January 30

Chapter 7 pt. 6

The Rule of St. Benedict January 30

We have no greater example of a person who loves not her own will, nor takes pleasure in satisfying her own desires, than that of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  She is completely free of all that compels her to self-interest.  She is free to love the will of another.  Caryll Houselander, in her small book, The Reed of God, describes the experience of loving, like St. Mary, not our own will, but the will of Christ within us:

If Christ is growing in us, if we are at peace, recollected, because we know that however insignificant our life seems to be, from it he is forming himself; if we go with eager will, in haste, to wherever our circumstances compel us, because we believe that he desires to be in that place, we shall find that we are driven more and more to act on the impulse of his love.  And the answer we shall get from others to the impulses will be an awakening into life, or the leap of joy of the already wakened life within them.

Br. Chad 2013