Chapter 41: The times for community meals
The principle is that the superior should manage everything so prudently that the saving work of grace may be accomplished in the community and whatever duties the community undertakes they may be carried out without any excuse for murmuring. (From para. 1 of Ch. 41 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
I'm at my desk right now, reading the Rule, writing this blog, and planning my day on a little yellow sticky note, distracted by feeling behind and by things that need to get done. Is my guiding principle truly that the saving work of grace may be accomplished among my family, friends, community? Or is distraction murmuring at me? Practicing attention will bring me into God's sphere better than fretting will.
How fragile my faith, my hope and my love sometimes. How easily I can get into that “murmuring” (for me it shows up in my feeling I am not “enough”) that St Benedict proscribes so frequently. How important to my life, therefore, become the love and support of fellow fragile human beings, like Fr. John and Fr. Laurence and my fellow meditators and Oblates who courageously share their faith and their hope and their love—their lives--with me and my fragile fellows.
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