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.

Friday, May 10, 2019

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

In fact they should remember that they will have to account in the awesome judgement of God both for their own teaching and also for the obedience of their disciples. (From para. 2 of Ch. 2 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

My hunch about the judgment of God is that it's "awesome" because it's inclusive, and probably the term "judgment" doesn't really apply at all. Contemplative experience helps me to see that so-called judgment may actually be more of a purification -- a burning away of all that causes individual separateness -- but not of individual responsibility. I'm responsible for my own actions and the infinite ways they reverberate in the universe.

1 comment:

Wally SaundersMay 10, 2019 at 4:59 AM
You give me another day of life, Abba, and with it an ability to respond, a response-ability to whatever and whomever I encounter today. Meditation sharpens my ability to respond lovingly and harmoniously.
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