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.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Chapter 18: The order for reciting the psalms (paragraph 3)

These same psalms are repeated daily until Sunday and the identical arrangement of hymns, lessons and verses is retained everyday. (From para. 3 of Ch. 18 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

It seems to me that a spirit of fidelity to practice pervades Benedict's sense of order -- just as it pervades the tradition of the mantra as taught by John Main.

3 comments:

Wally SaundersFebruary 22, 2015 at 5:14 AM
“The cross of the Lord has become the tree of life for us.” The first antiphon for Psalm One today grabs me, Abba. What optimism your resurrection generates! Embracing the daily death becomes my way to life. The seed that is me dies, disintegrates, and I become alive in and with you.
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Melanie CondesFebruary 22, 2015 at 5:21 AM
By nature, I like variety. I like to do new things, go to new places. But the repitition of the Psalms over and over is teaching me the necesarry 'grounding' for my spiritual journey.
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valFebruary 22, 2015 at 6:04 AM
By reciting the Psalms through praying the Divine Office more frequently as Benedict advises, opens me to the movement of the Spirit in my life. I use the occasions of my life and connect them with the words of the Psalms and my own words and wait patiently for the Spirit to direct, to move, to take possession of my heart, and to free me from my own selfish, self-centered word-ways.
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