The Lord Is My Shepherd Psalm 23 Even under the shadow of horror I will not fear evil For Christ is my companion. You let me lean on the staff that you hold steady You wield the weapon that beats off attackers You have brought food for the journey, and no enemy dares approach the …
Tag Archives: Christ
Love Your Enemies
Love your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6: 27-35). (RB 4. 31) Loving your enemies sounds like a nice idea until you actually have enemies yourself. An enemy is not merely someone with whom you disagree. You can disagree with your friends passionately and perpetually. Nor is an enemy an opponent in a game. An opponent recognizes …
Bear Injuries Patiently
Do not repay one bad turn with another 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9. Do not injure anyone, but bear injuries patiently. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 29-30) First of all, bearing injuries patiently is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of goodness. Only the strong bear up. Only the good restrain themselves when …
Wholly Holy And Hale
Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so. Live by God’s commandments every day. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 62-63) Of all the archaic vocabulary words that have become vestigial, holy has to be the most vacuous. We have no …
Bless Those Who Blast You
If people curse you, do not curse them back but bless them instead. (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 32) Sadly, the right to retaliate is not an inalienable right. It may be necessary to fight your enemies and to defeat them, for the sake of the common good. But the Christian must not inflict harm merely …
Aim For Judgment Day
The abbot must know that anyone undertaking the charge of souls must be ready to account for them. Whatever the number of brothers he has in his care, let him realize that on judgment day he will surely have to submit a reckoning to the Lord for all their souls–and indeed for his own as …
The Call: Awake!
Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” Romans 13:11 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.8) This “sleep” is the spiritual stupor of ordinary people who imagine that the front line is somewhere else. They think that they themselves …
The Challenge
This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. (RB Prologue.3) St. Benedict is of course not the first to describe the …