With astonishing perfection these opening words of the Rule express what is the true nature of the vocation to the monastic life. It is nothing other than the response from a son to follow in his father’s footsteps. The monk is a prodigal son who returns to his father’s house, and this homecoming is a wonder of grace, the fundamental grace upholding every vocation to the religious life. The Father, is God the Father the Almighty, who wills to call his adopted sons home to their ultimate end, to the eternal  facie ad Faciem (I Corinthians XIII, 12) of the beatific vision.   The vocation thus begins in light of this vision, and it will be in union with the Son of the Eternal Father, that the monk will have constant recourse for hope and perseverance through the dura et aspera, (Rule chapter 58) the hard and demanding challenges of the present life that will one day lead him to heaven. The son, now no longer estranged, as a new soldier, in a new Knighthood (c.f. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood,) he must train and strengthen his grip and grasp of the unfamiliar strong and glorious weapons of obedience (Rule, Prologue,) in imitation of His Saviour, knowing that he, too, will be redeemed by none other than the same means as shown by the sign of the Cross.

Just as Divine Revelation finds its twofold expression in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, the Sacred Liturgy and the Holy Rule are the two pillars of the Monastic Order. St. Gregory the Great, pope and biographer of St. Benedict, wrote of his Rule: Remarkable for its discretion… it is the synthesis of the entire teaching of the Holy Gospels (St. Gregory the Great in Book II of the Dialogues.) Organized in 73 chapters like the books of Sacred Scripture, and concentrated into a compact practical code of living with its discretio or equilibrium and balance of moderation, the Rule of
St. Benedict is a permanent foundation stone of Christendom and one of the invariables of history. This Rule written by a great saint has produced not only an unbroken tradition of sanctity but also vast societies of holiness, with both the monastery and the Christian city bearing its hallmarks. For over 15 centuries the Depositum Monasticum, the deposit of the monastic spirit,like a mirror image of the deposit of the Faith, has been inviolably carried across the expanse of time, intact. Thanks to this Rule, which enshrines the spirit of the Essential, and which has left out nothing for Christian living, both within andwithout the monastery walls, for religious and laity alike, the same spirit that has founded Christendom is also the same means unto its restoration in our present day.

Gifted with a penetrating depth of wisdom and experience, St. Benedict is the doctor of human nature, knowing the balance needed for true conversion. He calls his monastic way of life a school where the austerity of the letter is supplanted by the largesse of the spirit, the law of love. Therefore we establish a School of the Lord’s Service… based on the teaching of charity, in founding which he hopes to ordain nihil asperum, nihil grave, nothing bitter, nothing burdensome so as not to dishearten, he exhorts the young monk, not to be overcome with fear and flee from the way of salvation (Rule, Prologue.) The vocation is universal,  multi sunt vocati, for many are called, and they are to convert to God  in toto corde with the whole heart (St. Matthew XX, 16.)  In this sensethe fallen state of human nature is not to be cast away or condemned, but rather restored and redeemed, both in body and soul, through Ora et Labora, prayer and work. The practice of the virtue of modestia, the ancient ideal of moderation and patience, thus makes up one of the great teachings of the Benedictine school, safeguarded by the encouragements of fraternal charity. The Benedictine vision is therefore one of the heart, seeing the longanimitas, the long term, in the longer work of a lifetime, which in fine every part of man is to be raised up, sanctified and perfected in grace.