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, June 26, 2015

Chapter 20: The ideal of true reverence in prayer

When we come, then, with our requests in prayer before the Lord, who is God of all creation, is it not all the more important that we should approach him in a spirit of real humility and a devotion that is open to him alone and free from distracting thoughts? (From Ch. 20 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)

I understand real humility as true self-knowledge. That is, I come to know myself as someone grounded, not in my ego, but in the indwelling Christ. I'm helped to free myself from the distracting thoughts of my ego by the devotion of selfless attention to Him.

1 comment:

WallyJune 29, 2015 at 11:53 AM
Humility and reverence. "The experience of prayer is the experience of the liberating consequences of transcendence. It is, as I have said, transcendence realized " (John Main "Community of Love"). Liberation, freedom: that's what you invite me to, Abba, every morning and evening, in the silence of meditation and the mantra. How awe-full that makes me, Father.
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