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, May 26, 2019

Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraphs 1-3)

The word of God in scripture teaches us in clear and resounding terms that anyone who lays claim to a high position will be brought low and anyone who is modest in self-appraisal will be lifted up. (From Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

I hear Benedict making a distinction between the floundering and noisy self-inflation of the ego, and the selflessness necessary to be "lifted up". I have experienced self-inflation as a weighty mixture of pride, anxiety, and blindness. I don't think that silence or selflessness weigh anything at all, and so are free.

1 comment:

Wally SaundersMay 26, 2019 at 4:56 AM
Twice a day in meditation you invite me, Abba, to embrace you in the sacrament of the present moment. Embracing the now humbles me, thst is, makes me right size with the infinite Power and Immensity of my present Reality, the Reality that is You here within me.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment