on September 3, 2000; his feast day is October 3rd. Marmion wasn't a biblical commentator per se; he was a preacher and teacher. But exegesis is teaching and preaching. Teaching and preaching is exegesis.

His books are collections of his conferences. However, as Olivier Raquez, OSB, the postulator for his cause, said at his beatification: "his proper charism [was] the development of a spiritual doctrine solidly built on the Bible and the Liturgy which he propagated in his retreats, spiritual conferences and, above all, in his spiritual direction of a vast number of souls."²⁹ Raquez goes on to say that "[w]hat characterizes the spiritual teaching of the Blessed Columba Marmion, and what explains the incredible popularity of his writings among all walks of ecclesial life is the fact that he emphasized the biblical, liturgical and theological roots of experience in such a way that any Christian reading his works can find himself immediately at ease."³⁰

Again we find a Benedictine whose biblical interpretation flows from his practice of lectio, his immersion in the liturgy, and the constant linking of biblical wisdom to present reality. In Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, Marmion says that the goal for every monastic is union with Christ. Because of this striving for union, monastics must search for understanding and enlightenment in the truths of faith. The way to that goal is through the Gospel, especially as heard and preached in the liturgy.³¹

Listen to what Marmion says about lectio divina and you will hear his principles regarding the interpretation of Scripture. This is from Christ, The Ideal of the Monk:

Our Blessed Father knew by experience that no source of contemplation is purer and more fruitful than the Holy Scriptures. Indeed what is contemplation but the movement of the soul that, touched and illumined by light from above, enters into the mystery of God? It is true that no one has ever seen God, for He "inhabiteth light inaccessible," says St. Paul. How then are we to know Him? By His words.

"Would you enter into the very heart of God?" says St. Gregory. "Listen to His words": Disce cor Dei in verbis Dei (Lib. IV. Epist.31. PL 77, col. 706). With a being as essentially true as God, His words manifest His nature. Have we not here the very mystery of the Eternal Essence? God expresses Himself in His Word, in an infinite manner, so perfect and so adequate that this Word is Unique.³²

Marmion goes on to say that this Word, which is revealed to us in the Incarnation, is the word of eternal life. Christ, the Word, is revealed to us especially in the Gospel but also in the Old Testament, because Christ was "yesterday as He is today and will be tomorrow. . . . The whole treasury of the Scriptures, then, reveals Christ to us." As St. Jerome wrote, "To be ignorant of the Scriptures is to be ignorant of Christ" (In Isaiam Prologus, PL 24, col. 28).³³ Scripture is central in Benedictine life.

Knowing Scripture is, however, not enough. Marmion, like Benedictines throughout the tradition, says that for this word to be "living and effectual . . ., we must receive [the Word] with faith and humility and a sincere desire of knowing Christ and uniting ourselves to Him in order to walk in His footprints."³⁴In other words, we must actualize the Word. We must not only know it, we must live by it.

Marmion's own familiarity, not only with the Gospel, but with all of Scripture is evident from his books. Look at any page and you will find an interweaving of biblical allusions and quotations worthy of St. Benedict himself. For example, in that four pages that I just summarized, Marmion alludes to or quotes the Rule (four times), the Gospel of John (nine times), 1 John, 1 Timothy, 2 Corinthians (2 times), Hebrews (2 times), Colossians, Luke, Psalm 119, Revelation, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Corinthians, Romans, and Psalm 15, plus Gregory the Great, Bossuet, Jerome, the antiphon for the Office of St. Cecilia, and Origen.³⁵ That doesn't happen unless one is in the habit of reading and pondering throughout a lifetime!

Many monastics my age and older were nourished on Marmion's books throughout our years of initial formation and beyond. For many years, however, I have heard very little about him, but now he is enjoying a revival. Virtually all of his book, Christ in His Mysteries, is available on the Internet from Catholic Information Network (www.cin.org/marmion.html). His explanation of the mysteries of the Rosary is also on the Catholic Information Network (www.cin.org/liter/marmrosr.html). The chapter on prayer from Christ, The Life of the Soul can be found at the website of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, South Sound Deanery, in Western Washington State (http://landru.i-link-2.net/shnyves/marmion.htm). Finally, his life story and important information about him are on the Patron Saints page of the Catholic Forum website (www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc53.htm). We've reached a new era in the consideration of Benedictine influence!

Patrick Cummins

My final example is someone close to home, a monk from Conception Abbey, Missouri: Father Patrick Cummins. I chose Patrick in order to indicate yet another area in which Benedictines have made major contributions to biblical interpretation: translation. (The tradition of Benedictine translation of Scripture reaches back at least to Aelfric [ca. 955-1020] who translated Genesis through Judges into Old English.³⁶) Father Patrick brings us to the mid-twentieth century -- into the lifetimes of at least some of us! He was born in Missouri in 1880 and died at Conception in 1968.

He is another Benedictine who went home. He studied in Europe, primarily at Sant'Anselmo, and in 1905 earned a doctorate in theology there and at the Maximilian University in Munich. For the next fourteen years he taught at Conception. In 1920 he returned to Sant' Anselmo as rector, a position he held until 1925. After a year of pastoral duty in Idaho he returned to Conception where he taught until 1960. His primary interests were Scripture, especially the Psalms, and Dante's Divine Comedy.³⁷

He published an English edition of the Catholic School Bibleof Reverend James Ecker of Trier, Germany, and several articles in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly. But his most influential work was in the area of translation. In 1936 Bishop Edwin V. O'Hara gathered a group of biblical scholars to make a new translation of the New Testament under the auspices of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. This group, which formed the Catholic Biblical Association, included a Benedictine, F. Walsh, the secretary of the CCD. They began working from the Vulgate, as was required, and referring to the Greek New Testament in the textual notes.³⁸ The CCD New Testament was published in 1941.³⁹ But with Pius XII's encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritus, in 1943, the door was opened for Catholic scholars to translate directly from the original languages.

In August of that year Bishop O'Hara gave instructions to the CBA translators to translate the Old Testament from the original languages (requiring a revision of the translation -- about one-third -- that had already been completed).⁴⁰ Patrick Cummins was one of those translators; he was invited to do the English translation of Jeremiah. He submitted his translation in 1952 and it was published in the mid-fifties as part of the CCD translation of the prophets. This, however, was not the end of Patrick's translation efforts. His obituary states that "He is particularly known for his translation of the Psalms."⁴¹

Did Patrick Cummins have any influence on biblical interpretation? I'm sure most of you had never heard of him, but consider this: As you know, the CCD version formed the basis of the New American Bible, so for the last fifty years you have been reading and praying from what is basically Patrick Cummins translation of Jeremiah. He was also president of the Catholic Biblical Association from 1944-1945 and taught countless students at Conception Seminary College. Many of them were ordained and preached to who knows how many parishioners. He also had three shifts as novice-master at Conception, from 1908-1920, 1928-1931, 1949-1952 and was subprior from 1935-1949, rector of the college from 1931-1933, and instructor of laybrothers. He gave retreats to many religious women: Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Sisters of the Most Precious Blood.⁴² I think Patrick has influenced our biblical interpretation in ways we will never know.

Patrick Cummins takes me back to the beginning. Benedictine interpretation of Scripture is influenced by two factors: Benedictines always go home, and Benedictines interpret Scripture in a spirit of lectio divina. The latter point is illustrated by a story told by our Sister Mary Faith Schuster in American Benedictine Review:

Once a monk taking some visiting high school boys on a tour of the Abbey stopped with them at Father Patrick's door. "I want you to see Father Patrick and his room," he said. "Father is translating the psalms and I want you to see him at work." He knocked and there was no answer. Thinking Father to be absent, he decided to let the boys see the scholar's desk. He opened the door and a tall, six-foot-two man with iron gray hair, black habit, scapular, rose from his knees in front of the desk on which were open books and sheets of paper. "I'm sorry, Father. I knocked. I guess you didn't hear. I wouldn't have disturbed you at prayer. I wanted these boys to see your room."

"That's quite all right, Father. I wasn't really at prayer. I'm translating the psalms, you know, and I prefer to touch the word of God on my knees."⁴³

Conclusion

Benedictine contributions to the interpretation of Scripture continue in the twenty-first century. I have deliberately not included any living scholars, primarily because there are too many of them. Benedictines have served on translation committees for ICEL and for the New American Bible. Benedictine scholars have published commentaries on books of the Old and New Testaments, probed the New Testament source Q, and labored on archaeological digs. Even more continue to teach generations of students about the wonders of God's revelation in the Bible and to preach the living Word of God to ever-growing communities of the faithful. Most important, however, are all the Benedictines along with their friends and associates who, day after day, continue faithfully in the practice of lectio divina, thus becoming themselves channels of God's Word.

(Part I)

--

Notes