Saturday, July 11th, 2020

Saint Benedict doesn’t seem like the most useful guy: a monk and leader of monks far away in a monastery long ago. Yet without St Benedict, there would have been no Europe and no Western Civilisation: at least, a lot of our cultural riches would not have been passed down to us. And this is the importance of tradition. For centuries, while the secular world preoccupied itself with worldly destruction, the monks in their monasteries did little other than pray, work and rest - in their slow works passing from generation to generation what they had received from the previous. This is the importance of tradition, of handing over, and building on what was received. Our task is the same: to receive with veneration and respect what has come to us, and to pass it on to others. This is why tradition is part of Evangelisation - for this is what we are doing in evangelisation: passing on what we have received.