Rule 
Articles and posts specifically teaching the Rule of St. Benedict. Articles divided into two categories: Benedictine Wisdom, the teaching of the Benedictine Fathers; and Instruction, teaching by more modern day Benedictine scholars.
Wisdom teaches all things
By its anointing, wisdom teaches all things. Then, by having affixed the seal of God’s goodness to us, it imprints and conforms to itself by this anointing everything calmed and gentled within us. If it finds any hardness, any rigidity, it pounds and crushes it until this person, having received this wholesome happiness of God… Read More ›
Spiritual Emancipation
He who is spiritually “born” as a mature identity is liberated from the enclosing womb of myth and prejudice. He learns to think for himself, guided no longer by the dictates of need and by the systems and processes designed to create artificial needs and then “satisfy” them. This emancipation can take two forms: first… Read More ›
Who can pluck us out of His hand?
It is good for me to be troubled, Lord, as long as you are with me, better than reigning without you, of feasting without you, of being glorified without you. It is good for me to embrace you in tribulation, to have you with me in the furnace, better than being without you even in… Read More ›
Merton: The Value of Self-Knowledge
To live well myself means for me to know and appreciate something of the secret the mystery in myself: that which is incommunicable, which is at once myself and not myself at once in me and above me. From this sanctuary I must seek humbly and patiently to ward off all the intrusions of violence… Read More ›
Enter the Meaning of the Psalms
. . . There is no aspect of the interior life, no kind of religious experience, no spiritual need of the human person that is not depicted and lived out in the Psalms. But we cannot lay hands on these riches unless we are willing to work for them. … We cannot by mere human… Read More ›
Not Two but Three Comings of the Lord
We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible. In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will… Read More ›
The cult of pure illusion
One of the most widespread errors of our time is a superficial “personalism” which identifies the “person” with the external self, the empirical ego, and devotes itself solemnly to the cultivation of this ego. But this is the cult of a pure illusion, the illusion of what is popularly imagined to be “personality” or worse… Read More ›
Spiritual Life Today
Many of the problems and sufferings of the spiritual life today are either fictitious or they should not have to be put up with. But because of our mentality we block the “total response” that is needed for a fully healthy and fruitful spirituality. In fact the very idea of “spirituality” tends to be unhealthy… Read More ›
Introduction to the Psalter
. . .The Psalter appears as a “formulary” of prayers, a collection of 150 Psalms which the Biblical Tradition offers the people of believers so that they become their and our prayer, our way of speaking and of relating to God. This Book expresses the entire human experience with its multiple facets and the whole range… Read More ›
How important is TV?
I have watched TV twice in my life. I am frankly not terribly interested in TV anyway. Certainly I do not pretend that by simply refusing to keep up with the latest news I am therefore unaffected by what goes on, or free of it all. Certainly events happen and they affect me as they… Read More ›