ON June 17, a solemn Mass will mark 125 years of Benedictine education in the Philippines. It will be at the Abbatial Church — and that alone is a phenomenon missed by many. Most know the institution along Mendiola Street as “San Beda” — for a long time “college” and, a few years ago, “university.” But what many do not realize is that there is a “colegio” there only because there is a monastery, and the monastery is not San Beda. Formally, it is known as “the Abbey of Our Lady of Montserrat.” It is the Benedictine presence, marked by the Abbey both as a community and as a structure, that allows San Beda University to exist and in which consists its uniqueness.
An abbey is the place over which an abbot presides over a community of monks. In former times, some abbeys were characterized as “exempt” — and this meant that they were beyond the governance of the territorial bishop. So it was that many abbots had episcopal powers and administered considerable material goods — lands and cattle, aside from what were usually sprawling monasteries. In most places, monasteries rise in lonely places — built precisely where the silence and the peace allow for the contemplation essential to monastic life.
One Rule governs all Benedictine monasteries — and communities like the Cistercians and the Trappists — the Rule of St. Benedict — the “Regula” — that is in itself a classic of Catholic literature. Benedict of Nursia, considered the “Father of Western Monasticism,” bares his soul in the Regula. While many see in it an exemplary treatise on management, it is so only because it binds monks to lives of holiness, rooted in prayer and work. Two things stand out in the Rule: the twin precepts of Ora (Pray) and Labora (Work). Prayer binds the community to the full observance of what is known as the Liturgy of the Hours — The Office of Readings before dawn, Lauds as the sun rises, mid-morning, mid-day and mid-afternoon prayers, Vespers as the sun sets and Compline — to complete the day, before bedtime. Nothing, insisted Benedict, is to be preferred to the “opus Dei” — and this, for him, meant prayer and lectio Divina, the mindful, thoughtful, meditative reading of the sacra pagina — the Sacred page of Scripture. And when Benedict said “Labora” — he meant exactly that: labor. It was his vision that the monastery should be self-sufficient so that it would not be a burden to the community in which it was found. So, many monasteries used to be landed — because monks tilled the land, raised cattle and devoted themselves to crafts that allowed the monastery to survive and, in many cases, to flourish. Our Lady of Montserrat Abbey is unique — because it is found in the very heart of a noisy, bustling, often rambunctious metropolis. But anyone who has visited the Abbey will not fail to notice that behind the cloister door and the high fence that encloses the monastery is an oasis of calm and prayerful silence.
Benedictine monasteries have always been centers of scholastic endeavor. Long before the Dominicans produced Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscans, Duns Scotus and Bonaventure, the Benedictine monks, many of them in faraway monasteries, on lonely crags, high mountains or perched on promontories, labored at copying and illuminating books and writing treatises. Bede — who many mistake for Benedict — was a scholar of exemplary dedication. He wrote treatises on the books of Scripture and two on time — De Temporibus and De Temporum Ratione — and when one wonders why an abstruse concept like time should have occupied Bede, one will remember that the computation of the date of Easter was a very important matter, Easter being pivotal to the entire liturgical year. But Bede cogitated as well on matters that today we would think of as the domain of meteorologists and physicists. Then, any student of ecclesiastical studies will remember Anselm of Canterbury, with his two immortal works, the Monologion and Proslogion — works of the finest scholarship!
San Beda University used to be an all-boys college and it quickly became distinguished for its law program that has maintained its stature as one of the highest-ranked institutes of law in the country. The internationally acclaimed Anscar Chupungco, OSB, who was at one time Rector of the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm (the “Anselmianum”) — the world’s premier center for liturgical education — and who was an acknowledged authority on inculturation in the liturgy, serving as member of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, opened the Graduate Schools of Business, Law and Liturgy, and the College of Medicine. It was with Fr. Aloysius Maranan, OSB, that the college became a university and more programs opened. It has, under Fr. Aloy’s leadership, set its rights on global ranking.
Were San Beda just one more higher education institution, there would not be much to celebrate. There are, after all, hundreds of these all over the country. But it is a university that must endeavor to maintain the culture of quiet contemplation so that it can be true to its monastic origins. Because of the “labora” of the Benedictine monks who assist in the administration of the university, they are to find fulfillment in their monastic vocation. The present amiable Abbot, the Right Reverend Austin Cadiz, OSB, sees to this since every monk, no matter his administrative position in the university, is still a member of the monastic community.
This is the unique gift of San Beda University to the Philippines. It has been so for a century and a quarter now. But it must always discover fresh ways of keeping its lofty stature on higher education while being true to the intent of Benedict’s Regula and the spirit of monasticism within which the university has its roots and from which it must always draw its nourishment.
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
