As we just heard in chapter fifty-eight of the Rule about receiving our brethren, Benedict says to see if the newcomer truly seeks God. The signs for that are in three zeals. Zeal is defined as eagerness in this text of the RB 1980. The Latin sollicitus means zeal. Zeal for the work of God, zeal for obedience, zeal for the humble way of life.
Zeal for the work of God means not just coming to Office and being there all of the time. It is being there fully through your singing, listening, and responding. Even more deeply, as Saint Benedict says in the nineteenth chapter (“The Discipline of the Psalmody”), you bring the mind into harmony with the heart—the spirit with the voice [RB 19:7.]. We allow the ideas and words to form and shape us, and to make them truly our own.
The same is true of obedience. It is not just doing what we are told. Benedict, in the the fourth step of humility, says that we are to embrace and endure everything not only without murmuring but with joy. This way of humility, found in chapter seven of the Rule, is the heart of his spiritual teaching.
That in this obedience under difficult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, his heart quietly embraces suffering and endures it without weakening or seeking escape. For Scripture has it: Anyone who perseveres to the end will be saved (Matt 10:22), and again, Be brave of heart and rely on the Lord (Ps 26[27]:14). Another passage shows how the faithful must endure everything, even contradiction, for the Lord’s sake, saying in the person of those who suffer, For your sake we are put to death continually; we are regarded as sheep marked for slaughter (Rom 8:36; Ps 43[44]:22). They are so confident in their expectation of reward from God that they continue joyfully… [5]
Even in the zeal for these contradictions of life, you not only embrace them without murmuring, but embrace them with joy. It is with that same kind of wholeheartedness and zeal which one “inclines the ear of the heart” in the reading of the wisdom of Saint Benedict in his Rule. It is to seek and receive into your whole being the wisdom of the Rule.
Dom Basil Pennington
“Incline the Ear of Your Heart”
A talk given on the Rule of Saint Benedict
Sunday, March 18, 2001
© Copyright of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, 2006
5. RB 7:35-39. In chapter five of the Rule on obedience, Benedict instructs, “This very obedience, however, will be acceptable to God and agreeable to men only if compliance with what is commanded is not cringing or sluggish or half-hearted, but free from any grumbling or any reaction of unwillingness” (RB 5:14).
