WCCM Oblate Blog: Reflections from Daily Reading of the Rule of St. Benedict

WCCM Benedictine Oblates are encouraged to read a designated portion of the Rule daily, and to write a brief, personal response. I hope that this blog will support our Oblate community in this practice. Please, keep blog entries brief and in a first-person ("I") voice. Refrain from discussing, offering an opinion, or commenting on other entries. Simply consider how a particular section of the Rule is speaking to you in your present circumstances.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Chapter 73: This Rule is only a beginning

Whoever you may be, then, in your eagerness to reach your Father's home in heaven, be faithful with Christ's help to this small Rule which is only a beginning.

(From para. 1 of Ch. 73 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)

To end the Rule with a beginning is perhaps one of the strongest arguments for faithful practice that I hear in the entire Rule. Although Benedict points to other sources to help me "press on towards the highest standards of monastic life", he also implies that loving fidelity to the Rule will, "with Christ's help", lead me to the "Father's home in heaven". In the same way, John Main teaches that the only real progress in meditation is in fidelity to practice, a continual "beginning again".

1 comment:

val latonaSeptember 1, 2012 at 5:29 AM
"With Christ's help" and "under God's protection",Love "summon"(s) me to the "cultivation of virtues", the "inspired books" of Scripture, this "rule for beginners" and a constant return to the sacred practice of meditation and the mantra. I am being held up, carried forward,listened to,responded to and accompanied along the way,never alone and always called to be with the Other and others.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment