Chapter 41: The times for community meals

The principle is that the superior should manage everything so prudently that the saving work of grace may be accomplished in the community and whatever duties the community undertakes they may be carried out without any excuse for murmuring. (From para. 1 of Ch. 41 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

St Benedict uses ordinary examples such as diet and schedule to offer an ordinary principle: managing prudently. But, he encourages this ordinary-seeming principle in order that the saving work of grace might accomplish its work in the community, and also that the community might be dutiful without complaining. This insight about management seems to me to be both practical and prophetic. In other words, prudent management of ordinary life can actually be for the purpose of inviting grace to work on human nature. So I would do well to consider what "managing prudently" means in my own life.