. . . the Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings.

The Rule. Prologue vs 35

The Rule needs rules.  This is true of the Rule of Benedict and the Rule of God.  In the Rule, Benedict is translating the Gospel as he understands it into a set of rules for a monastic community.  Our work is to do a similar translation of the Gospel and the Rule of God into rules for our daily, weekly, and yearly life.  This work is deeply personal and not easily undertaken.  It calls us to examine our most deeply cherished values and beliefs because we need to articulate what we want to translate.

Articulating the Gospel and the Rule of God is the first part of our undertaking.  Benedict does this succinctly in the Prologue and throughout the chapters.  This led to the Rule being considered a sort of short version of the Gospel.  Our intent must be grounded in the same place, a clear articulation of what we understand the Gospel and the Rule of God to be.

We then must take that articulation and make it as simple as possible, not to be trite but rather to make it possible to consider translating that into the rules that we can live into.  This work is considerably easier when sitting before a good statement of faith.

Homework: write a clear articulation of your understanding of the Gospel and the Rule of God.  Not less than 50 words or more than 200 when finished.