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.
The Three Loves
Although there is an evident distinction between love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self, a marvelous bond nevertheless does exist among the three, so that each is found in all, and all in each. None of them can be possessed without all, and when one wavers they all diminish. Someone who does… Read More ›
Respecting Solitude
If a man does not know the value of his own loneliness, how can he respect another’s solitude? It is at once our loneliness and our dignity to have an incommunicable personality that is ours, ours alone and no one else’s, and will be so forever. When human society fulfills its true function the persons… Read More ›
The mythical nature of work in the modern world
In our society, a society of business rooted in Puritanism, based on a pseudo-ethic of industriousness and thrift, to be rewarded by comfort, pleasure, and a good bank account, the myth of work is thought to justify an existence that is essentially meaningless and futile. There is, then, a great deal of busy-ness as people… Read More ›
Building the foundations for spiritual unity
To live well myself is my first and essential contribution to the well being of all mankind and to the fulfillment of man’s collective destiny. If I do not live happily myself how can I help anyone else to be happy, or free, or wise? Yet to seek happiness is not to live happily. Perhaps… Read More ›
Who will free me from this body of death?
Unhappy creature that I am, who will free me from this body of death by which I am weighed down and oppressed to the extent that, unless the Lord helps me, my soul would soon be living in hell! The soul struggling under this load laments saying: ‘Why have you set me against you, and… Read More ›
I am that prodigal son
I am that prodigal son who took to himself his share of the inheritance, for I did not wish to preserve my strength for you and set out for a distant land, the region of unlikeness, behaving as one of the dumb beasts and made like them. There I squandered all I owned in riotous… Read More ›
The world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness
What is serious to human beings is often trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what God takes most seriously. God plays…in the garden of creation, and, if we could let go of our obsessions with what we think is the meaning of it all,… Read More ›
In the end there is no room for us
We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power… Read More ›
There is a great natural gift within us
Why should the soul not venture with confidence into the presence of him by whose image she sees herself honored, and in whose likeness she knows herself made glorious? Why should she fear a majesty when her very origin gives her ground for confidence? All she has to do is to take care to preserve… Read More ›
My destiny depends on my decisions
Since I am a [human being], my destiny depends on my human behavior: that is to say, upon my decisions. I must first of all appreciate this fact, and weigh the risks and difficulties it entails. I must, therefore, know myself, and know both the good and the evil that are in me. It will… Read More ›