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.
God Can Be Seen in Man and in Each One of Us
If I insist on giving you my truth, and never stop to receive your truth in return, then there can be no truth between us. Christ is present ‘where two or three are gathered in my name.’ But to be gathered in the name of Christ is to be gathered in the name of the… Read More ›
My True Identity Lies Hidden in God’s Call
Am I sure that the meaning of my life is the meaning God intends for it? Does God impose a meaning on my life from the outside, through event, custom, routine, law, system, impact with others in society? Or am I called to create from within, with him, with his grace, a meaning which reflects… Read More ›
Love Cannot Come of Emptiness.
Unfortunately the love that is to be born out of hate will never be born. Hatred is sterile; it breeds nothing but the image of its own empty fury, its own nothingness. Love cannot come of emptiness. It is full of reality. Hatred destroys the real being of man in fighting the fiction which it… Read More ›
Christ, the Way
Benedict immediately goes on, Christo omnino nihil praeponant. Absolutely nothing is to be placed before Christ. This is the crown of it. Christ is first, center, power, and the meaning of our life—the total center. The abbot has this meaning because he is the sacrament of Christ, and we need sacraments. He is there to… Read More ›
God must be loved as a Father
26. It is of first and primary importance that the supreme Deity be reverenced and His holy laws obeyed in private and in public life; otherwise, there is no human power capable of checking and keeping under due control the unleashed passions of peoples. Religion alone provides the support for what is right and honorable…. Read More ›
Love for the Abbot
What Benedict says next is interesting; it is unexpected. You think now that after he has talked about the fear of God, he will immediately talk about the love of God. Instead, he drops in, abbatem suum sincera et humili caritate diligant. Love his abbot with a sincere and humble charity. This tells us how… Read More ›
The Abyss of Interior Solitude
We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them; we do not leave them in order to have nothing to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good. But this is only a secondary end. The one end that includes… Read More ›
Pennington on Chapter 72 of the rule (cont.)
Obedience. Benedict goes on, oboedientiam sibi certatim impendant. We obey one another. We obey one another but certatim. Certatim expresses the idea of a certain jostling. If everybody is trying to obey each other, obviously there is going to be a certain competition there. That is what Benedict is saying. You struggle to be the… Read More ›
Love is our true destiny
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to… Read More ›
Lift your hearts to Christ
19. . . .It is essential in the Benedictine way of life that while engaged in manual or intellectual pursuits, all should strive continually to lift their hearts to Christ having that as their chief concern, and to burn with perfect love of Him. For the things of the earth or of the whole world… Read More ›