Status Updates From Commentary on the Rule of S...

A monastery is not a club, nor a house of retreat, nor an appendage to the universities. Doubtless it is a place of leisure, of liberty, and of repose (and that is the original sense of the word “school”...) but this leisure has for its object the study of the things of God, and the training and education of His soldiers, His guard of honour.

Let us make haste, while there is yet time, to do something for God; currendum et agendum est ; let us make haste to accomplish, by the light of this life, all the good works that we shall in heaven congratulate ourselves on having done. What does St. Paul think now of his scourgings, or St. Lawrence of his gridiron, or St. Benedict of his rolling amid the thorns, or St. Benedict Labre of his poverty ?

Let us make haste, while there is yet time, to do something for God; currendum et agendum est ; let us make haste to accomplish, by the light of this life, all the good works that we shall in heaven congratulate ourselves on having done. What does St. Paul think now of his scourgings, or St. Lawrence of his gridiron, or St. Benedict of his rolling amid the thorns, or St. Benedict Labre of his poverty ? It is enough t

Suppose there is some little discord of temperament, or even, it may be, of nature between you and the monastic law. Tell God about it. He will tell His grace and bid it come to your aid, and His grace will make possible for you what nature led you to regard as “hardly possible”; St. Benedict s phrase here is touched with gentle humour.

It is natural and prudent to examine rigorously and to look well in the face the dispositions, emotions, and affections which follow one another in us, and to question them: “What are you ? Whence do you come ? What have you come to do with me ? What are the ultimate consequences to which you will lead me ?”A wise man does not open his door to every visitor, nor do we let the first comer into the bosom of the family.