Chapter 2:  Gifts needed by an abbot or abbess (paragraph 1)

Anyone who aspires as abbot or abbess to be superior of a monastery should always remember what is really meant by the title and fulfil in their monastic life all that is required in one holding the office of monastic superior. For it is the place of Christ that the superior is understood to hold in the monastery by having a name which belongs to Christ . . . (From para. 1 of Ch. 2 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

If I'm to unpack what this passage might mean to me, I have to identify and abandon my false assumptions about leadership having to do with power or status. Benedict directs me to see that real leadership is about realizing the human consciousness of Jesus in my heart. In this way, I can see that Christ-like leadership expresses itself in selfless attention to the other.