Daily Reading for July 12

Balance, proportion, harmony are so central, they so underpin everything else in the Rule, that without them the whole Benedictine approach to the individual and to the community loses its keystone. This is something which speaks to us very immediately in the later twentieth century. The search for personal fulfillment has become something of a fetish in our society today, and yet we complicate our search by at the same time admiring expertise, specialization, professionalization. Total success in one particular area commands great respect. We ask our children early in life to make choices between subjects they intend to master. We acknowledge the superiority of a lifetime devoted to one highly esoteric form of research. It could be valuable to ask ourselves what we are losing, and to set ourselves the task of discovering if we could not, without being impossibly romantic or escapist about it, attempt to become more fully, more totally human, by recognizing that all the elements in our make-up are God-given and are equally worthy of respect. It is the interrelationship of body, mind, and spirit that now eludes us. Yet St Benedict insisted that since body, mind and spirit together make up the whole person the daily pattern of life in the monastery should involve time for prayer, time for study and time for manual work. All three should command respect and all three should equally become a way to God.

From Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict by Esther de Waal (Liturgical Press, 1984).