He had no project.
He did not plan to establish a monastery.
He did not plan to found a religious order.
He did not plan the preservation of the classical learning and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
He did not plan to feed the poor, care for the sick, found schools, or become a counselor to the great and powerful.
He did not plan to lay the foundations for so much of what was true, good, and beautiful in the remarkable Christian-inspired civilization of the Latin Middle Ages (notwithstanding its many great flaws and inadequacies).
He sought only to give himself to God. He found God in the desert. He found Him in silence and prayer. He also found Him in obedience, which for Benedict meant responding to the little things that God gave him. It meant loving God in those first followers who sought him out. It meant helping them to live together as brothers. It meant writing his directives down, as a rule "for beginners."
Silence, prayer, obedience, humility, love. These are still the things that really matter. These are the things that build up the heart of the Church and shine light on the pathways of our journey to eternal life. But we must acknowledge all of God's gifts: it is also this radical self-forgetfulness out of love for Christ that builds up the world. Saint Benedict was not aware of this, but God used him nonetheless, and for centuries in the West he has been known as the "Father of Europe." By seeking God after his example and according to his rule, Benedict's followers would also change the history of the world. Benedictine monasteries rose out of the ruins of the Latin Roman Empire, preserved and fostered valuable achievements of late antiquity, and inspired and helped shape the institutions of the new peoples who built Western Europe's Christian-inspired culture.
