Sister Susan’s Reflection: Feast of St. Scholastica

Reflection by Sister Susan Hutchens, Prioress
given to the St. Mary Monastery Community on February 9, 2021

In recent weeks we’ve heard the term “Failure of Imagination” a number of times in relation to current events.  We failed to imagine that anything like storming the Capitol, or an inauguration with 25,000 flags replacing 25,000 people could take place in this day and age.  Let alone a pandemic – who could have imagined that?  

I began to wonder what St. Scholastica’s life was really like. We know quite a bit about Benedict – lots of history pieces written, his Rule, his early years in Rome, and then in the caves, in the monasteries that tried to get rid of him, and finally his establishment and life at Monte Casino. 

But the only real thing we know or ever read about St. Scholastica is the story from Gregory the Great - of her last visit with Benedict.   What might we add if we imagine her life?

We hear Benedict and Scholastica were twins, or at least brother and sister. They were born in the small town of Norcia around 480 AD.  They were not poor, and it is thought that the family had a summer home about 2 miles from Norcia.  The home has become a Church and bears the name of St. Scholastica.  

Benedict was sent to Rome to study when he was probably a teenager, and   Scholastica stayed home. Did she imagine what Benedict’s days must be like, so different from hers? I wonder if she longed to go with him, to study as he did, to become independent.  Studying and independence were not the norm for young women of that time, but she may have wanted to have gone too.  What a different life that would have been for her!  

Did she know of Benedict’s moves out of Rome and back to the countryside to live in a cave?  Did she wonder what he was doing all those years that he was away? Did she long for the education and lifestyle that he might be leading?  Did she imagine herself living as he was living, giving himself to God daily?  

St. Gregory tells us - perhaps he imagined it - that Scholastica consecrated herself to God from her earliest youth.  Or – as other writers imagined – did her parents send her to a convent to pursue the path to God? The family summer home may have been her first convent, but no one truly knows that.

If the home was her first convent, did she establish it herself?  Did she prepare a Rule of sorts for the women to live by, and if so, what might it have been like?  Surely, she would have created something that enabled a peaceful, loving, hospitable, and faithful community to live together while focused on seeking God. Might they have had gardens, a guest house, bakery, sewing shop, medicinal lab, and maybe even an art studio?  I imagine, they had to support themselves, even while being dedicated to God in every way.  

But once Benedict established himself at Monte Casino, Scholastica imagined herself being closer to him. Butler’s Lives of the Saints tells us that she founded and governed a monastery, in a place called Plombariola, which was about 5 miles south of Benedict’s home at Monte Casino. We imagine that she followed Benedict’s Rule.  I imagine that she adjusted that Rule for the women, and followed things she had learned in earlier years:  God is ever present; hospitality for all must be lived as Jesus lived it; knowing Jesus through the Scriptures was vital for prayer; being practical in what they could do was important – perhaps they traded baked goods, or handmade garments for chopped wood, or to pay others for helping them build the cells they needed.

When it came close to the end of her life, we know well the story of her visit to Benedict.  She prayed to God to make Benedict stay longer, and God very boldly answered YES with the storm!  Like Mary sitting at Jesus feet listening with the ear of her heart, Scholastica sat with Benedict.  I imagine they were both listening to each other with ears open to all the goodness of the other.  Like Martha, Scholastica offered hospitality to Benedict, and with a little nudge from God, Benedict received and returned that hospitality by staying and talking all night. 

Imagine Benedict’s surprise just days later to see his beloved Sister on her way to heaven.  No doubt he was grateful for that last time spent with her; grateful for the gift she had been to him.  Let us spend time with each of our founding Saints tomorrow and maybe our imaginations too, to express our own gratitude for the blessing our monastic life is for us.