Sometimes being grounded means first being on the ground — at least, that was the experience of Charles Trout and his family during a recent overseas trip that culminated with meeting Pope Francis in the Vatican.

Trout, along with his wife, Cathy, and daughter, Cody, had traveled to Rome in mid-September to attend the Fifth International Oblates Congress, a worldwide gathering of Benedictine oblates — lay or religious people who are not monks or nuns but fashion and live their lives outside of a monastery according to the principles and values of the Benedictine Rule — representing the oblates and community of monks at Saint Bernard Abbey in Cullman.

Benedictine oblates make a promise of stability, or the attachment to the community of a certain monastery, and the experience of joining more than 150 other international oblates for a series of conferences and discussions at the pontifical university Sant’Anselmo, Charles Trout said, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about and share experiences of living the oblate life throughout the world.

The Right Rev. Marcus Voss, the 10th abbot of St. Bernard Abbey, agreed: Trout’s representation of the Cullman abbey at the congress was valuable in connecting and communicating with oblates from monasteries as far away as South Africa.

“This expands the Benedictine family,” Voss said. “It allows us to be part of a larger picture,” he said of his cloistered community, “connecting oblates throughout the world — and learning from each other what they find helpful and beneficial in living the Rule. … It was very important to us to have our oblates represented at the congress so that we could be together and add to the dialogue in terms of our American culture.”

But it was more than dialogue that would affect Charles, Cathy and Cody during their nine-day stay in Italy.

The sheer physical experience of walking the paths once traveled by Saint Benedict of Nursia — the sixth century hermit who for a time lived in solitude in the mountains of Subiaco, later founding a monastery in Monte Cassino and writing The Rule that would together become the roots of the Catholic Church’s monastic system — offered something more.

Beyond meetings and discussion groups, oblates at the congress had the opportunity to visit sacred sites connected to St. Benedict and his sister, St. Scholastica. Those sites included Monte Cassino, where both saints are buried and where Benedict wrote his Rule; and Subiaco and Sacro Speco, the cave where Benedict began his hermit life and site of his first monastery.

Coupling those places with what he had learned from other oblates and his own sacred reading offered a deeper connection to his Catholic faith and the Benedictine way of life, Trout said.

“It was moving,” he said. “There I was, learning more about the Benedictine spirituality because I was actually touching it, not just reading about it. … I was in these places and I was very quiet. My mind was free to think only of what I was doing right there.”

Yet it was back at the Vatican that the Trouts would have their most profound experience of the journey.

Near the end of the congress, at a private gathering on Sept. 15, Francis addressed the entire group, beginning with his view of what living an oblate life means.

The Benedictine oblate, “in his or her own family and social environment, recognizes and accepts the gift of God,” the pope said, “inspiring his or her own journey of faith with the values of the Holy Rule and of the monastic spiritual tradition. Here, I am thinking of your charism which, I believe, can be summarized in a certain way by the very beautiful expression of St. Benedict, who invited his followers to have a ‘heart expanded by the unspeakable sweetness of love.’”

That “sweetness of love,” Trout said, was manifested at the end of the address when oblates had the opportunity to personally meet the pope.

Daughter Cody, 33, has cerebral palsy. Trout said she is “highly functional, especially in reading.”

“But, she doesn’t speak very well. … But one of the highlights of the pope, to his credit, is that he always pays attention to those with special needs.”

Because of this, Cody not only got a special blessing from Francis, she was placed at the head of the line when the pope met the oblates and their families.

“We walked up after his speech,” Trout said. “Everybody went up to shake his hand, and Cody was the first one, and what he gave her, actually, was a blessing for her birthday.”

“I’ve got all kinds of pictures,” Trout said. “Oh, it was awesome.”

In early November, Trout will share that awesomeness and his experiences with the Saint Bernard oblate community in a workshop during which he hopes others will take what he gained from the journey.

“I would say,” he said, “I’m more than a bit more spiritually connected to the Rule, now.”