Chapter 2: Gifts needed by an abbot or abbess (paragraph 5-6)
They should make their own the different ways of teaching which the Apostle Paul recommended to Timothy when he told him to make use of criticism, of entreaty and of rebuke. (From para. 5 of Ch. 2 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
If I'm to know how to guide someone most appropriately, I must first put my habitual thoughts aside, and listen to them with an open heart.
If I'm to know how to guide someone most appropriately, I must first put my habitual thoughts aside, and listen to them with an open heart.
“The message we have been commanded to deliver, to repeat with all the freshness that the creative Spirit imbues us with, is of immense and contemporary urgency, most of all perhaps for the young. But it is a hard message, a hard saying, and it can barely be heard let alone accepted unless we ourselves are the living witnesses of its authenticity.” (John Main, “Community of Love p29). Any enthusiastic words I may have for others about twice-daily or any meditation will ring quite hollow unless I am consistently a living witness of this “hard message”, unless I am making time for this twice-daily work of prayer myself.
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