Pope Benedict XVI flew by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo for the General Audience in Aula Paolo VI today, returning to the summer residence afterwards.
Here is the Holy Father's English synthesis of his catechesis today on St. Anselm:
Dear brothers and sisters,
In Rome, on the Aventine hill, we find the Benedictine Abbey of St. Anselm. As the seat of an Institute of Higher Studies and of the Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation, it is a place that unites prayer, study and governance, the three activities that characterized the life of the saint to whom it is dedicated: Anselm of Aosta, the ninth centenary of whose death we observe this year.
The multiple initiatives promoted especially by the uiocese of Aosta for this happy occasion have shown the interest that that this medieval thinker continues to arouse.
He is also known as Anselm of Bec and Anselm of Canterbury because of the cities with which he was associated.
Who is this personage to whom three sites distant from each other and in three different countries (Italy, France and England) feel particularly bound?
He was a monk of intense spiritual life, an excellent educator of the young, a theologian with an extraordinary speculative capacity, a wise man of government, and an intransigent defender of libertas Ecclesiae, the freedom of the Church.
Anselm is one of the eminent personalities of the Middle Ages, who could harmonize all these qualities thanks to profound mystical experience which always guided his thought and action.
St. Anselm was born in 1033 (or in early 1034) in Aosta, the firstborn of a noble family. His father was a coarse man, dedicated to the pleasures of life, who dissipated his goods. His mother, on the contrary, was a lady of elevated breeding and profound religiosity (cfr Eadmero, Vita s. Anselmi, PL 159, col 49).
It was the mother who took care of her son's early human and religious formation, which she then entrusted to the Benedictines in a priory in Aosta.
Anselm, who as a boy - his biographer tells us - imagined the dwelling of the good God among the high and snowbound peaks of the Alps, dreamt one night that he had been invited to this splendid kingdom by God himself, who had a long and friendly conversation with him and at the end, asked him to eat 'a bread that was very white' (ibid., col 51).
This dream left him convinced that he was called to carry out a high mission. At the age of 15, he asked to be admitted into the Benedictine order, but his father opposed it with all his authority, and did not yield even when his son, who fell seriously ill and feeling himself near death, implored to take on the religious habit as a consolation.
After he got well, and with the premature death of his mother, Anselm went through a period of moral dissipation: he neglected his studies, and overcome by earthly passions, he became deaf to God's call.
He left home and started to wander throughout France in search of new experiences. After three years, he reached Normandy, where he went to the Benedictine Abbey of Bec, attracted by the fame of its prior, Lanfranco of Pavia.
It was for him a providential encounter that was decisive for the rest of his life. Under Lanfranco's guidance, Anselm resumed his studies with vigor, and in a short time, became not only his teacher's favorite pupil but also his confidante.
His monastic vocation was rekindled, and after careful consideration, he entered the monastic order at age 27 and was ordained a priest. Asceticism and study had opened new horizons for him, enabling him to recover, to a higher degree, the familiarity with God that he had as a child.
In 1063, when Lanfranco became the Abbot of Caen, Anselm - after barely three years of monastic life - was named prior of the monastery at Bec and master of the cloister school, in which he revealed his gifts as a refined educator.
He did not like authoritarian methods. He likened young people to small plants which develop better if they are not enclosed in a glass house but given 'healthy' freedom.
He was very demanding on himself and with the other monks in observance of the monastic life, but instead of imposing discipline, he sought to make them follow him through persuasion.
With the death of Abbot Erluino, who had founded the abbey of Bec, Anselm was unanimously elected to succeed him - it was February 1079.
Meanwhile, many monks had been called to Canterbury to bring to their colleagues across the Channel the (spiritual) renewal that was taking place on the Continent. Their work was well received, to the point that Lanfranco of Pavia, abbot of Caen, became the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
He asked Anselm to spend some time with him to instruct the (English) monks and help him in the difficult situation that the ecclesial community found itself after the Norman Conquest (1088).
Anselm's stay in Canterbury proved to be very fruitful. He earned such sympathy and esteem that at the death of Lanfranco, he was chosen to succeed him in the archiespiscopal chair of Canterbury. He received his solemn episcopal ordination in December 1093.
Anselm immediately engaged in an energetic battle for the freedom of the Church, courageously sustaining the independence of spiritual power from the temporal.
He defended the Church against the unwarranted interference of political authorities, above all, of King William the Red and Henry I, finding encouragement and support from the Roman Pontiff towards whom Anselm always showed courageous and heartfelt adherence.
This loyalty cost him in 1003 the bitterness of being exiled from his seat in Canterbury. It was only in 1006, after Henry I renounced his claim to conferring eccclesiastical investitutres, as well as raising taxes and confiscating the goods of the Church, that Anselm was able to return to England, where he was welcomed festively by the clergy and the people.
Thus ended happily the long struggle that he fought with the weapons of perseverance, ierceness and goodness. This sainted Archbishop, who roused such admiration wherever he went, dedicated the last years of his life above all to the moral formation of the clergy and to intellectual research on theological subjects.
He died on April 21, 1009, accompanied by the words of the Gospel at the Holy Mass of the day: "It is you who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer a kingdom on you, just as my Father has conferred one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom..." (Lk 22,28-30).
The dream of that mysterious banquet, which had been the start of his spiritual journey when he was but a child, thus found its realization. Jesus, who had invited him to sit at his table, welcomed St. Anselm on his death into the eternal kingdom of the Father.
"God, I pray to you, I want to love you, I want to know you and to be able to enjoy you. If in this life I am not capable of this to the full measure, then may I one day progress until I reach that fullness"
(Proslogion, cap.14).
This prayer makes us understand the mystical spirit of this great saint of the medieval era - the founder of scholastic theology, whom Christian tradition has given the title of 'Magnificent Doctor', because be cultivated the intense desire to know the divine mysteries in depth, fully aware that the search for God never ends, at least not on this earth.
The clarity and logical rigor of his thought always had the end of "elevating the mind to the contemplation of God" (Ivi, Proemium). He states clearly that whoever intends to do theology cannot count on his intelligence alone, but should cultivate at the same time a profound experience of faith.
The activity of the theologian, according to St. Anselm, develops in three stages: faith, which is a free gift from God to be accepted with humility; experience, which consists in embodying the word of God in one's own daily life; and thus, true knowledge, which is never the fruit of aseptic reasoning but rather of contemplative intuition.
Remaining even more useful today for healthy theological research and for whoever wants to study deeply the truths of the faith are his famous words: "I do not seek, Lord, to penetrate your profundity because I cannot even remotely confront it with my own intelligence. But I wish to understand, at least up to a certain point, your truth which my heart believes and loves. Indeed, I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand" (Ivi, 1).
Dear brothers and sisters, may love for the truth and a constant thirst for God, which marked the entire life of St. Anselm, be a stimulus for every Christian to search without ever tiring a union that is ever more intimate with Christ - the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Moreover, may the zeal full of courage that distinguished his pastoral activity, and which sometimes earned him misunderstanding, bitterness, and even exile, be an encouragement to Pastors, to consecrated persons, and to all the faithful, to love the Church of Christ, to pray, to work and to suffer for her, without ever abandoning or betraying her.
May this grace be obtained for us by the Virgin Mother of God, for whom St. Anselm had a tender and filial devotion. "Mary, it is you my heart wants to love," he wrote, "it is you that my tongue wants to praise ardently".