Temptations in a fallen city, memories of a beautiful woman, a poisoned chalice, the attacks of an envious priest, curses from a pagan priest, a rock that won’t budge, another that falls on a young monk, a kitchen in flames, a dragon that lurks to devour a fleeing monk, threats from Gothic warlords, and the prospect of a destroyed monastery.
St. Benedict, whose feast we celebrate on July 11th, endured constant attacks from the enemy throughout his life. The life of a monk only heightens the constant spiritual warfare we all face in the Christian life.
In fact, Benedict even had to use force to manifest his authority as abbot over his monks oppressed by the enemy, as related in Father Robert Nixon’s newly compiled and translated book The Cross and Medal of Saint Benedict: A Mystical Sign of Divine Power (TAN, 2024):
Benedict found this monk outside wandering around aimlessly when he should have been in the oratory in prayer. With a certain degree of paternal severity and charitable discipline, he reprimanded him for his lack of wisdom and discernment and struck him with his staff. At this, the monk fell down, motionless. And after that, the devil . . . never troubled him again. It was as if the staff of Benedict had not struck the hapless monk but had rather driven away the wicked tempter himself! (14).
St. Benedict has come to be recognized for the power of his actions against the enemy, alongside St. Michael, as a major protector against evil, particularly through the medal that bears his image. Father Nixon’s book offers an overview of how the medal rose to prominence as a Catholic devotion and received papal approval, couching it within the story of St. Benedict’s life and the rise of his order of monks.
If you’ve seen the back of a St. Benedict Medal, you may have noticed a series of letters. The first set is arranged in and around the shape of the Cross: C S P B C S S M L N D S M D. The next set is arranged in a circle around the Cross: V R S N S M V S M Q L I V B.
This arrangement first came to serious attention in the year 1647 in relation to the Benedictine Abbey of Metten in Bavaria, when it prevented a series of diabolic attacks. Although some of the laity already had medals with these letters engraved, no one at the time understood their meaning. It was only in researching the library’s manuscripts that a fifteenth-century illustration of St. Benedict pointed to the full prayer they abbreviated:
Cross of our Holy Father Benedict. May the Cross be light to me. May the dragon not be a leader to me. Get behind me, Satan: Never persuade me to vain things. What you like is evil; may you yourself drink your venom!
Due to a widespread story of the medal preventing the effect of curses and bringing about exorcisms and healings, which Father Nixon details in his book, its use spread across Europe, with Pope Benedict XIV approving an official blessing for it and granting it indulgences in 1741.
The great father of modern Benedictine monasticism, Dom Prosper Guéranger, speculated why God would grant so many favors to those who invoke his help through St. Benedict’s medal. In an age when “rationalism is so rife,” God has deigned to offer help to those “who put their confidence in the sacred signs marked on the medal” with “strong and simple” faith (Guéranger, The Medal or Cross of St. Benedict, author’s preface).
It’s as if to laugh at the devil and his plans to pull people away from God through the alleged sophistication of the modern world, overcoming them with simple signs pointing us to the Cross and the protection of a holy monk.
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Time to get the St. Benedict Medal out from storage on this, his Feast Day.
Thank you, Dr. Staudt, for this excellent article. My rosary has a St. Benedict’s medal on it – it has always enhanced my prayer life.
St. Benedict, pray for us.
Excellent, well written article. Thank you, Dr. Staudt.
“We didn’t even have to go inside the church to find one of the two most helpful people we would meet in Catemaco. All along the street on the south side of the Basilica were tiny stands selling crosses, rosaries, and assorted religious medals.
Michelle, who scorned Catholicism whenever her devout mother pushed the subject, now insisted upon loading up with what she called “protection.” Specifically, she wanted St. Benedict medals, which her mother had advised were the best for warding off evil. The woman operating the stand closest to the zócalo had not only the nicest collection of trinkets but also the strongest face and clearest eyes we had thus far seen in Catemaco. I was impressed also that, unlike all of the other stand operators on the street, she did not call or wave us to approach, instead watching us patiently, as if she knew we would come back to her. When we did, she introduced herself as María, asked where in the United States we were from, then said she had lived in San Diego for four years, had liked it there, and wanted to go back someday. It would have to be someday soon, I thought, reckoning the woman’s age to be about sixty.
Sixty-one, it turned out. I picked up that much, though not much else as I listened to María and Michelle converse in Spanish while sorting through the stall’s several dozen St. Benedict medals. Not until the sale was completed more than ten minutes later did Michelle fill me in on what had been discussed. “Good news, bad news,” she began. “We’re in a very dangerous place. The Zetas have been running the town for the past couple of years and they’ve made things a lot worse. They were out in force just a few nights ago, putting people in sequester, which basically means pulling them off the street and making them surrender their valuables and identify police informants.”
Excerpt From
The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared
Randall Sullivan
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-devils-best-trick/id6478709922
This material may be protected by copyright.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Old superstitions never die. They just keep rolling along from century to century.That alone explains why the church has so much conflict within. Those who live in fantasies from the past must somehow be supported by those who live in the present, create the future and allow for all voices to exist. A sort of democracy hidden within the Magisterium…
Monasticism seems a particularly timely topic in our time.
St. Benedict’s medal, but also “mettle.”
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