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 with offering a child 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.
In reference to property there is the sentence, "This ought to leave no way open for the child to entertain any expectations that could deceive and lead to ruin." What a child in the right circumstances and in a loving atmosphere develops is trust. With trust there are no expectations but a happiness and joy being with those
ReplyDeletewho love. Trust and surrender for me are difficult concepts as I am older because the future is uncertain. Meditation practice keeps bringing me to the here and now and the fact that I am loved in my very existence. The psalms and Christ himself point to the simplicity of children and how I am to be like them. With this reflection, I pray that I may surrender to God in complete trusting love.