Quotes About Benedictine

The 'Rule of St. Benedict' makes it possible for ordinary folk to live lives of quite extraordinary value. The weak have a place to do their best.

An alien priory, only a few miles distant, with its own miracle-working saint, and the great Benedictine house of Shrewsbury as empty of relics as a plundered almsbox! It was more than Prior Robert could stomach. He had been scouring the borderlands for a spare saint now for a year or more, looking hopefully towards Wales, where it was well known that holy men and women had been common as mushrooms in autumn in the past, and as little re

Prayer in Benedictine spirituality is not an interruption of our busy lives nor is it a higher act. Prayer is the filter through which we learn, if we listen hard enough, to see our world aright and anew and without which we live life with souls that are deaf and dumb and blind.

Benedictine spirituality, after all, is life lived to the hilt. It is a life of concentration on life's ordinary dimensions. It is an attempt to do the ordinary things of life extraordinarily well.

Into the midst of all this indistinguishable cacophony of life, the bell tower of every Benedictine monastery rings "listen." Listen with the heart of Christ. Listen with the lover's ear. Listen for the voice of God. Listen in your own heart for the sound of truth, the kind that comes when a piece of quality crystal is struck by a metal rod.

Benedictine conversion, then, is not an assertion of our strength or character. Benedictine spirituality is based on the simple acknowledgment that God will come to life before us and be reborn in us in unexpected ways day after day throughout our entire lives. We must be ready to respond to this God of woods and highways, of gentle breeze and cataclysm, of privacy and crowds - however this Spirit comes. Response is the essence of Benedictine spirituality.

Uniqueness and independence are clearly not synonyms in the mind of Benedict of Nursia. Uniqueness and responsibility go hand in hand in Benedictine spirituality. By all means I should be who I am and have what I need, but you have a claim on those gifts. Those gifts were given to me so much for your sake as for my own. The community does not exist to make me possible. Together we exist to make the gospel possible.

If you are going to put down spiritual roots, taught Benedict, you need to stay in one place long enough for them to go deep. The Rule requires monks to take a vow of "stability"—meaning that barring unusual circumstances, including being sent out as a missionary, the monk will remain for the rest of his life in the monastery where he took his vows.

The moment the Benedict Option becomes about anything other than communion with Christ and dwelling with our neighbors in love, it ceases to be Benedictine," he said. "It can't be a strategy for self-improvement or for saving the church or the world.

la opción benedictina no invita a mirar el pasado sino afrontar el futuro con la combativa, discreta y razonable esperanza que mantuvo la fe de Charles Péguy, Emmanuel Mounier o Jacques Maritain.

Nos atrevemos a pensar que Dreher puede tender un puente con esas comunidades europeas al elegir un precioso texto de Maritain para describir la opción benedictina. No la describe como un «castillo fortificado», sino como un «ejército de estrellas» arrojadas al cielo.

As Sister Joan Chittister, a direct descendant of Hildegard in the Benedictine tradition, says, the issue today is not "radical feminism," which the Vatican accuses Catholic sisters in America of, but "radical patriarchy.

The monastery of Christ in the Desert had its resident hermit, Brother Xavier, chosen after years of devotion and service, a monk so trusted and experienced that he qualified by Benedictine standards to be sent to the front lines in the fight against the devil.

Over time, Benedictine monasteries appeared around the world, always with the same anomaly: brothers living in obedience, meditation, and faith just beneath the rush of the world.

The belt / worn by a Benedictine was made of leather / but a Franciscan's cincture was rope. The gaudy sleeve / I once put on is fraying by the hour.

In Bede's great work they saw a golden age in which every minster had once been a model Benedictine community,

the Benedictine Rule, having no private property, abstaining from meat, and above all abstaining from sex.