Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Chapter 4: Guidelines for Christian and monastic good practice (paragraphs 1-2)


Renounce your own desires and ambitions so as to be free to follow Christ. (From para. 2 of Ch. 4 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, 1997.)

To renounce my own desires and ambitions -- I know that is totally counter-cultural, and so, for a moment, I feel a bracing freedom, room to breath. But then I start to think... if I don't follow my own desires and ambitions today, what am I going to do? If I may paraphrase St. Benedict, what I hear him telling me to do is to follow Christ. And, for that, all I need is to do is be free. Renouncing desires and ambitions may be one way to be free. But another way is through selfless attention. If I do what I have to do today with selfless attention, my heart is not weighed down, but free.

1 comment:

  1. Benedict is calling me not to just be a contemplative but to be an active contemplative. "The call to contemplation here", Chittister says in her commentary(p.57)"is the call not simply to see Christ in the other but to treat the other as Christ". "Seeing" with my heart calls for me to "treat" to act with my body through speaking, touching, hearing,using my hands, my feet and not just sitting or kneeling and praying. "In the New Testament", John Main explains, "there is one central unifying reality and that is the reality of love: love of God, love of neighbor, love of ourselves"(Silence&Stillness, May 18, p.129). Because of the Love of God, The Father, Jesus was propelled into the community to make that Love visible in all the ways that He could, teaching, healing, forgiving, feeding, companioning,comforting, visiting the sick, are just a few that come to my mind. In order to follow Christ then I "must"(Benedict"s word in this reading) "be engaged" in "acting for others in the place of God"(Chittister p.57). How much more clarity do I need?

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