WCCM Oblate Blog: Reflections from Daily Reading of the Rule of St. Benedict

WCCM Benedictine Oblates are encouraged to read a designated portion of the Rule daily, and to write a brief, personal response. I hope that this blog will support our Oblate community in this practice. Please, keep blog entries brief and in a first-person ("I") voice. Refrain from discussing, offering an opinion, or commenting on other entries. Simply consider how a particular section of the Rule is speaking to you in your present circumstances.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Chapter 69: No one should act as advocate for another

Great care must be taken to avoid any tendency for one of the community to take the side of and try to protect another, even though they may be closely related through ties of blood. (From Ch. 69 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

Protect another from what? I believe in standing up for those I love, for those in need. But perhaps I need to spare them my overprotection, when it would hinder their own growth in self-sufficiency, and their own growth in the Spirit.

2 comments:

Melanie CondesAugust 22, 2014 at 6:47 PM
I oftentimes find myself in trouble by being a staunch advocate of something that I think is good. And i guess, as it is i am still in 'close kinship' with my ideas. This part of the rule reminds me that nothing is good unless it comes from God.
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Wally SaundersAugust 24, 2014 at 4:51 AM
The “great care” Benedict prescribes here, to me, is synonymous with what we today might call “tough” love—learning how to walk that fine line between compulsively “helicoptering” and irresponsibly abandoning those I love.
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