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.
Serving one another
Obedience is a blessing to be shown by all, not only to the abbot but also to one another as brothers, since we know that it is by this way of obedience that we go to God. Therefore, although orders of the abbot or of the priors appointed by him take precedence, and no unofficial… Read More ›
We Live in the Time of the Two Advents of Christ
History itself acquired a new meaning, or rather its hidden meaning was revealed, when the Word of God became incarnate and entered into history. Time itself was now an Epiphany of the Creator and of the Redeemer, the “Lord of Ages.” And yet time also acquired a new solemnity, a new urgency, since the Lord… Read More ›
Surviving Advent as a Single
Tips for handling feelings of disappointment in a season filled with families and gatherings Soon enough Christmas music will flood the stores. All things holiday will insist that we are part of beautiful, functional families. Many of us simply aren’t. It isn’t always easy to embrace a season filled with families, children and abundance when… Read More ›
Truth lives and is embodied in men
A sincere man is not so much one who sees the truth and manifests it as he sees it, but one who loves the truth with pure love. But truth is more than an abstraction. It lives and is embodied in men and things that are real. And the secret of sincerity is, therefore, not… Read More ›
God cannot be regarded with indifference
So loving and generous a God cannot simply be regarded with indifference, or be a matter for dispassionate, rational speculation. The Cistercians, therefore, are far readier to speak to God than about God: Now, therefore, Lord, in complete faith I worship you. You who are God, the one Cause of all that is, the Wisdom… Read More ›
There is no sound flesh in us
We are as if we were not, likened to vanity and counted as nothing, supposing ourselves to be something when actually we are nothing. We enter this world wounded, walk here and then depart, wounded still. There is no sound flesh in us, from the sole of the foot to the top of the head…. Read More ›
Bear in ourselves the fury of the world against Christ
The great question then is how do we communicate with the modern world? If in fact communication has been reduced to pseudo-communication, to the celebration of pseudo-events and the irate clashing of incompatible myth-systems, how are we to avoid falling into this predicament? How are we to avoid the common obsession with pseudo-events in order… Read More ›
Our proper occupation is knowing and loving God
Our proper occupation is knowing and loving God, and, not least, delighting in such knowledge and love. We have been made in the image and likeness of God for the sake of this knowledge and love; and by means of them we are made new and formed again to God’s image and likeness: through understanding… Read More ›
Have you turned a deaf ear?
We ought to have the humility to admit we do not know all about ourselves, that we are not experts at running our own lives. We ought to stop taking our conscious plans and decisions with such infinite seriousness. It may well be that we are not the martyrs or the mystics or the apostles… Read More ›
Life closes the ego upon itself
The tragedy of a life centered on “things,” on the grasping and manipulation of objects, is that such a life closes the ego upon itself as though it were an end in itself, and throws it into a hopeless struggle with other perverse and hostile selves competing together for the possessions which will give them… Read More ›