Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God's commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. Amen.

Comment

Adapted from Esther de Waal's A Life-Giving Way:

In "a school for the Lord's service" we have reached that often-quoted phrase. To pursue God's call we need help, teaching, support in order to prepare our hearts and our bodies. The word "school" reminds me that I am learning not in some individual capacity, but as part of a company. I learn how to serve the Lord and actually do so. Christ is the master and the teacher. The Christ who has appeared in many different roles in the prologue now asks of me that I too play differing roles: that I am pupil, the one who learns, as well as son and daughter, soldier, member of the household, one who follows in the way. As the sympathetic and encouraging teacher, Benedict invites the disciple by promising that the regime of this school will be a reasonable one, and that what at first may seem difficult will, in the long run, through stability and not trying to escape, become second nature. The means and the end are the same -- love. If Benedict is strict at the start, the purpose is to safeguard love. But then as we progress in the way, we shall find "our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love," surely one of the most incomparable phrases of all kind.

In that final sentence, Benedict brings us once again to the paschal mystery, central to his whole teaching and his way of life. For the early community in Acts, which Benedict takes as his point of reference (the phrase "faithfully observing his teaching" echoes Acts 2:24), the resurrected Christ was not an abstract idea but experiential fact. For these first centuries in the Church, it might be no exaggeration to say that Christianity equalled Easter, which opened up the possibilities of light and life and energy and a new kind of spiritual power. Is this promise of life one that I want to grasp? For those of us who are truly seeking God and who have entered into the journey through the waters of baptism, Benedict points the way forward into light and life and love.

And so the prologue teaches us Christ -- the paschal Christ, risen in fullness from the grave, who has come through death-embracing love into his fullness that is our liberation from the dark powers within and without. In Benedict's school we shall learn Christ, not in any intellectual or cerebral way but in heart and mind and feeling. If Christ is my true self, living out of whom I discover my fullest humanity, then the Rule is there to lead me into the growth of the Christ-self. It is its Christ-centeredness that will make what the Rule has to say about the lived-out love between brothers and sisters a real and practical possibility. moment.

Response