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.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Chapter 63: Community order (paragraph 1)

So, apart from those whom the superior has promoted for a more cogent reason or demoted for specific faults, all the others retain the order of their conversion to monastic life so exactly that one who arrived at the monastery door at the second hour must accept a place junior to another who came an hour earlier, whatever their age or former rank may have been.

(From para. 1 of Ch. 63 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)

Benedict names conversion to a life of seeking God in community, as the moment of my on-going arrival into the Kingdom.

1 comment:

val latonaApril 19, 2013 at 3:53 AM
If you are truly seeking God, my friend, what difference does it make whether I am old or young; whether I am degreed or not; when I have asked for entry; whether I am expressive or not; whether I am a leader or not? Is not seeking Him enough? Whatever I need to find Him will be given to me. I must trust completely in the commitment to the meditation practice , and to the community.
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