Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraphs 6-7)
As to pursuing our own will we are warned against that when scripture says to us: turn away from your own desires and in the Lord's prayer itself we pray that his will may be brought to fulfilment in us. (From para. 6 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Pursuing my own will, turning away from my own desires -- what am I really being warned against? Is my will or desire necessarily bad? I think that Benedict is asking me to look to the root. If the root of my will or desire is in my ego, then what grows from that may very well be just be a larger ego. If the root of my will or desire is in God's "will" --which I would be more inclined to call God's "nature" or God's "love" -- then what grows from that is a deeper and more loving human nature.
Pursuing my own will, turning away from my own desires -- what am I really being warned against? Is my will or desire necessarily bad? I think that Benedict is asking me to look to the root. If the root of my will or desire is in my ego, then what grows from that may very well be just be a larger ego. If the root of my will or desire is in God's "will" --which I would be more inclined to call God's "nature" or God's "love" -- then what grows from that is a deeper and more loving human nature.
"Turn away from your own desires" so that "his will may be brought to fulfillment in us." If my desires have as their root fear, lack of self-esteem, shame, guilt, anxiety, repression, and lack of conviction, then I want to turn away from them. The Will of God can only be brought to fulfillment in me when I am grounded firmly in Love, love for God, love for myself and love for others. "The power of meditation is this: as you persevere on the path, the thing that you are suppressing or the fear that you cannot face or the guilt that you do not want to admit is, as it were, burned away in the fire of Divine Love. Very often, you will never consciously know what it was, but it is gone and it is gone for ever."(Daily Readings with John Main, January 31) Through patient practice of daily meditation, the fire of love is able to burn away my false desires and purify my intentions to follow Christ in obedience to the will of God.
ReplyDelete