Chapter 59: Children offered by nobles or poor
If parents who are from the nobility want to offer to God in the monastery one of their children, who is too young to take personal responsibility, they should draw up a document like that described above and, as they make the offering, wrap the document with the child's hand in the altar cloth. (From para. 1 of Ch. 59 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
It's hard for me to identify offering a child of mine to the monastery, but the mystery is that everything in my life is to be offered to God. There's something achingly tender for me in the image of wrapping the document with the child's hand in the altar cloth. I see in it an image of selflessness, purity, and wholeness.
When we were raising our two sons it was important for me to be reminded by a spiritual mentor that “Our kids are not our kids, they are God’s kids: we just get to help care for them for a while.” My children—and, now, grandchildren--like everyone else and everything I “have”, including my life, are really yours, Abba. Today I offer them--and myself--back to you to do with as you would. You love my children and grandchildren and me infinitely more than I do or ever could. We are all in your hands.
ReplyDeleteThis is a guideline for me in offering my young spiritual self to the monastery without walls. Oh Lord, i pray let not personal or material possession be a hindrance to this kind of beautiful oblation.
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