Humility
Accordingly, if "the eyes of God are watching the good and the wicked (Prv 15:3)," if at all times "the Holy One looks down from the heavens on us to see whether we understand and seek God (Ps 14:2);" and if every day the angels assigned to us report our deeds to God day and night, then, we must be vigilant every hour or, as the prophet says in the psalm, God may observe us "falling" at some time into evil and "so made worthless (Ps 14:3)." After sparing us for a while because God is loving and waits for us to improve, we may be told later, "This you did, and I said nothing (Ps 50:21)."
The God-life, Benedict is telling us, is a never-ending, unremitting, totally absorbing enterprise. God is intent on it; so must we be. The Hebrew poet, Moses Ibn Ezra, writes: "Those who persist in knocking will succeed in entering." Benedict thinks no less. It is not perfection that leads us to God; it is perseverance.
About the Rule of Benedict
Benedict of Nursia was born in the year 480. As a student in Rome, he tired of the decadent culture around him and left to live a simple spiritual life as a hermit in the countryside of Subiaco about thirty miles outside of the city. It wasn't long, however, before he was discovered both by the people of the area and disciples who were themselves looking for a more meaningful way of life. Out of these associations sprang the monastic life that would eventually cover Europe.
The Rule of Benedict is not a treatise in systematic theology. Its logic is the logic of daily life lived in Christ and lived well. This early monastic rule is part of the Wisdom tradition of Christianity and is rooted in the Bible for its inspiration and its end. It deals with the meaning and purpose of life. The positions taken in the Rule in the light of themes in the wisdom literature of other culture find Benedict of Nursia in the stream of thinkers who lived out of a single tradition but from the perspective of universal and fundamental insights into life.
Excerpted from The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister, OSB
