Chapter 31: The qualities required by the cellarer (paragraph 1)
All the utensils of the monastery and in fact everything that belongs to the monastery should be cared for as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar. (From para. 1 of Ch. 31 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
St. Benedict is telling me that even mundane things can be sacred vessels -- if I see their true reality, if I see with the eye of the heart. To see this way I need the grace of selfless attention, melting into awe and gratitude.
“He should be neither a miser nor a prodigal nor a squanderer of the monastery’s substance.” Abba, heal my relationship with mammon, money. Out of fear of financial insecurity, in the past, I have kept my and my family’s finances vague and unclear. Or else I have become obsessively over concerned with them. Teach me to be clear about and live contently within my means. Help me to steer a mid-course between the rocks of manic spending, on the one hand, and depressive hoarding, on the other, remembering, at once, your paradoxical lessons of both the prudent steward and the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
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