The Rules Of Saint Benedict

Fed up with the licentiousness of Rome, Saint Benedict escaped to the mountain where he lived in solitude and experienced a life of poverty supported by his own work (Ford). Saint Benedict later became the abbot of a nearby monastery as the fame of his sanctity spread (Ford). Through his experience of the monastic life and in response to the growing secularization of the Church, Saint Benedict established the Rules of Benedict (“6th Century”). The Rules of Benedict provided a monastic vision of a practical and spiritual life grounded with counter-cultural wisdom that directly challenge the current way of life, yet contributed to the growing attraction of the Benedictine spirituality.
Life per Benedict’s Rules is embedded with five qualities that confront the conventional wisdom of the current culture. These five qualities include ordinariness, commitment, self-denial, simplicity, and silence (Taylor). Benedictine way of life encompasses a
Life according to Benedict’s Rules is essentially social. Each one of us live in a community of people where we form various types of relationship. Benedictine way of life requires our commitment to these relationships because he recognized that no matter where we are, we will always encounter problems with one another. So, rather than running away, Benedict’s Rule compel us to work it out through our commitment with one another. This is incredibly contradicting to today’s conventional wisdom of “If you don’t like it, leave” that resulted in divorce rate soaring at fifty percent (Taylor). This commitment extends as far as to complete strangers. In accordance to Benedict’s Rules, strangers are to receive and honor as Christ, which contrast the current culture of every man for themselves. Benedictine way of life offer us an opportunity to achieve a stable communal life that is the truth of our