Something Worth Defending - Food for Thought.

“New life has risen from the ruins."

"While we have the image of 50 years ago before our eyes, we must once more repeat the word Monte Cassino, a name that has a far older meaning than the one attributed to it in 1944. We must go back 15 centuries to the time of St Benedict. Precisely at Monte Cassino one of those Benedictine abbeys that was to initiate the formation of Europe arose. Historians show that on the basis of the Benedictine principle "ora et labora", after the decline of the Roman Empire of the West and after the migrations of peoples, this Europe began to emerge, whose civil and cultural foundations have been preserved to this day. This is Christian Europe. It was St Benedict in the West, like Saints Cyril and Methodius in the East, who contributed to the Christianization of Europe in the first millennium. Moreover, the European nations are indebted to them for the very beginnings of their own culture and of this Western civilization, which has continued to develop over the centuries and has also spread to other continents.

"From this standpoint, what does the battle of Monte Cassino represent? It was the clashing of two "projects": one, both in the East and in the West, aiming at uprooting Europe from its Christian past linked to her Patrons, and in particular to St Benedict, and the other, striving to defend the Christian tradition of Europe and the "European spirit". The fact that the Abbey of Monte Cassino was destroyed has a symbolic value. Christ said: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit" (Jn 12:24). Evidently, the ancient Abbey of Monte Cassino had to be destroyed so that a new life for all of Europe could rise from its ruins. And in a certain sense, this is what happened."

MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF MONTE CASSINO

Monte Cassino Pope John Paul II
St. Benedict Christian Europe World+War+II