Feast day of St. Scholastica

Feb. 10. St. Scholastica, Virgin:   St. Scholastica, the twin sister of St. Benedict, was born at Nursia in Italy, in 480.  She followed in the footsteps of piety of her saintly brother.  In the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great it is related that on the occasion of the last conversation of St. Scholastica with her brother, he had determined to return to his monastery at evening, but Scholastica leaning with her elbows on the table and holding her forehead in her hands began to shed tears.  A violent storm immediately burst forth, and the rain fell in torrents, so that Benedict was compelled to remain and continue the spiritual conversation.  St. Gregory says that on that occasion she had more power than he over the heart of God, because whilst St. Benedict upheld the law of discipline and justice she, on the other hand, appealed to a higher law, that of love:  plus potuit, quia plus amavit.  Three days later in the year of Our Lord 543, while at prayer, before the night office, St. Benedict saw the innocent soul of St. Scholastica ascend to heaven in the shape of a dove (Collect).  Her body was placed at Monet-Cassino in the tomb her brother had prepared for himself, in which he was also placed a few weeks later.  “Thus it happenend,” writes St. Gregory, “that one tomb united the bodies of the bodies of those whose souls had always been intimately united in God.”