1. Life is a chaos but it’s much better with no traffic lights.

I come from the culture where everything is well organized and established. We have bus timetables, we arrive always on-time (even better 10 minutes before), we have strict rules and we are proud to find millions of ways to legally break them. When we drive, we are very careful with road signs, speed limits, traffic lights etc. But in Vietnam, it doesn’t work like this. There is no bus timetable; the bus just arrives when it arrives and you need to be very focused to catch it because it won’t even stop on your bus stop if you don’t give a sign to the driver. A curious thing is that the crossroads where there are no traffic lights have less traffic than those with lights. With traffic lights, one have to wait for the light to change. In pick hours, it makes traffic jam extends for whole kilometres with cars and motors stuck with no possibility to move. And the Vietnamese people doesn’t like to be stuck. When no lights, everybody just finds his/her own way out. That’s the big advantage of travelling by moto: it is small and easy to manage, can fit in narrow streets and between cars. It’s much easier to keep moving this way. And when I come to think of that, life many times is this kind of chaos, sometimes there are so many traffic lights, so many rules that make us feel stuck. It is much more risky to move around with no guidance, no route, but… at least we keep moving. Sometimes it is better to turn off the red lights and keep pushing our way until the road ahead appears free of obstacles.

• Mind your own business.

Living in community teaches us to take good care for one another, to be conscious about other people’s needs and try to do our best to make others’ life easier. We learn to be sisters, but sometimes, especially when being the person responsible for community, it feels like a burden of being responsible for everyone. When one sister has any kind of problem, is not responding to fraternal correction, does things that don’t exactly follow our congregational way of life etc., one feels she has responsibility to “repair” this sister. I feel it a lot: that I have to make others behave the way they should and if I don’t, it feels like a failure. But when I drive a motorbike in Saigon, I know that I can answer only for myself, for what I am doing in this moment. I have no control over the way other are driving, I cannot make them behave differently. I can be responsible only for myself. And maybe that’s the point: at the end, each one of us answer for ourselves. We are adults, we cannot blame other forever for our shortcomings, our ignorance, our bad decisions. To be responsible for oneself is more than enough responsibility for one person.

• Look only few meters ahead

Sometimes I get anxious. When I think about what I still have to do, what lies ahead of me and my community, what kind of troubles we will encounter, I feel I cannot breathe. I notice that I look too far ahead. I imagine how my life will look like in 5 or 10 years, I consider my situation, my family, my community, my congregation, and all I want is to close myself in my room with curtains down and sleep for eternity. In a way, I transfer this mentality to the way I drive. When I see a big truck doing a complicated maneuver a kilometre ahead of me, I already use to brake preparing myself to what will happen when I will arrive there. And by this, I cause trouble in the place I am at the moment because everyone gets disturbed when someone abruptly stops with no evident reason. Driving help me to learn to be attentive to where I am now, to what is my position now, to what happens in my immediate surroundings. Never mind the truck ahead, we will manage when we get there. As of now, pay attention to what you have to do here and now. That’s the only think you can really control.

• Trust but don’t trust others

It’s kind of complicated. As an inexperienced driver, I do trust in other people’s skills, that even if I make a mistake (better to say when I make a mistake) they will know how to react and there won’t be any tragedy. But on the other hand, some of those “others” drives really like crazy, as if they were the only ones using roads. It takes only a second while I look in the rear-view mirror and suddenly I have another motor crossing my way, turning around, stopping in front of me. One cannot lose focus at any moment. In some way, I am learning that to trust other is a complicated thing. On our life journey, we encounter those who make us fall, who give us trouble, and thanks to them we learn the rapid respond, we learn to be creative in solving problems that they bring to our lives. But we also encounter those who “have our back”, with whom we can do stupid things, take very bad decisions, commit thousand and one mistakes, yet still they will be there for us to catch us when we fall, to prevent our small world from falling apart. Both of them are equally necessary for us to grow and mature. That’s why growing is a complicated thing.

• Don’t be too polite

When I was learning to drive a car in my country, I was taught to always be polite to other, to always cede the way to others, always stop when seeing pedestrian crossing even in a forbidden place. And I tried to do the same in Vietnam, only to receive a concert of horns and bad words from other drivers. People here are not used to drive politely. They don’t expect that somebody will do so, and it puts them off. I became an obstacle to the flow. So I am slowly learning to push through the traffic like everyone else does, somehow even pedestrians here know how to do it in spite of the river of motorbike flowing through the streets. I think I could say I am learning to keep my boundaries. It shows me that it is important to respect myself, to prioritize myself, my plans, my journey, my road. It means saying “no” to those who try to to interrupt it. It also means staying focused on my life’s purpose and not letting myself be swayed.

• When I let it flow…

At the beginning I must admit I was terrified only thinking about getting on the motorbike and driving through the crowded streets of Saigon. But soon enough I discovered that the secret to driving lies in simply following the flow of the traffic. As long as you stay in line, go with steady speed, don’t bother others, you will surely arrive at your destination. Like a dead fish following the flow of the river. Sometimes it makes me wonder if this kind of security is the best for me. I mean, there are times when I got tired of fighting, of struggling to change the world, of trying hard to achieve something. It feels so good to belong to the flow, not to think, not to decide, not to question, not to be different. Just flow. But too much quietness makes one slumber, stop being aware of the beauty around, stop questioning the direction. We need to take courage to step out of the mainstream and do things in a different way, even when others will be bothered.

• You’ve got this!

To be honest, I struggle with low self-esteem. I am not secure of myself, of my decisions. I am always second-guessing my choices. I’m on the side of those afraid to take risks. It took me few long months to decide to get on the motorbike, just to mention one example. Suddenly, after some weeks past and I didn’t die, I realize that I was really doing it. I’ve got this! Nobody has ever taught me to ride. Just the way nobody has ever taught me to be an animator, to live in Vietnam, to accompany young people in their vocational journey, and many other things. But I am doing it. I’ve got it. Because sometimes all we need is to take this one step, just to begin, and we can soon discover of what marvellous things we are really capable of.

Sr. Aleksandra Nawrocka CMT

About the one from Kildare we know that she was a nun, although she was not formed in Benedictine spirituality. Monastic life in that era had many facets, some consecrated virgins lived alone or in a small group of other women, and often, after taking the veil, they also founded their own communities based on constitutions they wrote. Such was the case with Brigid.

She came from a wealthy pagan family, but some of the hagiographies state that the mother of the future saint was her father’s slave. Born around 451, the girl became enthralled with Christianity after becoming independent. This is a time of intense activity of missionary monks sent to Ireland, including St. Patrick. The characteristic feature of the evangelization carried out by them was that, unlike on the Continent, they did not destroy the existing pagan religion, but reinterpreted it. They extracted Christian meaning from the symbols and practices present in it, which meant that Irish Christianity was born quickly and relatively uncontroversially, through evolution rather than revolution. At the same time, pagan customs found refuge in its practices, and St. Brigid and her live are, one might say, a flagship example of this symbiosis.

She received the veil of a consecrated virgin from the hands of St. Bishop Mel, and was witnessed by St. Bishop Macaille of Croghan, a disciple of St. Patrick, who had prepared her earlier for the ceremony. Already during the consecration, an event was to occur that foreshadowed Brigid’s future greatness. Well, by mistake, St. Mel read from the ceremony, instead of the formula for the consecration of a virgin, the formula for the consecration of a bishop. Saint Macaille protested sharply, but then the consecrator countered that apparently there was God’s will in this mistake. Brigid, of course, was not ordained, but the act did indeed have prophetic significance. However, about this later, because first it is necessary to mention one of the most important accounts in the life of the nun.

One of her earliest biographies – and she lived to see seven, and in the early Middle Ages – links her to St. Patrick. They were supposed to have met at a meeting of Irish bishops where one of them, accused of begetting a child, was being trialled. As the legend goes, the answer came thanks to Brigid, who made the infant speak and point out its father. It was obvious to St. Patrick that she could only do this by God’s grace, so he received the nun with great respect. Moreover, he stated that she should travel everywhere with a priest so that she would have constant access to the sacraments. So he appointed one of his priests to be her … usher.

In the Book of Armagh (9th century), a center closely associated with the figure of Patrick, the relationship between these two missionaries is shown as very close: “Between St. Patrick and Brigid, pillars of the Irish people, there was such a strong bond (literal friendship) of divine love that they were both of one heart and one thought. Through both him and her, Christ did many wonderful works.” Some modern historiographers, however, see here only an indication that the two major ecclesiastical centers of the time recognized each other’s authority and gave up competition – Armagh was content with the north, while Kildare, founded by Brigid, was content with the south.

These theories are difficult to defend, since at the time of the creation of the Book of Armagh, the arrangement of responsibility still decisively prevailed on the side of the latter episcopal capital. To understand such a state of affairs, it is necessary to return to the figure and works of the founder of this place.

Some modern scholars deny her character’s historicity, among other reasons, because, unlike St. Patrick, who, in addition to his foundations, left behind writings, Brigid, instead of writing, preferred to build abbeys, establish schools, care for the development of crafts and the welfare of the people. Monk Cogitosus, the author of the earliest biography of the saint (early seventh century), describes her as one who, through her activities, transforms a wild and threatening island into a tame and friendly one, not destroying the potential hidden in nature and culture, but extracting it and giving it a framework, thus creating the seed of civilization. So we are talking about a champion of grassroots work.

Shortly after receiving the veil, she takes up residence with her companions at the bishop’s seat in Croghan. Soon, however, she moves under an oak tree near the pagan center of worship at Knockhaulin. Under this tree he establishes a monastery, which in Celtic is given the name Cell Dara (Church of the Oak) – today’s Kildare. Here again there is an element referring to pagan cults – well, in this monastery, as in the temples of the Celtic Brigid, an eternal fire was lit, which was guarded by the nuns who lived there. It was a symbol of the constant presence of God expressed in the existence of the community, but is itself a sign taken from pagan mythology, in which the aforementioned goddess was associated with light and warmth, including that of the home hearth.

The women who lived there, of course, had to take care of their own sustenance, moreover, physical labor is one of the elements of monastic life, so it’s no wonder that in one of the legends about the saint we read about her herding sheep. However, there came, as is not difficult in Ireland, a persistent downpour. Soaked to the bone, the shepherdess took refuge in one of the huts. Her coat was heavy with water, so she was happy to spot a rope running across the room through her rain-soaked eyelashes. Relieved, she hung her soaked outer garment on it and settled into a corner for a short nap. Moments later, other shepherds working nearby peeked inside and were amazed to see Brigid’s garment drying suspended from… a ray of sunlight.

But let’s return from the lands of beautiful stories to the hard historical ground. In addition to a female abbey, the nun soon established a male abbey in Kildare. In the rapidly growing village, and later town, schools were established (at the abbeys), all sorts of crafts were taught, and trained artisans produced objects of use and beauty. In Kildare there was also healing – and by no means just the gift of healing, which Brigid used, but regular hospices. Books were also transcribed: one of the island’s most famous illumination studios was established there. The Book of Kildare created there matched the fame and beauty of the Book of Kells, but unlike the latter, it has not survived to our times.

When the place founded by the nun grew organically to become one of the main religious and cultural centers, Brigid travelled around Ireland for missionary purposes. She was renowned for her wisdom, so she was listened to eagerly. In the descriptions of the miracles she performed during these journeys, as well as in the very manner in which she performed them, hagiographers likened the saint to a pagan goddess. The Abbess of Kildare was said to ride on a cart harnessed to oxen, and all animals, even wild ones, obeyed her will. She cured people, multiplied fertility to flocks, milk to cows, and even resurrected animals. Well, as part of her travels, she came to a poor woman and asked her to kill and prepare for her the only flesh she possessed. The woman momentarily hesitated, but did as the nun instructed. To her surprise, the next day she found by the side of the cow the same body as the one she had killed, only as alive as possible.

Above all, however, the Abbess of Kildare was converting, and this is the most marked difference from the story of her pagan predecessor. This is told, among other things, by the story related to the Christian significance of St. Brigid’s cross. It is woven from straw and, in terms of shape, resembles a swastika, the pagan symbol of the sun. Such a cross was supposed to have been woven by the saint at the bedside of a dying pagan chieftain, explaining with it to the dying man the meaning of the Passion of the Lord. The story so moved the heart of the listener that just before he died he was baptized. Considering that this sacrament washes away all sins, one must admit that with this decision he won everything. Such crosses are still made by the Irish to this day on the Feast of Brigid, i.e. February 1, after which they place them over the entrance to the house – this is to guard the household from lightning and all evil. The cross is one of the three symbols of Ireland, along with the clover leaf and the lyre, just as the one who was said to have first woven it is one of the three patron saints of the Green Isle (the other two being St. Patrick and St. Columban).

She was held in such high esteem that both she and her successors on the abbot throne of the female monastery in Kildare held the first place among Irish bishops, they were even referred to as  „archbishops”. This was the realization of the prophecy expressed in St. Mel’s error at Brigid’s consecration. This situation persisted until the first half of the 12th century, when King Leinster raped the then abbess of Kildare and introduced his cousin in her place. The synod of bishops, however, refused to allow the forcibly imposed superior to preside over their meetings, stating that she had no authority because her authority lacked the mandate of a community speaking with the voice of a saint.

After a fruitful and long (more than seventy years) life, Brigid, “freed from cares, threw off the burden of her body and followed the Divine Lamb to the heavenly chambers, having fallen asleep on the first day of the month of February,” as Cogitosus poetically describes it. This was in the year of our Lord 525 and took place in Kildare. In the pagan calendar it was the feast of the goddess Brigid. This day, falling midway between the shortest day of the year and the spring equinox, is considered in Ireland to mark the beginning of spring, and thus the return to more lush vegetation, milking cows and days increasingly full of light. Through the birth to heaven of a saint, it became a celebration of the one who, while sustaining the Island’s lush life, also gave it the empowering framework of Christian civilization.

I am captivated by the fact that in Brigid’s hagiography there is no cruel death, no ascetic feats, martyrdom is expressed in embracing monastic daily life with its ascetic practices, fasts and prayers, and preaching Christ, as well as service to all manifestations of life and creativity. This is one of the most cheerful stories about saints to be found in collections of lives. In it, the main character is portrayed as a good and wise mother or grandmother performing miracles to properly take care of the home, loved ones, animals on the homestead, but also taking care to pass on what is most precious to her – faith in Christ. She so effectively disappears behind her works that, as I wrote at the beginning, some historians deny her real existence.

She remained among her own, as evidenced by the miracles performed at her shrine, but also by the story of the maintenance of an eternal fire at the female abbey. Visiting them in the second half of the 13th century, Gerald of Wales describes what this guard looked like. At the time of Brigid’s death, there were a total of twenty nuns in the abbey with her. After that, a fixed number of 19 was kept, and each of them had her own night of vigil. When the twentieth night came, the nun leaving her post would pile wood by the hearth, saying: “Brigid, guard your fire. This is your night.” In the morning, the woods were usually gone, and the fire burned lively as ever.

Although it was finally extinguished in the 16th century by bishop’s order, it was reignited in 1993, and Brigid remained the holy patron saint of the Isles even after the reform of the list of saints before the Second Vatican Council, when all saints of questionable historicity were removed. I think, in fact, it was the pagan Brigit who was the shadow. Her resemblance to the Abbess of Kildare, on the other hand, is due to the fact that the latter, with her life, responded in the most perfect way possible to the longings from which the Celtic goddess was born.

Elizabeth Wiater, “Mystics and Warriors. Women Who Changed the Church,” WAM 2021, p. 19-26.

The main source for her biography is the life of Benedict just mentioned. Written using the ancient form of dialogue (the author, Gregory, converses with an unknown Peter), it tells the story of the abbot of Monte Cassino in an engaging and emotionally involving way. “Listening” to this conversation, we learn that to a Christian couple from Nursia around year 480 a pair of twins was born. This was a family with power and wealthy, though not of the most prominent (let’s say the middle class of the time), but undoubtedly pious.

The children were baptized early, because nowhere do we read about Benedict’s baptism, and Gregory’s closer story begins when his hero began his education in Rome. Back then, boys began their education at the age of seven, so the future author of the Rule of his own name must have been received into the Church as a child – and since he was, so was his sister.

She was “consecrated to the Almighty Lord from her earliest years,” so she was probably placed as a child as an oblate in one of the Roman monasteries. There she became a disciple sensu stricto – and not just any Master. Besides, she would remain faithful to His teachings to the point of sainthood.

The practice of placing children in the service of God was normal at the time (in the Rule of St. Benedict we find whole chapters devoted to the subject of the treatment of the youngest in the abbey), the child’s psyche and his place in the family were simply viewed differently.

The Roman mentality still held the belief that until a person reached adulthood, she was the property of her father. And she could be dealt with at will, such as deciding that a daughter would be a nun, even if she was not yet ten years old. In Scholastics’ case, fortunately, the decision turned out to be right and in line with what the Lord was calling the girl to do.

By the time her brother began his studies in literature, she had probably already acquired the level of education that the customs of the time prescribed for a woman, and was entering more and more deeply into monastic life. I suppose Benedict visited her, and who knows if it wasn’t the stark contrast between the quietness and ideals of the sister monastery and the almost unprincipled student life of decadent Rome that caused the young man to suddenly get up and leave the room one day, in the middle of a lecture. It was around the year 500 – his path towards the summits: holiness and Monte Cassino, where he eventually founded his monastery, was beginning.

We don’t know when on this mountain his sister joined him, founding a female abbey a short distance away. Gregory records that she visited her brother infrequently, only once a year. It is very likely that they corresponded, but no traces have survived to support this hypothesis. One thing we know for sure – their bond, based on radical love for Christ, remained alive and nourished both of them.

Gregory describes in detail only one of Scholastic’s visits to the male abbey. She did not enter it, but stayed with her companions on the grounds belonging to the monastery, though not within its walls, thus expressing respect for the cloister. This geography is relevant here, as we will soon see.

Benedict went out to visit his sister with his brothers, and they sat down in the guest house to talk about “the things of God.” They were both old by then, and as they sat at the table like this, gray-haired and wrinkled, but surrounded by a cluster of disciples, they were a living confirmation of Christ’s promise that whoever leaves home and loved ones for Him, a hundredfold will receive now, in this life (cf. Mk.10:28-31). They spent the entire day in this way, and also ate the only prescribed meal of the day together, and when evening came, Benedict began to gather to leave. This was a display of fidelity on his part to the law he himself had established – the regulations firmly prohibit monks from spending the night outside the abbey if they had possibility to return.

Scholastic began to ask her brother to stay so that she could still enjoy a conversation together, but he was relentless. To her fervent request, “Please don’t abandon me this night! Let’s talk until morning about the joys of eternal life!”, he replied, judging by his tone, somewhat indignant that he could not spend the night outside the monastery.

Here Gregory interjects a meteorological remark: “And the sky was so bright that not even the smallest cloud was visible anywhere,” then returns to the story. She writes that Scholastics did not argue with her brother. She simply intertwined her hands on the table, leaned over and began to pray. The second she raised her head, thunder rolled outside the windows, and torrential rain poured down from the hitherto clear sky. It was so violent that no one was able to put a foot out the door.

Benedict had no doubt who was behind it. With a simplicity surprising to our scientific mentality, he exclaimed: “May Almighty God forgive you, sister. What have you done?” To this she replied, as befitted a seedy mamma italiana: “I asked you, and you wouldn’t listen to me. I asked my Lord and He heard me. So now leave, if you can, leave me and go back to the convent!”. What was left for the humiliated patriarch – he stayed. They talked all night about the things of God, and in the morning the rain stopped and Benedict and his brothers returned to the abbey.

I am invariably impressed by the spiritual interpretation that the whole event is given by the pope-biographer quoted so abundantly here. So let’s quote him again, so as not to miss anything of its beauty: “Benedict not always could do whatever he wanted (…) His will was opposed (…) by a miracle worked by the heart of a woman to whom God lent his omnipotence. No wonder that long longing for her brother, she was that hour stronger than he, for in the words of John ‘God is love’ (1Jn 4:16). And there is deep justice in this, that more was achieved by the one who loved more.” Well, after such a statement, it only falls to repeat after Gregory’s interlocutor: “I confess that I like very much what you say.”

Much wisdom can be gleaned from this story. What captures me most of all is the portrayal of Scholastics’ weakness as the space of her greatest strength. In her wisdom at a time when she is helpless, she relies on God. After all, she couldn’t force her brother to break a law that he himself laid down and took so seriously that somewhere in that righteousness love was lost. Scholasticism introduced a touch (if storms of such intensity can be so described!) of chaos into the perfectly ordered and principled male world. This allowed life, its brazen and yet so endearing dynamism, to enter this space.

About the Rule of St. Benedict, its experts, but also practitioners, say that the main feature of this work, decisive for the fact that for one and a half a millennium it is still valid and thousands of monks and nuns live according to it, is moderation and understanding of human weakness. I sometimes wonder if the presence of these qualities was not influenced precisely by its creator’s relationship with his sister. Wasn’t Scholastics, though not mentioned by name, the one who tempered her brother’s principled character, patiently pointing out God’s mercy?

One thing cannot be doubted – he loved her dearly. This is evidenced by the continuation of the story about her in the Dialogues. Well, three days after the sister’s visit, Benedict had a vision. In it he saw that Scholastics was dying – her soul, like a dove, was about to fly away to heaven – to which he reacted in a way that probably shocked us. Well, he began to worship God. Not because he had just lost his sister, but because he had seen her reach the goal toward which they had both been so persistent. Only when he finished singing for joy did he tell his brothers what had happened. Perhaps the thought also flashed through his head, full of gratitude, that good was the storm and a good night vigil together, as the time for Scholastics’ departure approached.

He ordered her body to be brought to the abbey and placed in a tomb he had prepared for himself. He himself soon followed her, too, and they rested in the womb of the earth together – as they had lived together in their mother’s womb – awaiting the resurrection. It was also a sign that they had united far more than was possible in mortality – with God and in God.

Let’s return to the image from the beginning of this story, taken from the hymn to the Hour of Readings for the feast of St. Benedict: “When the end of the old order came / And the new earth was born in pain / You stood, Father, on the frontier of time / To protect the good. The turn of the fifth and sixth centuries, that is, the period when the siblings of Nursia lived, was in the West the slow dying of the ancient world, finally killed by barbarians ravaging the Eternal City. The entire sublime civilization with its culture, laws, social norms and technology – was passing away. Cities ceased to exist or turned into villages, education disappeared and books became a luxury that only the increasingly illiterate could appreciate.

Out of this world plunging into chaos and death, it was Scholastics and Benedict, along with their spiritual children, who saved what was good in it. It delights me that at the beginning of the regulated Western monastic movement that would shape the European continent for centuries to come, and in the 10th and 11th centuries de facto bring the hierarchical Church out of total spiritual collapse, stood the siblings. Equal to each other, autonomous when it came to the care of their communities, equally radically running in the same direction, and at the same time loving each other so deeply with a completely pure love.

Scholastics seems to remain in her brother’s shadow, yet she is the first to achieve the goal of their common desire. She is also a model that describes well the roles of the great holy women of the Middle Ages, and perhaps of any era. There is a vivid resemblance to Mary in her silence and devotion to God, for they only strengthen the nun’s ability to admonish her brother when necessary. She draws all her strength from her Lord, and it is from Him that her authority flows – so strong that for believers it is unquestionable, while those who do not recognize it must succumb to it anyway, compelled by circumstances. After all, as those wiser than I say, coincidence is just one of God’s many names.

From: Elżbieta Wiater “Mistyczki i wojowniczki. Kobiety, które zmieniały Kościół”, WAM 2021, p. 11-17.