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.
To recover our true glory we must practice humility
[M]an was created to have true glory on God. . . This true glory was lost by pride. To recover it we must practice humility. “The surest salvation, the remedy of his ills, and the restoration of his original state is the practice of humility AND NOT PRETENDING THAT HE MAY LAY CLAIM TO ANY… Read More ›
The man who lives in division
The man who lives in division is not a person but only an “individual.” I have what you have not. I am what you are not. I have taken what you have failed to take and I have seized what you could never get. Therefore you suffer and I am happy, you are despised and… Read More ›
Sin conceals the soul’s simplicity
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 ›
Sin and the fundamental reality of life
All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge,… Read More ›
The Trinity: Goodness, Gentleness, Sweetness, and Love
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are names of goodness, names of gentleness, sweetness and love. Who is more gentle than the Father, who so great, kind and merciful? Who is dearer than Jesus Christ? Our savior is all healing, all goodness, gentleness, sweetness. Who is more loving, dear and holy than the Holy Spirit? He… Read More ›
The cycle is despair
In order to experience your [false] self as real, you have to suppress the awareness of your contingency, your unreality, your state of radical need. This you do by creating an awareness of yourself as one who has no needs that he cannot immediately fulfill. Basically, this is illusion of omnipotence: an illusion which the… Read More ›
Discover that which has no Beginning
What is God? The Beginning; this is the answer he gave of himself Many things in the world are spoken of as beginnings, and this is in respect to what comes after them. Yet if you look back and see something which precedes another, you will call that the beginning. Therefore, if you seek the… Read More ›
I will not fear, for you are ever with me…
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing… Read More ›
Cannot find true rest in falsehood
Man’s intelligence, however we may misuse it, is far too keen and too sure to rest for long in error. It may embrace a lie and cling to it stubbornly, believing it to be true: but it cannot find true rest in falsehood. The mind that is in love with error wears itself out with… Read More ›
Happiness with no pricetag
There are various ways of being happy, and every man has the capacity to make his life what it needs to be for him to have a reasonable amount of peace in it. Why then do we persecute ourselves with illusory demands, never content until we feel we have conformed to some standard of happiness… Read More ›