Saint Benedict

The Church honors St. Benedict who was born in 480 A.D., just after the Fall of the Roman Empire, and died 543, a long time ago, and yet his message of attentive listening and obedience to the voice of God rings loud and clear, 1500+ years later. He begins his famous Rule, which was the backbone of the monasticism that Christianized Europe, preserved the learning of the centuries, and has led countless men and women to sanctity, with the simple injunction: "Listen carefully, my son, to the master's instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart". Listening carefully, something we in our noisy cluttered lives have a hard time doing...and attend to them with the ear of your heart, that is not just intellectual assent, but deep, total commitment from the heart...another strange anomoly in our moder era. Commitment? From the heart? Yet how effective. How humbling, how instructive in leading us to the obedience to God's will that makes us whole. In our Marist Contitutions we read in article 45: "Our practice of gospel obedience is the way we express our freedom nd our availability for the Church's mission. It makes us strong despite our weakness. It is our way of denouncing the striving for and abuse of power, and the ideologies which violate human rights or make personal autonomy an absolute. In so doing, we proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the obedient servant." It all begins with listening. Benedict hit the nail on the head. May it penetrate our hearts and change our approach to this day's tasks...to the life tasks ahead we have been asked to accept.
Bro. Rene