20. To make oneself a stranger to the ways of the world.

21. To put nothing before the love of Christ.

22. Not to give way to anger.

23. Not to nurse a grudge.

24. Not to harbor deceit in one's heart.

25. Not to make false peace.

26. Not to forsake charity.

27. Not to swear, for fear of perjury.
28. To speak the truth, heart and tongue.
29. Not to return evil for evil.
30. Not to wrong anyone, but to bear patiently wrongs done to oneself.
31. To love one's enemies.
32. Not to return curse for curse, but blessing instead.

Comment

From Columba Cary-Elwes' Work & Prayer: The Rule of St. Benedict for Lay People:

Verse 20 is important, as it reminds us of the opposite tendency in us, namely to go the way of the world, enjoy its riches, its frivolous pleasures, and ignore and even despise the poor. -"Blessed are the poor." All those who are ignorant of God, of Christ and of salvation, are also poor indeed, and need help.

Verse 21, "To put nothing before the love of Christ," is the test of our real Christian living.

The following group, 22-32, in various ways describes how any of us can fail by anger, cultivating a grudge, being deceitful, throwing true love to the winds, lying, doing harm to those who may have harmed us. Patience goes by the board, and as for loving our enemies,, or blessing those who persecute us ... that never enters our heads. So we have still some way to go.

From Norvene Vest's Preferring Christ:

t is fundamental to the Rule that this Christ (our Lord, Shepherd, Rock) is embodied in the many whom we greet each day. That is especially true of those we serve – strangers and the sick – but also of those to whom we owe obedience – the abbot. The nearness of Christ in the word of God as well as in the very pots and pans (31:10) means that all things may reveal Christ as we learn reverence and gratitude for the world God has given.

f this is who Christ is for Benedict, what does it mean to prefer this One? To prefer someone or something is to wish to be with them, to choose them over all other options. It is to give them top priority, to put them ahead of everything else. It is, in fact, to find them desirable. As always, Benedict is less interested in theory than in practice. Throughout the Rule, he gives hundreds of examples of what preferring Christ means in a practical way: it is no more complex than that every encounter presented to us each day is an opportunity to give and receive the love of Christ. And it is every bit that demanding.

ecause Christ is who he is, the demand is matched by a gift. For it is the love of Christ which we are to prefer. And fortunately, that phrase carries a double meaning, in English as well as Latin: the love of Christ means both Christ’s love for us as well as our love for him! The burden of preferring Christ does not rest solely on our shoulders. In everything we do Christ’s love has moved toward us, helping us prefer him. Let our whole life be centered in the awesome fact of this love. It is the preference toward which the Rule’s guidance is intended.

From Esther de Waal's A Life-Giving Way:

erses 20-21 bring a restatement of what holds this chapter together: the absolute priority of our love of Christ. This, and the seven verses that follow, are no longer that mosaic of biblical quotation. Here we have Benedict's own voice. Verse 20 is totally a reflection of the man himself, in the world and yet not of the world, accepting the material and yet not bound by it. Michael Casey summarizes the significance of what is being said here.

Separation from the world is not primarily an act of distancing or detachment, but an act of joining oneself to Christ and to the holy community: an act of attachment. . . . No Christian can scorn the world for which Christ died; he can however refuse to accept its unevangelical standards of behavior.

f I were looking for one single, simple phrase to sum up Benedict's whole way of life, I would find it in verse 21: "The love of Christ must come before all else." It will be said again in 72,11, the chapter that is a great lyrical outpouring about love and to which Benedict returns at the end of the Rule when he has shown us how his way of living will enable us to incarnate that love. This Christ-love is the center of the whole Rule and the center of our lives. If there is any one thing that is characteristic of Benedict, it is that he makes the love of Christ the focal point to which everything must lead. One should really not talk about a verse like this, but just stop and meditate on it.

n verses 22-28 Benedict is looking at personal wholeness, showing me how I can so easily fail through anger, carrying grudges, nursing resentments, and being deceitful. We are not given a quotation, but short comments from Benedict himself, the fruit perhaps of his own experience of community at Cassino. "Rid your heart of all deceit . . . . Speak the truth with heart and tongue." Again we are brought back to the dangers of being untruthful, whether inwardly or outwardly.

Response