The brilliant young woman, Scholastica lived in the 6th Century, a time when women had little influence and were expected to marry and run a household according to her husband’s power and wealth. As twin of Benedict of Nursia, however, this great saint decided to serve God in prayer and scholarship with a community of women she established.  Through the years of her adult life she led her community and established a rule that was designed to mimic their imagination of the perfect world of God’s reign.  Her monastery cared for the sick and the poor of the area, provided a guest house for women who needed shelter, educated girls and young women, provided spiritual direction and maintained a library of scripture and spiritual texts.  The house was financially self sufficient and the vowed religious served as a powerhouse of prayer.  Pope Saint Gregory I wrote of Scholastica in his book of Dialogues that her greater love would do greater things for the world.

The First Reading from the Book of Kings presents a Jewish leader, Jeroboam, who chooses to go a very different route.  Because Jeroboam and his people had been harshly treated by Solomon and then were threatened with worse treatment by Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, he sets up his own kingdom separate from the Dynasty of David in the South.  To break the religious unity of the tribes of Israel Jeroboam even goes so far as to establish alternate religious practice that the author of Kings identifies as idolatry.  What we discover later in the books of Kings, however, is that virtually all human rules and kingdoms have elements of idolatry.  One could even say this is the nature of human politics when it becomes the focus of decision making.  If a person or a group determines to pursue their own flourishing in opposition to the common good, and at the cost of other’s lives and wellbeing they effectively worship the golden calf as the Jews of the Exodus had.  One has only to look at “super bowl Sunday” tomorrow for the same symptoms in the United States in our day.  The “feast” of being number 1 carries with it the consequences of multiple harms.  It is no accident that more domestic violence is carried out on this day in the United States, or that human trafficking for sex is higher than any other time of the year because this sports festival becomes a paradigm for various forms of self worship that humans can and do undertake.  Violence and greed are at the heart of much of the advertising, and the cost of a single ticket to the “game” and its half-time ritual would feed a hungry child for a year or more.  

The Gospel, on the other hand shows us the pattern of worship of the God of life and compassion.  Here Jesus feeds the multitude miraculously after challenging his disciples to do so first.  He takes their small offering of loaves of bread and a few fish and blesses God who multiplies them to fill the lives of thousands of people with more-than-adequate nourishment.  

The movement from self-adoration to genuine worship of God is expressed in the whole liturgy that moves from acknowledgement of sin to repentance and then to gratitude and the contemplation of great deeds for those who love God.  In celebration of Saint Scholastica we would do well to honor and emulate women and men who have made the choice to adore God with their lives by living generously through discerning the greater needs that we can fill with the gifts that have been poured out on us.    

“No human lives by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4.4b)