It Grows Green

Cut it Down; It Grows Green

On February 15th, 1944, at the height of Second World War, the Abbey of Monte Cassino was destroyed by a series of air raids. Up until that point, it had been held by German troops, but it came under attack as the Allied forces advanced through Italy.

This famous abbey, where St. Benedict wrote his Rule, and where he died and was buried, had been destroyed several times before. In 590, not long after St. Benedict, it was sacked by the Lombards. The monks eventually returned, only to have their monastery attacked again in 883, this time by Saracens. The abbey was leveled by an earthquake in 1349, and subsequently rebuilt again.

Today, if you look at the crest of the Abbey of Monte Cassino, you will see an image of a stump, with a green shoot growing out of it. Below the image is the motto, “Succisa Virescit,” which literally means, “Having been cut down, it grows green.” The crest represents the monastery as a tree, which has been cut down, but now has green shoots growing out from the stump.

What does the history of Monte Cassino have to say to us? By way of answering this question, I would like to pose another one: Why did those monks keep rebuilding Monte Cassino? Pope Benedict XVI put it this way:

“First and foremost, it must be frankly admitted straight away that it was not their intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past. Their motivation was much more basic. Their goal was: quaerere Deum [to seek God]. Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential – to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself. They were searching for God.”

Those monks who came to the mountain overlooking the town of Cassino were not there to develop a new culture. They were not there to save Western civilization. They simply responded to the question St. Benedict poses in the Prologue: “Who is there who desires life and wishes to see good days?” They came to the monastery, and even rebuilt it, to seek God.

This might be the first lesson for us. If you ask yourself, “Why am I here?” you might have several answers. Some of those answers might be somewhat superficial, while others might be deeper and more personal. It’s worth taking some time to address the question, “What are my motivations, and which ones are truly lasting?”

Going back for a moment to Monte Cassino, if the reason why the monks kept rebuilding the monastery was to seek God, I think it’s also worth asking the question: How did they go about doing it? St. John Henry Newman comments on this:

by Br. Jean-Marie Hogan

Monte Cassino was built in the sixth century under the guidance of St. Benedict. The site had been home to a Roman temple to Apollo before the Benedictine monks took it over. It has been destroyed and rebuilt many times, most recently during and after World War II. Photo from the Collection of the National WWII Museum, 2013.495.1681

Holy Week

Retreat 2021

This article was adapted from Br. Jean-Marie’s conference at the 2021 Holy Week Retreat. All Retreat Materials and Conferences are available free at: kansasmonks.org/triduum2021

Monte Cassino, like the age-old oak planted by St. Benedict, “stripped of its leaves” by the violence of the war, sprang up even more vigorously than before.

- pope benedict xvi

“When the bodily frame receives an injury, or is seized with some sudden malady, nature may be expected to set right the evil, if left to itself, but she requires time; science comes to shorten the process, and is violent that it may be certain. This may be taken to illustrate St. Benedict’s mode of counteracting the miseries of life. He found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way, not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, nor professing to do it, by any set time or by any rare specific or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often, till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction, or conversion. The new world which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure.”

I would like to focus on these two words that Newman uses: “growth” and “structure.” Since they are somewhat metaphorical, let’s unpack the terms of the metaphor. First, what does it mean to construct something? Creating a physical structure usually requires drawing up a plan for whatever it is that you want to build, gathering the materials, and putting it together. At each of these steps, you are generating something. But what about growing? If you’re growing a vegetable garden, you have to water the plants; otherwise, they will wither. The difference is: you can’t make the plants grow. While your work does matter, ultimately, it isn’t you that’s causing the growth.

According to Newman, St. Benedict went about his work in the mode of growing. While he did do a lot of work, his work was less about constructing something, and more about watering the garden. God was the one who made the growth happen.

What does that mean for us? Just as with a garden, you have to be faithful in taking care of it, but you can’t make the plants grow, so our own spiritual growth is not something we can make happen. What we do matters, but the new life does not come from ourselves; it can only come from God.

In my own experience, one place where I have seen this kind of growth happen has been through praying the psalms. Lately, I have been finding that when I am confronted with a temptation, a line from the psalms sets me back on course. For example, one of my jobs at the Abbey is to clean the stairs. To be honest, I don’t look forward to cleaning the stairs, and I often don’t feel like doing it. But what comes to my mind is, “The threshold of the house of God I prefer to the dwellings of the wicked.” This verse reminds me that even if I don’t particularly enjoy what I am doing right now, this is still where I am meant to be—here, in the house of God.

This experience of being re-directed by the psalms is clearly something that I did not generate. I didn’t go looking through the Bible for a verse that would help motivate me to clean the stairs. I did receive it through praying the psalms as part of the Divine Office with the monastic community. In this sense, praying the Office is like watering the plants. But it still wasn’t something that I brought about on my own.

In the past year, there have been several times when I have felt like a stump. Something in me had been cut off; part of me had died, and I wasn’t sure if it would ever come back. While I wouldn’t have planned any of those painful moments for myself, the important thing for me to ask myself is: Do I trust that God has a plan for my good, to help me grow into the son my Father wants me to be, even if that happens in a way that I didn’t expect? Do I have confidence that He is there, generating new life in me, even when all I can see is the stump? These are questions I continue to wrestle with.

In your own life, are there places where you feel “cut down”? I invite you to bring those before the Lord, and to ask Him for the grace to trust that He is at work.

The coat of arms of Monte Cassino is featured in stained glass in the monastic refectory at St. Benedict’s Abbey.

Br. Jean-Marie Hogan is the newest member of St. Benedict’s Abbey, professing first vows on December 8, 2020. Coming to the Abbey from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Br. Jean-Marie studied Classics at the University of Dallas, graduating in 2019. Currently Br. Jean-Marie serves the monastic community as a sacristan, takes classes at Benedictine College, and works at other tasks around the monastery.