The Rule Of Saint Benedict - An Effective 21st Century Counter-Attack

The date was March 5, 2008.

A few months prior to the above point in time [September 22, 2007], I had made my Final Solemn Promises as an Oblate of Saint Benedict.

I created a blog in March of 2008 that focused on my life as an Oblate of Saint Benedict. The blog was entitled Oblate Offerings. Alongside me, though he lives in Canada and I live in Alabama, a dear friend and likewise former Protestant pastor was also making similar transitions in his life. He, too, began blogging. It was more than interesting following each other’s journey. Blogging our separate journeys worked as iron sharpening iron and helped to create a sense of accountability.

Oblate Offerings has since been privatized and is no longer in public view. Oblate Reflections [launched a little over a year ago], picks up where Oblate Offerings left off.

I like to think, and certainly pray, that generous measures of conversatio morum [conversion of life] are the fruit of these twelve years that have passed since I made my Solemn Promises. I think the greatest fruit borne of these years is the realization that, despite whatever else has occurred in the way of conversion, I have so much farther to go in being converted. Your prayers, in regard to my continued conversatio morum, are greatly desired and appreciated.

Here is a cutting from Oblate Offerings … the first post that I made to the blog, dated March 5, 2008.

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As an Oblate of St. Benedict, I think of myself as a fundamental Christian.

Don't let that scare you because it has nothing to do with the ideas of Post-Reformation fundamentalism. By this I mean that I've returned, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that I am returning, to the basics of the faith, basics that were set forth in an orderly fashion some 1500 years ago by St. Benedict, basics that are as valid today as they were when St. Benedict distilled the best wisdom of his day into the Gospel based Holy Rule of St. Benedict.

In the preface to the 4th Edition of the Manual For Oblates printed by St. John's Abbey Press it says, "The Christians of today have been told repeatedly by the spiritual leaders that the neo-paganism of today is perhaps more subtle, more dangerous, more widespread than the paganism of Greece and Rome at the time of St. Benedict. In every phase of life do Christians meet danger to their souls - in their amusements, in their books and periodicals, in their educational system, in their social life. What is needed desperately is a counter attack that will be effective."

I find it more than interesting that these words are found in a little volume that was last printed in 1955, the year after I was born. 54 years have passed. The dangers noted half a century ago have steeped, fermented, and spread the influence of their intoxicating brew in a way that makes our present early 21st century age even more dangerous.

St. Benedict, the Rule of St. Benedict, and Benedictine spirituality offer us a practical and effective way to make our return to Christ more systematic, more constant in an age where so many sounding chimes, bells, and whistles invite us to move toward them.

Personally, after a lot of years spent in denominational and non-denominational settings, many of them in pastoral and other forms of church ministry, I'm no longer looking for new words, new revelations, new ideas, new programs, or new promises of prosperity and the inevitable disappointments and let-downs that have, and will always, come with them. I need form in my spiritual life, form that generates stability and I discover this, and much more, in Benedictine spirituality.

Benedictine spirituality is very simple but it is not simplistic.

It offers us a way that is constant, a way that is constantly challenging, a way that will never allow us to settle on our lees and become satisfied to the point of spiritual stagnation. In a world of changing ideals and modern theological adaptations and applications it serves as a tether that holds us secure to the Anchor of our souls.

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I am still, twelves years later, returning to the basics of the faith, and I still, more assuredly than at the beginning, strongly recommend The Rule of Saint Benedict as a practical, radical, counter-cultural, and deeply meaningful way of life.