Friday, April 3, 2015

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.)

I may not have two kitchens, but I have the grace of a discipline, the practice of meditation twice a day. Circumstances may require me to be flexible, and sometimes I may fail, but I have the stability of knowing what my practice is, so that I may always be grounded in it, always return to it.

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