St. Benedict was born about the year 480 of a wealthy family in Nursia, northeast of Rome. All that we know of him comes to us through his famous Rule, and through the Dialogues of Pope St. Gregory the Great, written several decades after his death. The Dialogues are not literal history as we know it, but rather a series of stories and miracles written to edify and inspire others. Nonetheless, they are not therefore untrue.

As a young man, Benedict began his secular studies in Rome, but quickly fled to Subiaco, southeast of Rome, to live as a hermit. Soon he was asked by a group of monks to become their abbot. His rule was too strict for them however, and they attempted to poison him. He was miraculously saved, and then left them. He subsequently established twelve monasteries, and then later moved to Monte Cassino, where he destroyed a pagan temple and rebuilt a monastery in its place. It was there that he wrote the Rule, which is not, as previously believed, a totally new creation; but rather a synthesis of the best of the previous three centuries of monastic tradition. Benedict combines elements of both new and old, cenobitic and solitary, Christian East and West in his rule, and always refers his monks to the person of Jesus and the pages of the Gospel.

St. Benedict died about the year 547, after working many miracles and at the end of his life receiving a vision of God in which he saw the entire world taken up into a single ray of divine light – a potent symbol for the contemplative and monastic life. In 1964, Pope Paul VI proclaimed him the patron saint of the whole of Europe.

His Rule was for a few centuries after his death just one among many rules that were known and used in the Western Church. In the ninth century the emperor Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's son, made it the only rule in France and Germany in a move to consolidate and regularize the monasteries. This was accomplished through the agency of St. Benedict of Aniane, in 816 and 817 – though this standardization was short lived. Nevertheless, in the centuries that followed, the Rule became the dominant rule in the West, famed for its moderation and balance, and it is still known and followed for this today.

Prayer to St. Benedict

Almighty and everlasting God, your precepts are the wisdom of a loving Father: Give us grace, following the teaching and example of your servant Benedict, to walk with loving and willing hearts in the school of the Lord's service; let your ears be open to our prayers; and prosper with your blessing the work of our hands; through Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen