The Rule of St. Benedict November 10
Our national culture places an unqualified positive value on a practice that our Father Benedict here calls a "most wicked vice." The phenomenon generated within the human being by the act of private ownership is looked upon by Americans as a firm foundation on which to build a stable society. St. Benedict looks at this same phenomenon and instructs that it is "to be cut out of the monastery by the roots."
This striking contrast prompts me to step back and question how it is that this phenomenon has generated within me that which our Father Benedict sees as so wicked and destructive. How is it that the roots of this vice have infiltrated the soil in which the Gospel has been planted in me? And how do I pull the roots up while living outside of a monastery?
The passage from which I read this morning in the Gospel of St. Luke narrates the exchange between Jesus and the "rich ruler" who asks the "good teacher" what he must do to inherit eternal life. The story is a picture of just how a human being can be kept from the full life of God by the shackles that possessions lock around his identity, his sense of self--heart, mind, soul--and how difficult it is to truly remove them.
Br. Chad 2012
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