Chapter 59: Children offered by nobles or by the poor

If parents who are from the nobility want to offer to God in the monastery one of their children, who is too young to take personal responsibility, they should draw up a document like that described above, and, as they make the offering, wrap the document with the child's hand in the altar cloth.

(From para. 1 of Ch. 59 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)

These children were the original oblates. As a twenty-first century Oblate of WCCM, I commit myself not only to deepening my own practice of meditation through the Benedictine wisdom tradition.  I also offer too other Oblates my participation in the way community can enhance discernment.