The Gospel of Christ calls me to live by a set of standards that cuts across the grain of the standards that motivate those living outside the corral of Christ’s standards.
Saint Benedict, in his little rule for beginners[1], succinctly distills these standards for living the Christian life into something no larger than a small booklet for those who answer Christ’s call to hasten toward the heavenly home[2] that Christ has gone to prepare for us.
We do well to remember that we are on earth only temporarily. We do well to remember the Last Things of Death, Judgment, Heaven, or Hell.
Christ said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.”[3]
The way to the place where Christ has gone is obviously seen with even a casual reading of the New Testament. It is through daily dying to ourselves[4], through being born again in Christ to an initial newness of life[5], and by following a course of persevering in continual conversion[6] into clearer images of Christ that we make our way to where he has gone.
This is the historical pathway. This is the pathway the Saints of all ages have trod. This is the pathway that is worn so deeply in Christian history that it cannot not be seen. There is no other way.
“How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?”[7]
The answer is a very simple one.
We shall not.
The Rule of Saint Benedict is, among other things, a detailed and serious examination of conscience that works to continually realign my way of thinking and living so that my life can more and more resemble and reflect the light and life of Christ.
Obedience to The Rule calls me to integrate these principles into my life as an Oblate of Saint Benedict [1] as tools cultivating my own conversion … conversatio morum … ensuring my admittance to the eternal home prepared for me, [2] hopefully to shed some light in the unbridled darkness of this age, and [3] to encourage others in their own discoveries of the spiritual wealth that is contained in Benedict’s model for living that is available to everyone who will only open their ears to listen to the instructions of the master and attend to them with the ear of the heart.[8]
Abbot Benedict insists that I …
(34) Not to be proud...
(35) Not to be given to wine (cf Ti 1:7; 1 Tm 3:3).
(36) Not to be a great eater.
(37) Not to be drowsy.
(38) Not to be slothful (cf Rom 12:11).
(39) Not to be a murmurer.
(40) Not to be a detractor.[9]
Pride, addictions, gluttony, too much sleep, laziness, grumbling, and speaking ill of others are strictly prohibited in the lives of those who enroll in Benedict’s school for the Lord’s service[10].
Why? The simplest answer is that, with the exception of too much sleep, these are clearly practices that do not belong in the lives of those who profess to be followers of Christ.
Of these, the refraining from too much sleep is keenly monastic with its roots in the practices of the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived as hermits [anchorites]. Monks living in the monastic communities that developed in the East [cenobites] maintained the “short sleeping” practice. Saint Benedict, in establishing monasticism in the West, continued the “short sleeping” practice in order to maintain the opus dei [The Work of God] by praying the Psalms at the appointed hours.
Most monasteries that I am familiar with no longer rise to pray in the middle of the night then catch a nap before rising to pray at four in the morning.
The rest of the prohibited practices are easily determined in the Scriptures as sinful ills that garner the wrath of God.
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