Benedictine Values
What I had researched for the answer to the question “How can the Benedictine values be translated to peace?”
LOVE OF CHRIST AND NEIGHBOUR Benedictine life, like that of all Christians, is first and foremost a response to God’s astonishing love for humankind, a love expressed in the free gift of God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Love, the motive for monastic life and its goal, tops St. Benedict’s list of tools for good works (RB 5:10, 7:67-69, 4.1-2). Yet the Rule recognises many ways in which monastics can fail to ground their lives in love. It sets up personal and communal practices that deal directly with human selfishness wherever it occurs and seeks to heal the resulting harm to one’s self and others. Ultimately it is the power of God’s love that is decisive. Indeed, the crowning good work for the monastic is “never to lose hope in God’s mercy” (RB 4:74). PRAYER Benedictine schools cultivate a fundamental attentiveness to the ways in which God is present in the human mind and heart and, indeed, in all creation. St. Benedict directs that nothing is to be preferred to prayer (RB 43.3). This daily experience of prayer is supported and deepened by individual spiritual reading, a practice that Benedictines call by its Latin name, lectio divino. Lectio divina is the slow meditative reading of Scriptures and other sacred texts with the intention of discerning how God is at work right now in the world and calling within the individual’s own heart. For a monastic, the daily movement between common liturgical prayer and lectio divino opens up new space within where qualities and virtues such as compassion, integrity and courage can develop and grow strong. STABILITY Stability shapes a Benedictine way of life. All of its members commit themselves to seeking God. They resolve to pursue this, their heart’s deepest desire, together, day in and day out, in good times and in bad, throughout the entire span of their lives. STEWARDSHIP At its
LOVE OF CHRIST AND NEIGHBOUR Benedictine life, like that of all Christians, is first and foremost a response to God’s astonishing love for humankind, a love expressed in the free gift of God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ. Love, the motive for monastic life and its goal, tops St. Benedict’s list of tools for good works (RB 5:10, 7:67-69, 4.1-2). Yet the Rule recognises many ways in which monastics can fail to ground their lives in love. It sets up personal and communal practices that deal directly with human selfishness wherever it occurs and seeks to heal the resulting harm to one’s self and others. Ultimately it is the power of God’s love that is decisive. Indeed, the crowning good work for the monastic is “never to lose hope in God’s mercy” (RB 4:74). PRAYER Benedictine schools cultivate a fundamental attentiveness to the ways in which God is present in the human mind and heart and, indeed, in all creation. St. Benedict directs that nothing is to be preferred to prayer (RB 43.3). This daily experience of prayer is supported and deepened by individual spiritual reading, a practice that Benedictines call by its Latin name, lectio divino. Lectio divina is the slow meditative reading of Scriptures and other sacred texts with the intention of discerning how God is at work right now in the world and calling within the individual’s own heart. For a monastic, the daily movement between common liturgical prayer and lectio divino opens up new space within where qualities and virtues such as compassion, integrity and courage can develop and grow strong. STABILITY Stability shapes a Benedictine way of life. All of its members commit themselves to seeking God. They resolve to pursue this, their heart’s deepest desire, together, day in and day out, in good times and in bad, throughout the entire span of their lives. STEWARDSHIP At its