He Bore Us with Grace

Fr. Scott A. Haynes

A Meditation on the

Translation of the Relics of St. Benedict

July 11

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”—Psalm 115:15

I. Saints Do Not Sleep in the Earth

The Church’s memory does not fade like the memory of the world. It preserves with living warmth the witness of the saints—not as figures of the past, but as heavenly friends, present and active. When the Church celebrates the Translation of the Relics of St. Benedict on July 11, she is not commemorating a mere medieval episode. She is acknowledging a divine mystery: the power of God working in His saints, not only in life but also in death—and beyond death.

Relics speak to the Catholic heart of something the modern world forgets: that grace leaves a permanent mark on flesh, and that the bodies of the holy are not to be discarded or lost, but reverenced and honored. Their bones do not merely lie in tombs; they remain vessels of intercession, channels of miracles, and testimonies of glory.

II. The Hidden Tomb: A Quest Rooted in Faith

The tale of the translation begins in the seventh century, during a time of chaos and conquest. The abbey at Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict himself, had been ravaged by the Lombards, and his burial place was nearly forgotten.

Yet God raised up new sons to honor the father. According to the narrative preserved by Fleury Abbey—later called Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire—a priest from Gaul, under the direction of Abbot Mummolus, undertook a pilgrimage into Italy to find the saint’s remains. They came not with swords or royal orders but with prayer, humility, and fasting.

Fleury Abbey

Legend tells us that the swineherd of the region, a man unknown to the world but known to God, pointed them toward the ruined site. Days passed in prayer and confusion until a vision was given—not to the abbot or the priest—but to the cook, a man of low estate. In a dream, an angel showed him the exact location of the tomb. What a marvelous irony: the founder of Western monasticism, whose Rule exalted humility, now revealed himself not through princes or scholars, but to the humble laborer in the monastery kitchen.

Breaking through the marble seal beneath the altar, they uncovered two separate compartments, one bearing the name of Benedict, the other of Scholastica. The words inscribed made clear that the siblings, united in holiness during life, were to be separated by stone in burial—but only to be reunited again in heavenly glory.[1]

III. Blood-Stained Linens and Heavenly Signs

The monks did not find dry bones. The linen cloths that had wrapped Benedict’s sacred body were still stained with blood, as though the marks of grace and sacrifice endured beyond the grave. This sign, recorded in the ancient account of the translation, spoke volumes: “It pleased God to reveal by visible sign what they were in the world to come.”[2]

The relics were gently lifted, wrapped, and placed in reliquaries for the long journey back to Gaul. As they set out, those who carried the bones found that the burdens seemed to carry themselves. Horses and men, who might have labored under the weight, bore them as if they were light as feathers. Paths twisted gently, boughs bent, and the very earth seemed to make way for the passing of God’s saint. As one chronicler put it, “We bore him with reverence; he bore us with grace.”[3]

IV. From Italy to France: A Saint Goes Forth to Conquer Again

The relics reached Fleury, a modest monastery beside the River Loire. But with the arrival of St. Benedict, it became a spiritual capital, a new Monte Cassino, a throne of prayer and learning. The monks built a grand shrine, and miracles abounded. The blind saw, the crippled walked, hearts once hardened by sin melted in confession. As with the bones of Elisha in the Old Testament, which brought a dead man to life (4 Kings 13:21), so the relics of Benedict raised souls from spiritual death.

The arrival of his bones was not merely a transportation—it was a planting, a sowing of sanctity in new soil. Dom Prosper Guéranger, 19th-century abbot of Solesmes, would later write:

“The translation of St. Benedict’s body was not merely a physical event. It was a mystical seed planted in the soil of Gaul, from which would spring the whole spiritual regeneration of the West.”[4]

V. What the Church Fathers Say

Monte Cassino Monastery

The veneration of relics is not a medieval invention. The Church Fathers defend it as the natural outgrowth of the Incarnation.

• St. John Damascene writes:

  “The bodies of the saints are not to be despised, since they were the temples of the Holy Spirit... Through them God works miracles.”[5]

• St. Augustine of Hippo, upon seeing the miracles worked through the relics of St. Stephen, declared:

  “God honors the remains of His faithful servants. Their bones are not dead to Him.”[6]

• Pope St. Gregory the Great, Benedict’s own biographer, wrote in his Dialogues that the saint, even while alive, performed miracles—calming storms, raising the dead, and seeing the world “gathered into a single ray of light.”[7] He notes that Benedict’s power did not cease with death. Rather, it increased.

VI. The Rule in Motion: Benedict’s Last Journey as Teaching

This translation of relics can be read as a spiritual parable. Benedict, who spent his life teaching stability (stabilitas loci), obedience, and humility, ends his earthly presence with movement, obedience to God’s will, and humble exaltation. This is no contradiction. It is a fulfillment.

St. Peter Damian, the great Benedictine reformer, wrote:

“Let the Rule of Benedict be written not only in books but in your very marrow. Let each day be a cloistered offering.”[8]

Benedict’s translation calls us to translate the Rule into our own lives. Just as his relics were hidden, discovered, and borne into new lands, so the spirit of monasticism must be carried into our hearts, homes, and churches.

VII. The Importance of the Feast Day

In the traditional Benedictine calendar, March 21 is the feast of St. Benedict’s death, his dies natalis into Heaven. But July 11, the day of his translation, celebrates the expansion of his mission. It is his going forth—not in word or sermon, but in relic and miracle. While March 21 honors his repose, July 11 is the feast of his spiritual legacy—the transmission of his sanctity across borders and generations.

The liturgy of this feast reflects his dignity and applies these words from Sacred Scripture,

“Let us praise men of renown, and our fathers in their generation” (Ecclus. 44:1).

Our prayer this day invokes God’s power, who placed His servant as a teacher of the monastic life. We ought to ask the Lord to give us the grace to follow the spiritual example of this great saint.

VIII. A Vivid Application: Carry the Saint Within You

Imagine the monks walking through dark forests with the relics on their shoulders, guided by torches and psalms. Hear the clinking of their staff against stones, the hush of awe as they cross villages. Picture the mothers weeping with joy as their children are healed, the monks processing into Fleury with tears in their eyes, chanting the psalms of David as incense rises into heaven.

Now, apply this image to your own soul. Your heart is the reliquary. You are the bearer of sacred things. The virtues of Benedict—order, peace, humility, silence, joy—must be carried from the cloister into the chaos of modern life.

In an age of noise, be silent.

In an age of pride, be humble.

In an age of busyness, be prayerful

In an age of fragmentation, be stable.

In an age of despair, have hope.

In an age of sloth, practice ora et labora ("prayer and work").[9]

IX. Prayer

O glorious Father Benedict, whose sacred bones were stained with the blood of spiritual combat and crowned with miracles, intercede for us, thy children. As thy relics brought healing to the lands of France, bring grace to our homes and peace to our troubled age. Teach us to carry thee within, to be translated from sin to grace, from noise to silence, from earth to heaven. And when we pass from this world, may our bodies, like thine, bear witness to the sanctity of Christ’s love, and may we rest beside thee in the eternal cloister of the heavenly Jerusalem. Amen.

Footnotes

1. Translatio Sancti Benedicti, in C.G. Coulton (ed.), Life in the Middle Ages, vol. IV (New York: Macmillan, 1910), 29–31.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 12: Time after Pentecost (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000), 97.

5. St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, IV.15, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 9.

6. St. Augustine, City of God, Book XXII, ch. 8, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2.

7. Pope Gregory I, Dialogues, Book II, ch. 37, trans. Odo Zimmerman, O.S.B. (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1959).

8. St. Peter Damian, Letter 28 to the Monks of Monte Cassino, in Letters of Peter Damian, trans. Owen J. Blum (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1992), vol. 1.

9. Motto of the Benedictine Order.