The Way of St Benedict

 There is extraordinary wisdom, and a certain amount of weirdness, in the Rule of St Benedict. Although it was written in the year 500 or there abouts, it is strikingly relevant to today in some of the details and principles. Benedict was a brilliant organiser, an inspirational leader and a thoughtful pastor-theologian. 

The life of monks could be divided in to three main areas: (1) The work of God (prayer and Bible reading) (2) Study and (3) work. 

It is obviously impractical for the average lay person to follow the Rule all the time in detail. Indeed, nor could the secular clergy. Even for monks today there might need to be some adaptation. 

I am not, as it happens, overly keen on all sorts of monasticism. I have some typically Reformed concerns about withdrawal from the world or too much celibacy and so on. But I am in favour of prayer and the Bible. And I think it is really striking how much Bible there was in the life of a reasonably faithful Benedictine monk. Benedict goes into some detail about this. Make sure you say or sing the whole Psalter at least once a week, folks! Now, even that might be a bit much for most of us, but we could manage to say, sing or listen to Psalm say most mornings and evenings. We might then get the prayers and songs of the Bible into our head and live and think and sing and pray rather more scripturally than we typically do.