The Rule of St. Benedict: Chapter 7 pt. 10
Contentment is a serious threat to the American way of life. Our economy is predicated upon the discontentment that lives inside the human being. If one is truly "content with the poorest and worst of everything", as our Father Benedict describes, no advertising campaign will be able to create the desires that drive consumption.
But the knife cuts more deeply than society on a grand scale. St. Benedict aims to dethrone self-interested desire within the human psyche so that the individual is empowered to respond to her circumstances from the impulse of Divine Love rather than from her own perceived needs.
The extent to which one must secure pleasure for oneself through possessions or status is the extent to which one's ability is compromised to be a channel through which God moves.
Our brother Frances embodied a holy outer and inner poverty. He, like our Father Benedict in the cave near Subiaco, learned to be truly content with whatever the hand of God provides, even if it be "the poorest and worst of everything." And he, like St. Benedict, was thereby made a channel through which God would make manifest a tradition that would change the world.
Br. Chad
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