Chapter 63: Community order (paragraph 1)
So, apart from those whom the superior has promoted for a more cogent reason or demoted for specific faults, all the others retain the order of their conversion to monastic life so exactly that one who arrived at the monastery door at the second hour must accept a place junior to another who came an hour earlier, whatever their age or former rank may have been. (From para. 1 of Ch. 62 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
St. Benedict defines my moment of conversion -- my movement away from self-centeredness and towards Christian community -- as the moment I open to becoming a new creation in Christ.
The paradox and the genius of Benedict’s Rule about community hierarchy is that it obliterates hierarchies, those innumerable pecking orders that normal living subjects me to: schooling, age, gender, size, wealth, fame, etc. All of those entitlement schemes are replaced by the the simple date and time of my public commitment to you, Abba.
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