Benedictine Wisdom 
Instruction on the Rule by the great early thinkers of the Benedictine order.
Unlikeness . . .
Unlikeness means, not that the likeness has been destroyed, but that it has been concealed by something else which has been laid over it. The soul has not in fact put off her original form but has put on one foreign to her. The latter is an addition; the former has not been lost. This… Read More ›
The good Samaritan
Christ is the good Samaritan who rescues us as well as the physician who binds up our wounds: With what oil abounding was Christ anointed! From his bounty he poured oil into all our wounds! Yes, we are the wounded man who went down to Jericho, fell among brigands, was robbed, and wounded and left… Read More ›
God has the words of eternal life
God has the words of eternal life, and the hour is coming — if only it were already here! — when the dead shall hear his voice, and those who hear him shall live, for life is in his will. And if you want to know, his will is our conversion. Listen to him then:… Read More ›
Speaking with Jesus about Jesus
Reading should serve prayer, should dispose the affections, should neither devour the hours nor gobble up the moments of prayer. When you read you are taught about Christ, but when you pray you join him in familiar colloquy. How much more enchanting is the grace of speaking with him than about him! Gilbert of Hoyland
Falling is a test
After this [God] allows us to fall harder and more grievously than ever we did before — as it seems to us. And then we think (because we are not all wise) that what we had begun has come to nothing. But it is not so. It is necessary for us to fall and it… Read More ›
Search the Scriptures
Search the Scriptures. For you are not mistaken in thinking that you find life in them, you who seek nothing else in them but Christ, to whom the Scriptures bear witness. Blessed indeed are they who search his testimonies, seek them out with all their heart. Your testimonies are wonderful, Lord, therefore my soul has… Read More ›
Lighting the Lamp and Sweeping the House
The image would have lain stained and deformed, had not the woman of the Gospel lit her lamp — had not Wisdom appeared in the flesh, in other words — swept the house — of the vices — searched carefully for her lost coin — her image — which, its original luster gone, coated over… Read More ›
Wisdom and Knowledge
Haphazard reading, constantly varied and as if lighted upon by chance does not edify but makes the mind unstable; taken into the memory lightly, it goes out from it even more lightly. But you should concentrate on certain authors and let your mind grow accustomed to them. The light of wisdom is kindled by fervent… Read More ›
But there came the Son of God
Created as we were to the image and likeness of the Creator, we fell through our sin from God into ourselves, and fell from ourselves beneath ourselves into such an abyss of unlikeness that no hope was left. But there came the Son of God, eternal Wisdom; he bowed his heavens and came down. He… Read More ›
The desert will feed you
If you have fled away to remain in solitude, continue to stay there; wait there for the One who will save you ‘from pusillanimity of spirit and the storm’. However much the storm of battles may assail you, however much you may feel the lack even of sustenance in the desert, do not because of… Read More ›