August, 2026
DR. BRANDON BECK
LAY CHAPLAIN, COHI
MONK, THE OOOW
CHURCH OF RECONCILIATION, SAN ANTONIO, TX
THEOLOGY STUDENT, BRITE DIVINITY SCHOOL
My family and I saw Christopher Nolan’s new The Odyssey in theaters recently. As I have reflected on the unique and creative way that Nolan, in his true-to-form bigger-than-life cinematic style, retold Homer’s epic, I couldn’t help but connect themes from this ancient epic tale with our Rule of Benedict.
Both works have survived so many hundreds and thousands of years because they teach invaluable life lessons for individuals and communities – one based on Jesus’ life and words and the other, quite possibly, a known work to those with whom Jesus worked.
It is based on the works of Homer that we come to talk about our lives as potentially related to the Hero’s Journey archetype. We all are born in this unknown life of ours and journey through our lives with a continual goal of returning home to that eternal kin-dom with our Father in Heaven. Throughout the journeys of our lives, we meet strange people and creatures and succeed and fail through joys and struggles just as Odysseus models as he strives to bring himself and his crew back to Ithaca. Our personal Cyclops might be depression or anxiety; our personal Scylla and Charybdis might be the decision we have to make about putting our parents in a nursing home or having them live with us in their final years.
Jesus lived the Hero’s Journey, as well, and is our example in faith that our true home to which we are all striving to return is Heaven drawn near on Earth and ever after in eternity. We achieve our home by simply loving God, our Neighbors, and Ourselves. Just as Jesus was tempted in the desert, we too use our relationship with God to resist the Siren songs of temptation in our lives.
Benedict knew all of this and taught his monastics well. When we are instructed by Benedict to pray in certain ways at certain times, to listen to God in all our endeavors, to wait patiently on each other, to both lead and follow in the manner of Jesus, and to be humble in our pursuit of deeper relationship with each other and with God, we are really being instructed to keep our eyes on the goal of our ultimate homecoming while relying on other people journeying with us.
One of the characters in Nolan’s film says, “They no longer know how to write the songs.” When I heard that line, I thought of the many traditions that are important to us as People of the Word and Table. I wondered what “songs” we no longer know how to write and how we, as faithful people in community, can remind ourselves and others not just of the “songs” of our ancestors but also that how and why “to write” them matters.
Let us not forget our home, our way and reason for striving to return, and the guides we have along the way. The guide whom we study in Community of Hope, St. Benedict, offers lessons and advice all along the way for how to be a better steward of the gifts God gives each of us.
