Let us open our eyes to the deifying light,
let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us,
"Today if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts."
Our Father Benedict seeks here to inspire in us a disposition of urgent attention so that we may perceive our true selves, deified in God's own light. This urgency is set against our own lethargy and tendency to harden our hearts to the light and voice of God. It is set against procrastination and ambivalence--the thought that we can fulfill our calling without giving our all.
St. Benedict strikes this tone at the outset of the Rule because one's disposition at the beginning of a journey sets one's course. As we begin again, let us do so with earnest, eager, urgent attention to what the Spirit is saying in the actual circumstances of our real lives, the circumstances where God is waiting to be revealed.
Br. Chad
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about Christian discipleship, "Only when we have really forgotten ourselves completely, when we really no longer know ourselves, only then are we ready to take up the cross for [Christ's] sake." When I consider Bonhoeffer's commitment to this claim, and the early death he suffered as a result of it, I'm shaken up. He was willing to risk everything in order to obey the call of God--he was willing to march up to Nazis on their turf and argue with them; he was willing to call out the unjust, status-quo-maintaining, cheap-grace-embracing pastors of the German Church of the late 1930's and early 1940's; he was willing to be arrested; and he was willing to die. He heard God saying follow Me, not the herd--that is, suffer for Christ who is the icon of those cast out, rather than clinging to the comfort of your privilege.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading a chapter a day of Discipleship (http://www.amazon.com/Discipleship-Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Works-Vol/dp/0800683242/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1388709259&sr=8-1) right now, and it's illuminating the Rule of Benedict (as well as my path of discernment) for me.