Saturday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Benedict
July 11, 2015 8:30am
As I said at the beginning of
Mass, today we celebrate Saint Benedict.
Benedict was born in the year 480
in central Italy.
He assisted a number of
communities in being established who were devoted to a life of work and prayer.
Eventually, these were called
monasteries.
And most important, Benedict
composed a Rule to govern the life of the monks and sisters.
This is known as The Rule or The Benedictine Rule.
It is practical and it is intended
to help the men and women who follow it to pursue the spiritual life.
The very first word of The Rule of Saint Benedict is: Listen.
The Rule says: “Listen carefully to the master’s
instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”
For Benedict, the first step in
seeking God was to listen.
To him, listening means being
aware of God’s presence in our lives.
It means that we slow down enough
and are quiet or silent enough that we can listen.
Benedict wants us to listen to
God as God speaks in the Scripture and listen to God in the words of one
another.
He even wants us to listen by
looking for and seeing God in nature, maybe in a warm July day like today, and
in the very ordinary things of life, like the cereal and toast we had for
breakfast.
So Benedict sees listening as an active
and not a passive thing.
He calls us to consciously be attentive
to what is going on around us.
This great, wise leader begins
his Rule of life this simply: Listen.
That is the first step in the
spiritual life, the foundation in our living close to God.
As Benedict says, “Listen with the ear of your heart.”
