The Rule of St Benedict and Your Work - Again!
I want to remind you again of this amazing work - the Rule of St Benedict. I've pretty much said all this before, but the benefits from reading sections of the Rule each day are so great, I just wanted to plug it again. So please bear with me. Here we go.
Read the Rule of St Benedict every day. You can find it online.
It was written by St Benedict for his monks in the 6th Century. So why read it now; why would a man working, especially a married guy with kids, read this? What could instructions to monks have to say to us?
Just this: prayer and work; in Latin: ora et labora. That's a monks day. The Rule tells you how to do it successfully.
If you add some prayer to a typical workday, that's pretty much what a Catholic man at work does, isn't it? Prayer and work. Not a bad combination to productively fill in your time.
Also, it's a masterwork of spiritual guidance as well as a guide to how a well-run monastery should run. Remember that the monasteries were important social institutions back in the post-Roman/early Middle Ages. Some say they were the only points of light in a Dark Age in the West...that they preserved letters, culture, civilization itself in a chaotic time.
In any case, it's broken down to be read daily, in little bits. Benedictine monks read it daily, broken down so that you read it three times through over the course of a year.
You'll get to some parts where there's a lot of discussion about things like what Psalms to say or sing in a given season. So maybe those sections won't resonate with your daily experience. I read them anyway. For me, they show the care St Benedict put into his Rule - and the importance of prayers being said carefully, faithfully, each day.
The tradition is to read it through three times a year, starting on January 1st. So the third cycle of the year just began on September 1st. Right now we've just gotten through "The Instruments of Good Works." St Benedict summarizes these this way:
Read the Rule of St Benedict every day. You can find it online.
It was written by St Benedict for his monks in the 6th Century. So why read it now; why would a man working, especially a married guy with kids, read this? What could instructions to monks have to say to us?
Just this: prayer and work; in Latin: ora et labora. That's a monks day. The Rule tells you how to do it successfully.
If you add some prayer to a typical workday, that's pretty much what a Catholic man at work does, isn't it? Prayer and work. Not a bad combination to productively fill in your time.
Also, it's a masterwork of spiritual guidance as well as a guide to how a well-run monastery should run. Remember that the monasteries were important social institutions back in the post-Roman/early Middle Ages. Some say they were the only points of light in a Dark Age in the West...that they preserved letters, culture, civilization itself in a chaotic time.
In any case, it's broken down to be read daily, in little bits. Benedictine monks read it daily, broken down so that you read it three times through over the course of a year.
You'll get to some parts where there's a lot of discussion about things like what Psalms to say or sing in a given season. So maybe those sections won't resonate with your daily experience. I read them anyway. For me, they show the care St Benedict put into his Rule - and the importance of prayers being said carefully, faithfully, each day.
The tradition is to read it through three times a year, starting on January 1st. So the third cycle of the year just began on September 1st. Right now we've just gotten through "The Instruments of Good Works." St Benedict summarizes these this way:
Behold these are the instruments of the spiritual art, which if they have been plied without ceasing day and night and approved on judgment day, will merit for us from the Lord that reward which he has promised: "The eye hath not seen nor the ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him."
You can't really read these words and not want to know what these "instruments" are, can you?
I read The Rule of St Benedict every morning. It only takes a few minutes, at most. It may have been written for monks, but it's just so helpful for a man working in the world too. At least that's been my experience.
I read The Rule of St Benedict every morning. It only takes a few minutes, at most. It may have been written for monks, but it's just so helpful for a man working in the world too. At least that's been my experience.
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