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, March 29, 2015

Chapter 49: How Lent should be observed in the monastery

Therefore we urge that all in the monastery during these holy days of Lent should look carefully at the integrity of their lives and get rid in this holy season of any thoughtless compromises which may have crept in at other times. (From para. 1 of Ch. 49 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

My ego can creep into absolutely anything, and it can creep fast if it thinks it's going to be gratified. My practice of meditation is a timeless corrective to thoughtless compromise.

1 comment:

valMarch 30, 2015 at 3:10 PM
A little further on in this chapter Benedict says that, "during these days....each of us will have something above the assigned measure to offer God of his own will with the joy of the Holy Spirit." I like that loving gesture in those words. I do not need to look to anyone else and what they may be doing, it is between me and God. When I can do something for God that is uniquely me it gives me great joy. And that runs through life also. Small gestures of love for God are the "little way" of
love.
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