Feast Day: January 21st
St. Benedict gives four different kinds of monks in his famous Rule. The first, and most familiar, are the cenobites, the monks who live in community, obedient to their abbot as well as the rule of their order. The second class or kind of monk are the anchorites, or hermits, those who have lived in a monastery, faithful to its life as described above, having grown to a preeminent love of God and virtue towards their brothers, to such an extent that now they depart from that community to live alone, relying only on God in their continued fight against vices of mind and body. The third kind, the sarabaites, live in a monastery, but don’t abide its rules or superior, they still live according to the world, doing what they like, untested, unpurified, in the sturdy language of St. Benedict: lying to God by their tonsure. And finally, the gyrovagues, who drift from place to place, receiving the hospitality of monasteries for a few days, but always thinking the grass is greener elsewhere, slaves still to their appetites and whims.
St. Meinrad entered the world in Germany, around 800 A.D., born into the family of the Counts of Hohenzollern, though that family would not really enter the annals of history for another two or three hundred years (eventually becoming one of the most important dynasties in Europe, later descendants becoming electors to the Holy Roman Empire, then Kings of Prussia, and eventually Emperors of Germany itself, with the empire only ending after WWI). Meinrad, of course, came almost a thousand years before all that, and he just wanted to be a monk. Some relatives of his were Abbots of the monastery of Reichenau, on an island in Lake Constance, where Meinrad received his education, and eventually joined that monastery. Spending time in that Abbey, as well as a Priory dependent upon it at Bollingen, on lake Zurich, he was finally ready, and willing, to enter the eremitical life and settled into his simple hermitage on the slopes of Mt. Etzel.
All he had with him was a statue of Our Lady, from which miracles had happened, and the simple requisites of his life as a hermit. And, a heart formed by those years under the benedictine rule, wise, prayerful, quiet, generous, and gentle. So many people came to know of his holiness that they came in droves to receive his advice and intercession, so several years later (it is not about 835), he retreated further into the forest, to what would later become the grand Abbey of Einsiedeln (from which, in 1854, monks would be sent to Indiana, establishing the Archabbey of St. Meinrad, and eventually a seminary where many of the priests of our diocese received their formation to the priesthood).
But Meinrad didn’t himself found Einsiedeln because in 861 two men came to his hermitage seeking to rob him of the many gifts that he received from those who were still visiting him. He didn’t have what they wanted: every gift, no matter how precious, was immediately given away to the poor, and though he knew their intentions, the hermit would not let mere murderous intentions impede his extending them hospitality, so he sat the two men down, cooked them a good dinner, and was then murdered by them when he was unable to give them the riches they sought. And so, the Church now has a “Martyr of Hospitality”, perhaps an inspiration and intercessor for all of us as we sacrifice ourselves to welcome, care for, invite, and provide for those who come to us. As with all the martyrs, their losing their life actually inspires many to follow in their footsteps, and so hermit after hermit returned to that same hermitage, eventually founding their the splendid abbey that stands there to this day.
– Fr. Dominic got to visit the Abbey of Einsiedeln in 2017, several months before he was ordained a deacon and a year before being ordained a priest. The Monks, after St. Meinrad’s example, were immensely hospitable, allowing us to join them for meals and prayer, showing us around the splendid place where they have prayed and worked for all the centuries since (with a brief hiatus only during World War II if I remember correctly), as well as the wonderful library they care for with 230,000 books, thousands of manuscripts, some of them from over a thousand years ago when it was founded.
