Beer is a Gift From God

Norcia, Italy, Jun 14, 2017 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was God and beer sales that helped sustain the Benedictine monks of Norcia, and it is God and beer sales that will help them rebuild.

Last year, in August and again in October, strong earthquakes rocked the town of Norcia, Italy, killing hundreds of people and destroying the 14th century Basilica of St. Benedict, where the monks of Norcia dwelt.

Miraculously, their brewery, where they produce Birra Nursia, was mostly left intact.

The monks were forced to dwell in tents and cabins through a particularly cold Italian winter while they began rebuilding a new, earthquake-proof monastery in San Benedetto in Monte, just outside the walls of Norcia.

Now, the monks  have announced a special project that will help them rebuild: Leffe, a Belgian brewery, has agreed to partner with the monks for a special edition brew, the proceeds of which will go directly to the monks’ new monastery.

Unfortunately, it will only be available in Italy.

The Monks Of Norcia

The Basilica over the birthplace of St. Benedict was destroyed in the recent earthquake in mid-Italy. I have written about the Benedicine monks there before -their singing, their beer. There is hope for the Church as long as there are men like this in it.  Please read this article by Rod Dreher.

There is a man driven to his knees, on the piazza, surrounded by nuns, the elderly, and someone in a wheelchair. The weak, the frightened, those without a roof over their heads. What did the priest-monk Basil do? He went to his knees to pray. This is the fruit of the spiritual training, day and night, that Brother Augustine talks about — the training that simply is the Benedictine life. This is the core of the Benedict Option: building up the daily habits of prayer, asceticism, and charity that allow the Holy Spirit to make us resilient. If you think losing their basilica and monastery is going to stop the Monks of Norcia, you badly underestimate them. All the prayer, worship, fasting and brotherhood they’ve been living these last 16 years, this ordering their lives around the service of Christ, has rooted them deeply in the faith. This terrible calamity shows their human weakness, but it also will reveal their inner strength, for as God said to St. Paul, “My power is made perfect in weakness.”