Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraph 4)
The first step of humility is to cherish at all times the sense of awe with which we should turn to God. It should drive forgetfulness away... (From para. 4 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
The experience of forgetfulness that I think St. Benedict is talking about here, is a dullness or a defense against the mystery of human life. Coming alive involves vulnerability and pain ("the pain involved in all loving", as John Main observes) but is nothing less than learning to live in the presence of God.
I love Laurence Freeman’s suggestion of a personal response to Jesus’ “Redemptive question”, “But who do you say that I am”. In fact, his very last words in “Jesus The Teacher Within” (Ch12 Kindle Loc5176) are: “ . . . I say that you, Jesus, are the humility, the humanity of God.” This is the awesomeness and the touchstone of my faith: to believe that you, Abba, so loved the world and me personally to send your only beloved Son to take flesh, become a human being, so that we, so that I, might have everlasting life. Jesus is your humility, your humanity.
ReplyDelete“The journey is from materialism to a renewed sense of the spiritual quality of life discovered in its ordinariness.” (John Main, “Monastery Without Walls” Kindle loc 4842). Just as the shepherds and the Magi found Jesus in most humble circumstances, help me, Abba, to find you, here, now, in silence, within.
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