At no other place in the Rule does St Benedict devote a specific chapter separately to a season of the Church’s year. Certainly in dealing with the scheme by which the Work of God should be fulfilled the entire year is embraced in a sort of microcosm, and within that “holy Easter” is certainly highlighted. Continue reading “The Observance of Lent”
Category Archives: The Holy Rule of St Benedict
Silence (2)
Silence for the sake of silence; silence for the sake of listening; silence for the sake of reclaiming real communication; silence to be free from sin; silence for prayer again; silence for the death that awaits us all; silence God’s voice, always filled by the Word.
Silence
If there is anything in the popular imagination that is associated with the monastic and contemplative life it is probably silence. But the type of silence which people imagine reigns in monasteries and hermitages is really only a very pale reflection of reality…
Obedience – Joyfully Counter-Cultural
Obedience is indistinguishable from religious life because religious life is always about the imitation of Christ – and Christ is the one who comes not to do his own will but the will of Him who sent him (see John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38, and many other moments throughout John’s Gospel).
So, Who’s In Charge Here? – Benedict’s Idea of the Servant-Leader
The figure of the abbot or superior in St Benedict’s Rule is one which has its foundations in that other rule which we have mentioned – the Rule of the Master – but it is, at the same time, a radically different figure. There is no hint of the tyrant in Benedict’s leader…
What Kind of Christian Am I – Benedict’s Kinds of Monks
If we ever thought that the Rule which Benedict writes is just for monastics, then, interestingly, Chapter 1 of his Rule should dispel that notion. He calls it “The Kinds of Monks”, but he might well have said “The Kinds of Disciples”, or indeed “The Kinds of Christians”. Wrapped up…
Setting Out Your Stall – St Benedict’s Prologue
The Prologue, or introduction, which begins the text is not in fact, according to the author, part of the Rule itself – that begins formally with Chapter 1. But it nonetheless forms a weighty, and comparatively lengthy, foreword, which cannot be skipped. Benedict lays out for us his fundamental notion of…
Introducing the Holy Rule
Having taken something of a whistle stop tour of the life and times of our Holy Father, St Benedict, we need to spend a little time considering what is, as far as we know, the only document which he left to posterity. It’s not simply that it is, in many ways, Benedict himself speaking…
The Holy Rule: Introducing St Benedict
Before we can embark on any kind of reading of the Rule of St Benedict, it behoves us to say something about the man who is its author. In one way, that should not prove very difficult – there is but one work that purports to be an account of his life…
Bethlehem Abbey Cistercian Family 