Fr. Divo Barsotti, A Spiritual Commentary to the Prologue of St Benedict's Rule

 
 

 

Preface
HIS is not a commentary to a text, but rather meditations provoked by reading it. It always seems to me that the themes that I have seen in the Prologue to St Benedict's Rule are really the fundamental themes of monastic spirituality. It is traditional in the history of spirituality to meditate upon a text, and not to desire to comment or analyze, but rather pour it out as prayer. The text suggests a theme that the mind then develops freely, asking only that one be obedient with simplicity to the ideas that raise up certain expressions in one's inmost being. Though it would have been easy many time to refer to other texts even of the same Rule to add value to the teaching, I preferred the flow of a discourse that without any systemitization could humbly bring interior prayer. The book that results therefore has no scientific pretense. It is a word from the heart and desires to speak to the heart: cor ad cor loquitur.
 

The Richness of the PrologueAusculta, o fili, praecepta magistri, inclina aurem cordis tui, et admonitionem pii patris libenter excipe, et efficaciter comple; ut ad eum per obedientiae laborem readeas, a quo per inobedientiar desidiam recesseras.
Listen, O my child, to the teachings of the Master, and incline the ear of your heart and accept willingly the rules of your loving father and with all your might fulfil them; so that you turn through the labour of obedience to Him from whom you withdraw through the sloth of disobedience.

The expressions in the Rule's Prologue desiring to define spiritual life are many and different, but all hold this in common: the sense of a relationship. Spiritual life is a school, and the relationship is between the disciple and the master: it is a family, and the relationship is of a child and a father; it is a war, and the relationship is that of a soldier obeying his general; it is work, and now the relationship that the worker takes in relation to the one over him, with his boss. But always spiritual life is a relationship read...