These people fear the Lord, and do not become elated over their good deeds; they judge it is the Lord's power, not their own, that brings about the good in them. They praise the Lord working in them, and say 3with the Prophet: Not to us, Lord, not to us give the glory, but to your name alone (Ps 113:9). In just this way Paul the Apostle refused to take credit for the power of his preaching. He declared: By God's grace I am what I am (I Cor 15:10). And again he said: He who boasts should make his boast in the Lord (II Cor 10:17). That is why the Lord says in the Gospel: Whoever hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house upon rock; the floods came and the winds blew and beat against the house, mut it did not fall: it was founded on rock (Mt 7:24-25).

Comment

The following is from Joan Chittister's The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages. Chittister is a Benedictine, known widely as a speaker and author.

Benedict puts to rest the position of the wandering monk Pelagius, who taught in the fifth century that human beings were inherently good and capable of achieving God's great presence on the strength of their own merits. Benedict wants "good deeds" but he does not want pride. We do what we do in life, even holy things, the Prologue teaches, not because we are so good but because God is so good and enables us to rise above the misery of ourselves. Even the spiritual life can become an arrogant trap if we do not realize that the spiritual life is not a game that is won by the development of spiritual skills. The spiritual life is simply the God-life already at work in us.

Clearly, for Benedict, God is not something to be achieved; God is a presence to be responded to but to whom without that presence we cannot respond. God isn't something for which spiritual athletes compete or someone that secret spiritual formulas expose. God is the breath we breathe. It is thanks to God that we have any idea of God at all. God is not a mathematical formula that we discover by dint of our superior intelligence or our moral valor. God is the reason that we can reach God. It is to this ever-present Presence that the Rule of Benedict directs us. It is to God already in our lives that Benedict turns our minds. The Hasidim tell the story of the preacher who preached over and over, "Put God into your life; put God into your life." But the holy rabbi of the village said, "Our task is not to put God into our lives. God is already there. Our task is simply to realize that."

The fact is that we still compartmentalize God. We tell ourselves that we are working on reaching the spiritual life by saying prayers and doing penances and making pilgrimages and giving things up. And we keep score: so many fast days, so many spiritual books read, . . . so many steps toward the acquisition of God. The Rule of Benedict sets us straight. God is with us, for the taking, but not for any spiritual payment, only for realizing what we already have.

God is neither cajoled nor captured, the Rule makes plain. God is in the Here and Now in Benedictine spirituality. It is we who are not. It is we who are trapped in the past, angry at what formed us, or fixated on a future that is free from pain or totally under out control. But God is in our present, waiting for us there.

Response