Saturday, April 5, 2014

Chapter 53: The reception of guests (paragraphs 5-6)


The kitchen to serve the superior together with the guests should be quite separate, so that guests, who are never lacking in a monastery, may not unsettle the community, by arriving as they do at all times of the day. (From para. 5 of Ch. 53 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

Separate kitchens are like an inner chamber and an outer chamber to my heart -- God invites me to be serenely contemplative in the inner chamber, even while being hospitable as needed in the outer chamber.

2 comments:

  1. “Hell is other people”, said, famously, Jean Paul Sartre. Jesus and the Rule tell me that heaven is other people: Jesus himself in every person I meet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is another paradox of life that I have to live well. I often hear my folks say, in one family maintaining two kitchens is very difficult and expensive. In me, maintaining two kitchens that will serve my banquet with my Lord and my banquet with my guests (in the spirit of the hospitality of Rule) is not only difficult and at times expensive (at the expense of my egotistic self) but requires discipline, consistency and perseverance. In other words, a complete reliance on the grace of God.

    ReplyDelete