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.)

Through his emphasis on the simple act of arriving at the monastery door, St. Benedict helps me to see my own moment of conversion -- my movement away from self-centeredness and towards Christian community -- as the moment I commit to becoming a new creation in Christ.