We are called to serve....

July 9. A close reading of Benedict, almost from the first day, quickly reveals that we all have a responsibility to serve others—without pride, without resentment, and, when possible, without delay.

Our call to care for one another lies at the very heart of our faith tradition. Love God. Love one another as Christ has loved us. And perhaps we need to ask ourselves a very simple question: What does love look like when it gets up in the morning and goes to work?

Surely, much of the time, it looks like service.

For the cellarer, we understand this well enough. The cellarer has been entrusted with the goods of the monastery and called to respond to the needs of the community. Benedict is remarkably careful in his description. This person must not be arrogant, harsh, wasteful, or slow. The cellarer is to be like a parent to the whole community. Even when unable to provide what is requested, Benedict insists that a kind word must be offered.

But what about you and me?

Are we really called to serve one another with this same attentiveness?

I believe the answer is yes.

The call did not begin with Benedict. Jesus knelt on the floor and washed the feet of his disciples. The one they called Lord took the position of a servant. He did not simply preach love; he picked up a towel and a basin and brought love to life.

The desert elders understood this. Their severe lives of prayer and self-denial were never meant to create isolated spiritual athletes. At their best, the disciplines of the desert were intended to wear away the tyranny of the self so that room might be made for God and neighbor. Abba Agathon could imagine perfect charity as taking upon himself the suffering of another. It is an astonishing image: the spiritual life measured not by how holy I appear, but by how willing I am to carry another's burden.

Augustine, centuries later, reminded his people that although he was a bishop for them, he was a Christian with them. Office did not separate him from the common life. We belong to one another. Augustine speaks of Christians bearing one another's burdens as the law of Christ.

Luther would make the point with one of his wonderful paradoxes: the Christian, set free by faith, becomes the servant of all. Freedom in Christ is not freedom from the neighbor. It is freedom from the anxious protection of the self so that we may finally turn outward in love.

And here, perhaps, Benedict challenges us.

We may be tempted to think that service belongs to people who have been assigned the job—the cellarer, the nurse, the pastor, the volunteer, the caregiver. But Benedictine life will not let us escape so easily. The Rule eventually calls the members of the community to obedience toward one another. The cellarer simply shows us, in concentrated form, what a life attentive to others might look like.

Of course, we have a duty to care for ourselves. Of course, we cannot do everything for everyone. Service without wisdom can become exhaustion, resentment, or even an unhealthy need to be needed.

But that is not the center of the Benedictine heart.

The question is simpler and, perhaps, more demanding:

Am I becoming indifferent to the needs of those around me?

Richard Rohr often reminds us that contemplation must finally become engagement—that love becomes real in relationship, in doing, in connecting, in life lived “with and for the neighbor.” The spiritual life cannot end inside us.

Perhaps each morning we should imagine that Benedict has quietly placed the cellarer's keys in our hands.

Not the keys to the monastery storeroom.

The keys to whatever we possess today—our time, our patience, our experience, our attention, our resources, our capacity to encourage, perhaps simply our willingness to stop and listen.

These are the goods entrusted to us.

And somewhere, before this day is over, someone will need something we have been given.

We are called to serve.

The keys....

July 8. Chapter 31 of the Rule concerns a particular office in a sixth-century monastery: the cellarer. Yet, as so often happens with Benedict, a few words about an ancient monastic office suddenly open into a question about our own lives.

Benedict says the cellarer is to be “like a parent to the whole community.”

We should not pass too quickly over those words.

The cellarer was the person through whose hands the necessities of life passed. Food. Tools. Supplies. The ordinary things upon which the life of the community depended. Over the centuries the office would grow into one of considerable administrative and economic responsibility. But Benedict begins not with administrative skill. He begins with the soul.

The cellarer must be wise, mature, temperate, humble.

Why?

Because the cellarer has the keys.

And there is a spiritual danger in possessing the keys.

Most of us, at one time or another, have been given control of something another person needs. Perhaps it is money. Knowledge. Food. Transportation. A position in an organization. Access to people. Even our time and attention.

Something another person needs must pass through our hands.

And temptation is real.

We may delay simply because we can. We may subtly remind another person of their dependence upon us. We may use our resources to enhance our standing, gather gratitude, or exercise control. We may even convince ourselves that our importance comes from possessing the keys.

Benedict understands.

“Keep watch over your own soul,” he tells the cellarer.

What an extraordinary warning. Do not merely watch the storeroom. Watch your heart.

Notice what happens within you when someone needs you. Notice whether you give with love or condescension. Notice whether you secretly enjoy the power to say yes or no. Notice whether the gifts entrusted to you have slowly begun to feel as though they belong to you.

The wisdom of the ages returns again and again to this truth. Marcus Aurelius reminded himself that human beings were made for one another. Augustine taught that the Christian life finally bends toward love of God and neighbor. Luther said that, because God has freely helped us in Christ, we are freed to help our neighbor—not for praise or gratitude, but simply in love.

Perhaps, then, we are all cellarers. We all carry some keys.

And perhaps we are all called, in Benedict's beautiful phrase, to become parents to the world—not controlling it, not possessing it, but nurturing whatever portion of life has been placed within our reach.

This may also explain Benedict's astonishing instruction that the tools and goods of the monastery are to be treated like the sacred vessels of the altar. Nothing is merely a thing. Nothing entrusted to us is insignificant.

The artist cares for the brush. The carpenter oils the plane. The writer treasures the pen. The cook respects the knife.

And the disciple?

The disciple learns to reverence everything placed into their hands—people, possessions, gifts, time, creation itself—because none of it is finally ours.

We are simply the ones who, for a little while, have been given the keys.

Do you love me....

July 7.  This is the final chapter of the preceding seven chapters dealing with what has sometimes been called the penal code of the Rule.

Even the phrase sounds severe.

At times it has been difficult to imagine a person of Benedict's wisdom spending so much time considering the punishment of those in his care. Yet, as Sister Joan reminds us, we do not have to read these chapters very closely before discovering that Benedict's purpose is always to heal, never to destroy; to cure, not to crush.

Perhaps we should have seen Christ standing behind Benedict all along.

Jesus certainly confronted his disciples. He rebuked Peter. He corrected James and John. He found his closest friends sleeping when he had asked them to remain awake. But after Peter's greatest failure, Jesus did something extraordinary.

He asked him a question.

Do you love me?

Not: Are you sufficiently ashamed?
Not: Have you suffered enough?
Not even: Can you promise never to fail again?

Do you love me?

The Desert Fathers understood something of this mystery. They demanded honesty, effort, and perseverance, yet warned us never to correct another without remembering the trail of our own sins behind us. Augustine believed correction could awaken the sleeping heart, but only grace could finally heal it. Luther insisted that the fallen must know that we seek not their destruction but their salvation.

And perhaps that is the question we must carry from these difficult chapters.

When those we love fall—and when we ourselves fall—what is it that truly calls us home?

Fear may stop us momentarily. Shame may drive us into hiding. Punishment may force outward obedience.

But what finally loosens the grip of the false self? What enables us to surrender an evil way, rise again, and begin anew?

Love.

Richard Rohr writes that God does not love us if we change. God loves us so that we can change.

So today, at the end of Benedict's long reflection on discipline, I invite you to look gently and honestly into your own life. Remember those moments of great weakness. What was it that finally reached you? What allowed you to surrender, to turn, to begin again?

The answer will be different for each of us. Grace finds strange and wonderfully personal roads into the human heart.

But perhaps, somewhere beneath it all, we will hear the same question Christ asked Peter beside the sea:

Do you love me?

The courage to begin again....

July 6.  Life is full of false starts.

What a remarkably compassionate truth to find beneath Chapter 29. Benedict, writing fourteen centuries ago, seems already to understand something we spend lifetimes discovering: human beings are uncertain creatures. We hesitate. We choose and reconsider. We begin, lose heart, wander away, and sometimes return ashamed that we ever left.

Benedict makes room for this.

The brother who leaves may return. If he leaves again, Benedict permits another return—and even a third. Yet eventually a boundary is drawn.

Why?  Perhaps because there is a profound difference between searching and drifting.

The Desert Fathers understood this. Their lives were filled with beginnings and beginnings again. They struggled with anger, temptation, pride, boredom, and despair. Holiness was not their perfect record. Holiness was their willingness to return to the cell, return to prayer, return to God.

But eventually one must stay in the cell. That may be Benedict's deeper wisdom. We cannot spend our entire lives standing in the doorway asking whether this is the life we want. At some point, we must enter. 

We must give ourselves to something.

The philosophers came to much the same conclusion. Aristotle understood that character is formed through repeated action. We do not merely decide to become virtuous; our habits slowly form us into particular kinds of people. Kierkegaard recognized the danger of endless possibility. A life never chosen can become a life never truly lived.

This is where Sister Joan's words become profoundly provocative:

Eventually, we must all settle down and do something serious with our lives

and every day we must make a fresh beginning of it.

Notice the beautiful tension.

Settle down.
Begin again.

Commit.
And recommit.

Stay.
And start over.

This is not rigidity. It is stability of heart.

John Mark Comer speaks directly to our distracted age, reminding us that spiritual transformation requires intention, practices, and a rule of life. Richard Rohr approaches the same truth through contemplation: we must take a long, loving look at reality. But contemplation cannot become an endless examination of possibilities. Eventually, the inner life must become a lived life.

Reflection—but then movement.  Discernment—but then decision.  Grace for the false start—but eventually the courage to stay.

Perhaps the great spiritual danger is not that we will make the wrong beginning. God seems remarkably patient with wrong beginnings. Perhaps the greater danger is that we become so afraid of choosing imperfectly that we never give ourselves completely to anything.

We keep one hand on the door.

Benedict gently asks us to remove it.

Choose the life. Enter the cell. Begin the work. 
And when tomorrow comes, make a fresh beginning of it.

Perhaps this is conversatio morum at its deepest.

Reach out and touch the face of God....

There are moments in the Rule when Benedict seems so severe. We recoil from the language of punishment, and rightly so. But beneath the ancient forms lies a truth that has not aged: human beings do not become whole by drifting. We grow by correction, surrender, humility, and grace.

Sr. Joan reminds us that everything changes. The Tao says that when we understand this, there is nothing we need to cling to. Benedict would add: there are things in us that must die if we are ever to live. Not the self God created. Not the beloved child of God. But the false-self—that frightened, grasping, self-protective thing that mistakes comfort for peace, control for strength, and appetite for freedom.

And so the great question rises: how?

How does the weak and selfish false-self relinquish control to the true-self, the one that longs to reach out and touch the face of God?

Perhaps it begins when we finally see the false-self promises safety but delivers bondage. It promises pleasure but leaves restlessness. It promises control but breeds fear. Through grace alone we do have the courage to admit that the life God calls us to is not merely morally better; it is profoundly, overwhelmingly, undeniably more alive.

Augustine knew it when he cried, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Paul knew it when he wrote, “I die daily.” Jesus gave the deepest law of all: only the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies bears fruit.

This is not simple behavioral mathematics, though habit matters. It is not willpower alone, though discipline matters. Willpower is a fragile reed; it bends beneath exhaustion, fear, and habit. What must come to bear is something deeper: honest self-knowledge, a willingness to be corrected, the support of community, the slow practice of obedience, and above all grace.

Benedict does not imagine solitary heroism. The whole community is growing together. We are each, in turn, child and elder, offender and healer, beginner and guide. We learn to die to the useless patterns that once protected us but now imprison us. We learn to let go of the small self so the true self may breathe.

And this dying is not destruction. It is resurrection in slow motion.

To die to resentment is to live in mercy.
To die to pride is to live in truth.
To die to control is to live in trust.
To die to selfishness is to discover love.

So the question is not whether we are weak. We are. The question is whether weakness can become the doorway through which grace enters. Benedict’s answer is yes. Sr. Joan’s answer is yes. The wisdom of the ages says yes.

We are called to growth, not because

God despises us as we are, but because God sees what we may yet become.

I am always with you....

Chapter 27 of the Rule introduces one of Benedict’s most beautiful and mysterious figures: the senpectae—a mature and wise member of the community whom the abbot sends quietly to the fallen brother.

Benedict does not dismiss the offense or offer cheap forgiveness. Something has been broken. Truth must be faced. Responsibility accepted. But now another danger appears. Despair.

Benedict understands that discipline can destroy. A person lost in guilt—I have done wrong—can easily conclude: I am beyond restoration.

And so who, who does Benedict sends? Not another judge. He sends someone who understands the sorrow and grief found in shame.

The senpectae's life has been deeply lived and honestly examined—someone who knows pride, fear, resentment, the need for control, and most importantly—failure itself.

Such wisdom reaches back into the desert tradition, where the ancient abba or amma learned to listen beneath the words—to recognize that anger may conceal grief, zeal may conceal pride, and excessive sorrow may become as spiritually dangerous as arrogance.

Across the centuries, we find echoes of this ministry in the confessor, spiritual director, chaplain, pastoral counselor, and psychotherapist. Yet beneath all of this lies Benedict’s ancient insight.

The fallen person may be the least able to seek help precisely when help is most needed. Shame isolates. Fear silences. The senpectae crosses that distance, holding together the two truths: you must face what you have done; you are not to be destroyed by what you have done.

Perhaps the deepest qualification of the senpectae is their ability to look honestly within. The senpectae stands in that narrow passage between accountability and hopeless dispair.

The voice of the living God saying simply—I am always with you.

The work of growth...

Today’s reading from the Rule seems narrow: how should the community relate to one who has been excommunicated? Benedict’s instruction may sound severe. Yet beneath it lies a difficult wisdom about recovery, responsibility, and love.

We have reflected in recent days on the false self—its affinity for comfort and its desire for control. We want healing without pain, growth without surrender, transformation without sacrifice. Yet there comes a moment when we must act and no one can act on our behalf.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers knew this well. They sought solitude not because community was unimportant, but because some encounters with the self cannot be delegated. Others may pray for us, encourage us, forgive us—but we must consent to transformation—we must surrender.

This is central to the heart of the Rule. We are responsible for ourselves.  There are moments when love must not interfere with the work another person must do. Help that seeks to rescue can shield us from the truth. Companionship may very well discourage us from the surrender recovery requires.

We understand this in physical therapy. The therapist may guide us. But we must face the stress and pain of restoring the body.

So too with the soul.

No one else can confess our fault, relinquish our resentments, surrender our illusion of control, or take the first trembling steps toward another life. Grace surrounds us. Community sustains us. Prayer strengthens us. But there will be sacred sacrifice that remains ours alone.

Perhaps the lesson today is twofold: to undertake courageously our own work, and to remain faithfully near those undertaking theirs. Sometimes the very presence of loves heals.

Know my healing presence.

 

The truth within us....

Chapter 25 of the Rule is not really asking, "What should the abbot do when someone sins?" He is asking something far more unsettling: "What should I do when I discover that I am the offender?"

Chapter 25 can easily be read as Benedict's instructions to an abbot. But a slower reading invites a more personal question. What if I am the brother who has committed the serious fault? What if I have wounded another, fractured a relationship, or weakened the community entrusted to me?

In our own age, we are inclined either to excuse ourselves or to condemn ourselves. Benedict chooses neither path. His concern is not punishment but restoration. He assumes that human beings fail. The real question is what we do next.

The first act of restoration is remarkably simple, though never easy. We must confront the truth within us.

The Desert Fathers believed that nothing could begin until a person ceased hiding from oneself. Abba Moses taught, "Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything." The "cell" is more than a room. It is that quiet place where distractions fall away and we encounter ourselves honestly. There we discover that our greatest struggle is seldom with another person. It is with pride, fear, resentment, insecurity, or the thousand disguises of the ego.

Sister Joan Chittister brings this ancient wisdom into our own day. At our worst, she reminds us, we seek the solace of another's hand. Human beings need one another in moments of crisis, whether they recognize it or not. We are not designed to heal ourselves in isolation. We need grace, but we also need community. We need someone who will neither excuse us nor abandon us.

Perhaps her most penetrating observation comes at the close of this chapter. It is not a bad idea, she says, to distance ourselves from what we claim we do not want, if only to discover whether the problem lies in the thing itself—or in us.

That is a profoundly Benedictine insight. Our first instinct is to change our circumstances, our work, our relationships, or our community. Benedict quietly asks whether the disorder we are trying to escape may have taken up residence within us—realizing we carry ourselves— wherever we go.

Yet honesty alone is not enough. We must also accept responsibility. Modern culture often urges us to embrace our flaws. There is wisdom in that, provided we understand what it means. We do not embrace our flaws to excuse them. We embrace them because only what is acknowledged can be transformed. We remove the coat of imagined holiness long enough to admit that beneath it rests an unfinished human being, still learning to love, struggling to grow.

The ancients never imagined that such work was easy. John Cassian wrote that the heart is like a deep well whose waters are not easily seen until they are stirred. Evagrius taught that our hidden thoughts shape our outward lives long before our actions reveal them. Gregory the Great observed that the diseases of the soul often remain invisible to the one who suffers from them most.

Modern psychology has arrived at much the same conclusion. Carl Jung warned that what we fail to bring into consciousness will direct our lives while appearing to us as fate. We blame circumstances, chance, or other people for what has long been growing quietly within our own hearts.

Where, then, do we find the strength to change?

Not in willpower alone. Willpower is a fragile reed. It bends beneath exhaustion, fear, and habit.

The Christian tradition answers differently. Strength grows wherever humility and grace meet. It is born when we stop defending ourselves. When we cease pretending. When we ask for help. When we confess. When we accept correction. When we make amends. When we begin again.

Saint Benedict understood something we often forget: conversion is rarely dramatic. It is usually made of a thousand small decisions, each one turning us, almost imperceptibly, toward God. Every sincere apology, every difficult conversation, every act of restitution, every quiet prayer of "Lord, have mercy," weakens the grip of the old self and strengthens the new.  Does this sound familiar?

We are called to return to the center of our being and learn to confront the truth within us. There we discover that we are neither as virtuous as we imagined nor as hopeless as we feared.

There, stripped of illusion but surrounded by grace, we begin to find the courage that had always seemed to evade us.

And perhaps that is Benedict's quiet promise. Serious faults need not become permanent failures. They can become the very place where humility is born, relationships are restored, and the soul begins, once again, to grow.

Where must you go to discover the silence.  For in that silence, we discover that the strength we seek is not hidden somewhere else—it has been waiting beneath our pride, ready to emerge the moment we are willing to live into the truth.

This is the way of Christ....

It is easy to become lost in readings of the Rule such as Chapter 24. At first glance, Benedict's instructions seem almost entirely disciplinary—excluding a brother from the common table, separating him from the community, and requiring what Benedict calls "proper satisfaction" before restoration. Such practices belong to another age, yet beneath them lies a wisdom that has never grown old.

Benedict understood that community is sacred and fragile. Sister Joan Chittister reminds us that anything which weakens love, trust, respect, or cooperation slowly corrodes the life of a community. Whether in a monastery, a family, or a congregation, healing must begin before genuine growth can continue.

Reading this chapter, I was reminded of the theological reflections we practiced in Education for Ministry: creation, brokenness, recognition, redemption, and restoration. Benedict follows this same rhythm. Community is formed. Something fractures it. The wound is acknowledged. Healing is sought. Communion is restored.

His phrase, proper satisfaction, invites deep reflection. Is it simply penance or confession? Perhaps it is something more profound: not paying a debt but restoring a relationship.

The temporary exclusion from the common table was itself a form of penance—not because suffering has value in itself, but because separation reveals what has been lost. The table symbolizes communion. Its absence awakens the heart to the cost of broken relationships.

Yet who can know whether repentance is genuine? We may sincerely desire holiness today and stumble again tomorrow. Only God truly knows the human heart. The community cannot judge another's soul; it can only recognize the outward signs of humility, reconciliation, and the sincere desire to begin anew.

As Richard Rohr reminds us, the false self constantly seeks comfort, control, and recognition. Benedict recognized this same temptation fifteen centuries earlier. Every wound to community begins when the false self eclipses the true self created in God's image.

Perhaps proper satisfaction begins simply with truth: seeing ourselves honestly, acknowledging the hurt we have caused, seeking forgiveness, and accepting whatever healing requires.

This is not merely Benedict's pattern; it is the pattern of the Gospel itself. God creates, we wander, grace calls us home, and love restores what seemed beyond repair.

The question remains for each of us: Is there a relationship in my own life awaiting proper satisfaction? An apology delayed? A forgiveness withheld? The table of the Kingdom is always prepared, but the journey to it passes through humility, truth, reconciliation, and restoration. 

This is the way of Christ.

We must assume responsibility....

Benedict's words for today are another reminder that the Rule is never meant to imprison us in the customs of the sixth century. Rather, it invites us to discover the timeless principles that lie beneath those customs. What mattered to Benedict was not the particular correction but the transformation of the person. If something is broken, mend it. If something has mastered us, curb it. If something within us has drifted from truth, gently but resolutely set it right.

Sister Joan Chittister captures the heart of Benedict's wisdom when she observes that in a culture where self-control is often mistaken for self-denial or self-destruction, we are called to recover a forgotten truth: very little in life happens by accident. Character is formed by a thousand small choices. A holy life is not stumbled upon; it is cultivated.

The ancient philosophers understood this well. Aristotle taught that excellence is not an isolated act but a habit, formed by repeatedly choosing what is good until virtue becomes our second nature. The Desert Fathers believed that the great spiritual battles were won not in dramatic moments but in the quiet victories over one's own impulses. Benedict stands squarely in that tradition. The purpose of discipline is never punishment. It is freedom—the freedom to become the person God created us to be.

Why, then, does self-discipline come more easily to some than to others? Partly because habits, once established, gather their own momentum. The disciplined person is not necessarily stronger; more often, they have learned to make countless small faithful choices before great decisions ever arrive. Others struggle because every decision remains a battle, every good intention competing against distraction, fear, comfort, or delay. The difference is rarely one of desire. Most of us know what ought to be done. The difference lies in what we repeatedly choose when no one else is watching.

Modern writers echo the same insight. Richard Rohr reminds us that the false self always seeks comfort and control, while the true self grows through surrender. Self-discipline is not the triumph of the ego but the gradual yielding of the ego to God's transforming grace. Grace does not eliminate effort; it sanctifies it.

Perhaps that is Benedict's deepest lesson today. We must willingly assume responsibility for our own formation. We cannot wait for circumstances to improve or for inspiration to arrive. We become what we repeatedly practice. Every honest examination of conscience, every restrained word, every act of forgiveness, every prayer offered when we least feel like praying, slowly reshapes the soul.

Self-discipline, then, is not the enemy of freedom. It is its doorway. It is the quiet daily practice by which God, with our willing cooperation, fashions ordinary people into faithful disciples.

Ready when the call comes....

At first glance, Chapter 22 of the Rule of Benedict seems almost disappointingly ordinary. It concerns sleeping arrangements—where the monks sleep, how they are clothed, whether a light should remain burning, and how quickly they should rise when the signal is given. It hardly appears to be the sort of material from which great spiritual wisdom emerges.

Yet Benedict rarely writes about mere logistics. Beneath every practical instruction lies a spiritual discipline.

To appreciate this chapter, we must first remember the world in which Benedict wrote. Sixth-century Italy was a place of uncertainty. The Roman Empire had collapsed. Violence, disease, poverty, and political upheaval were commonplace. Most people were peasants. Few could read. Privacy scarcely existed. Entire families often slept in a single room. Life was dictated by the seasons, the weather, and survival.

Into such a world Benedict proposed something astonishing: not simply a monastery, but a school for the Lord's service—a community where ordinary people might learn an entirely different way of living together.

These monks were not angels. They were strong-willed men from every walk of life. Some had been soldiers, others farmers or laborers, still others sons of wealthy families. They brought with them habits of pride, impatience, fear, ambition, and self-protection. Benedict understood that holiness would not emerge simply because they prayed together. It would be formed through hundreds of small, faithful acts of consideration for one another.

So they slept clothed—not out of suspicion of the body, but in readiness. When the signal sounded for the Night Office, no one lingered. No one waited for someone else to go first. They were to "rise without delay," eager for the Work of God. Yet Benedict immediately tempers zeal with charity: each should hasten to arrive before the others, "yet with all gravity and decorum." Even enthusiasm must never become competition.

There is profound wisdom here. The Christian life is not measured only by great acts of sacrifice. It is revealed in punctuality, consideration, modesty, simplicity, and readiness to answer God's call. Character is built in habits long before it is tested in crises.

The ancient Desert Fathers understood this well. They often taught that the smallest act performed faithfully reveals the true condition of the heart. Evagrius Ponticus wrote that the disciplined ordering of daily life gradually orders the soul itself. Centuries later, Jean-Pierre de Caussade would speak of the "sacrament of the present moment," where God waits to be encountered not only in extraordinary experiences but in ordinary obedience. More recently, Richard Rohr has reminded us that the ego is quietly transformed through practices that teach us to live for something larger than ourselves.

Perhaps that is Benedict's deeper lesson.

Community is built less by grand ideals than by thousands of unnoticed courtesies. One person rises promptly. Another keeps silence so others may rest. Someone makes room for another's weakness. Someone chooses dignity over haste, patience over irritation, encouragement over criticism.

In these simple gestures, Christ becomes visible.

Chapter 22 invites us to ask a searching question: How ready am I when God calls? Not only in moments of crisis, but in the interruptions of an ordinary day—in the unexpected knock, the neighbor in need, the invitation to forgive, the opportunity to encourage, the quiet summons to prayer.

The monastery's dormitory may seem far removed from our homes today. Yet Benedict's vision remains remarkably contemporary. A family, a parish, a retirement community, or a circle of friends flourishes when its members cultivate readiness, modesty, discipline, and mutual regard.

The sleeping arrangements were never merely about sleep.

They were about awakening—to God, to one another, and to the quiet truth that a holy community is built one ordinary act of love at a time.

We are called to build....

Today's meditation invites us to reflect on leadership and the building of community. It is tempting to begin with what appears to be a simple question: What is most important? Yet wisdom quickly teaches us that the question itself is too small. Communities are not sustained by a single virtue, a single principle, or a single leader. They flourish only when many virtues are held together in faithful balance—truth with mercy, courage with humility, justice with compassion, conviction with listening.

Benedict understood this profoundly.

He realized that building a community was never the work of the abbot alone. It was the work of the entire community, each member contributing to the life of the whole. Looking across the monastery, Benedict chose trusted individuals—our translation calls them deans—not because they possessed authority or influence, but because they had demonstrated virtuous living, sound judgment, and wise teaching. Each was entrusted with the care of a small group, responsible for its well-being according to the commandments of God and the guidance of the abbot.

The touchstone for every decision remained the same: Benedictine values. Whenever uncertainty arose, the community needed only to ask, What is sacred among us? What best reflects the Gospel we have pledged to live? Decisions were never meant to arise from personal preference or the loudest voice, but from a shared commitment to what had formed the community from the beginning.

It is not surprising, then, that we soon discover a profound truth: it is the community that builds community. A common vision gives birth to a common heart. Such a people are immersed in Scripture, attentive to prayer, and devoted to listening—not only for the voice of God but also for the lived experience of one another.

Sister Joan reminds us that a person formed in this Benedictine spirit naturally seeks cooperation rather than competition, listening rather than domination, reconciliation rather than division. Such leadership gathers people together; it never fractures them. Its measure is not power but communion.

In recent years we have often spoken of the importance of recognizing that there is always a backstory. Rarely do we fully understand the complete truth of any situation. Beneath every decision lie unseen forces: histories, fears, hopes, disappointments, loyalties, and hidden wounds that quietly shape human behavior.

Benedict understood this centuries ago. Throughout the Rule he repeatedly counsels patience, careful listening, and humility before judgment. Today's chapter reminds us that wise leadership requires more than knowledge of the facts. It demands hearts immersed in Scripture, ears attentive to the experience of the community, and minds willing to discern the deeper currents at work beneath the surface.

Perhaps, then, the question is not, What is most important? A better question is, What is being asked of us now, for the sake of the whole? Sometimes the community needs vision; sometimes consolation. Sometimes it needs courage to act; at other times, the humility to wait. The true leader does not seek to prevail but to help the community become more faithful to its calling.

When people trust that they have been heard, when they know their story matters, and when every decision is measured against the enduring values of the Gospel, community ceases to be merely an organization. It becomes what Benedict always intended: a school for the Lord's service, where together we learn, day by day, to become what we say we believe.

Reverence begins with prayer....

Benedict tells us that prayer should be brief, offered with few words, arising from a heart that is pure rather than from lips that are merely busy. God is not persuaded by the length of our prayers but by the openness of our hearts.

Sr. Joan Chittister reminds us that the purpose of prayer is not to establish a routine but to establish a relationship—an enduring relationship with the God who is already with us. Prayer is not something we do at appointed hours alone; prayer is the slow shaping of a life until every thought, every word, every action becomes an expression of God's presence within us.

The ancient monks called this purity of heart. John Cassian described it as the one great purpose toward which every spiritual discipline points. It is not moral perfection. It is singleness of heart—the gradual surrender of every competing desire until there is only one great longing left: to seek God in all things.

Centuries later, Thomas Merton wrote that the pure of heart are those who no longer seek themselves, but seek only the will of God. Meister Eckhart taught that we must become empty enough for God to be God within us. Thomas Keating reminded us that the spiritual journey is less about acquiring holiness than about letting go of the false self that obscures it. And Richard Rohr often observes that we do not think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.

Perhaps that is why the word true is so profound. Truth is not merely the correctness of our opinions. It is the alignment of our lives with the life of God. We speak of true north because it does not wander. We speak of true notes because they are in harmony. Likewise, a true heart is one brought into harmony with the heart of God.

Such truth can be elusive. We are easily deceived by ambition, comfort, fear, certainty, and self-interest. The Desert Fathers warned that the greatest obstacle to God is not wickedness but illusion—the mistaken belief that our own desires are God's desires. Prayer slowly strips away those illusions. It teaches us to listen with "the ear of the heart" until God's hopes become our hopes, God's compassion becomes our compassion, and God's truth becomes the measure of our lives.

Then prayer has accomplished its work. We have become, little by little, what we have prayed. Our words grow fewer because our lives speak more clearly. We become disciples whose witness is not found primarily in eloquent speech but in quiet integrity. We become, in Benedict's vision, people whose hearts are pure, whose minds are centered in the Truth that is Truth, whose strength rests in the Power that is Power, and whose lives are transformed by the Love that is Love.

For in the end, purity of heart is simply this: to will one thing—to belong wholly to God, and in belonging to Him, to belong more completely to His world.

And so....we are called to live the Gospel message....

The wisdom of the ages, from Evagrius Ponticus and the Desert Fathers, through Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross, to Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, and Sister Joan—reminds us that the spiritual life is not about acquiring something new. It is about allowing God to reveal what has always been intended. Prayer does not inform God. Prayer transforms us—so that we become who we say we are.

By now we have come to appreciate the extraordinary clarity that Sister Joan Chittister brings to the Rule of Benedict. Today she offers one of her most compelling images: the smelter's furnace.

Raw ore enters the crucible carrying both precious metal and worthless dross. Only fire can separate the one from the other. So it is with the soul.

Benedict understood that the Divine Office is not simply a discipline of words but a furnace of grace. Day after day, the psalms gather our scattered minds, disordered loves, restless ambitions, hidden fears, and deepest hopes into the presence of God. There, in the quiet fire of prayer, they are fused into a single heart.

The Desert Fathers called this purity of heart—the undivided life. Augustine spoke of rightly ordered love. Benedict called it listening "with the ear of the heart." Richard Rohr describes it as the True Self emerging as the false self slowly burns away. Different voices, one enduring truth.

Prayer is not meant to change God's mind. It is meant to change ours.

As the furnace burns away pride, illusion, fear, and self-deception, the image of Christ becomes steadily clearer within us. Our words and our lives begin to agree. Our worship becomes visible in the way we love, forgive, serve, and hope.

The goal is wonderfully simple: that, by God's grace, we become who we profess to be—indeed, who He has always created us to become.

Only then do our prayers cease to be merely spoken and become, at last, embodied. Only then does God's presence become palpable in us. And only then do we become what we seek: people whose lives proclaim the Gospel long before our lips ever do.

Out of the mind of God....

Breath deeply and begin....

Todays reflection touches on something that sits at the very heart of Benedictine spirituality. Benedict did not insist on praying all 150 psalms each week because he was a legalist. He did so because he understood that the Psalter is nothing less than a school of the human soul. The psalms teach us to pray not only when we feel close to God, but when we are angry, bewildered, joyful, grateful, ashamed, frightened, hopeful, or filled with praise. They refuse to let us become selective in our spirituality.

The Rule of Benedict gives remarkable freedom in arranging the psalms. If another distribution seems more suitable, Benedict says, arrange them differently. His one non-negotiable requirement is that the entire Psalter be prayed every week. Why? Because he believed that no disciple should be allowed to live in only one corner of the spiritual life.

The Psalms immerse us in the whole of human experience. Within them we encounter lament and thanksgiving, triumph and failure, fear and confidence, repentance and joy. They remind us that every human emotion can become prayer and that every circumstance can become a place where God is present. To neglect parts of the Psalter is, in a sense, to neglect parts of ourselves.

This insight has been rediscovered by many modern spiritual writers. Eugene H. Peterson described the Psalms as God's gift of language for lives that often leave us speechless. Before we know how to pray, the Psalms pray for us. Walter Brueggemann observed that they move continually through orientations, disorientations, and new orientations—the very pattern of every faithful life. We begin with confidence, encounter suffering or uncertainty, and emerge, often unexpectedly, into deeper trust. N. T. Wright reminds us that the Psalms form the imagination of God's people, teaching us to see our own lives as chapters within God's larger story.

Yet this raises an honest question. These prayers were written nearly three thousand years ago. They speak of kings, shepherds, enemies with swords, deserts, exile, and temple sacrifices. What possible connection do they have with traffic jams, medical diagnoses, fractured families, retirement communities, political division, or loneliness in the digital age?

The answer lies beneath the surface. Human circumstances change; the human heart does not. We may no longer flee from Saul, but we know betrayal. We may never climb the steps of the Temple, but we know longing for God's presence. We may not fight armies, yet we battle fear, pride, resentment, grief, and despair every day. The outward forms have changed. The inward struggles have not.

The challenge, then, is not simply to read the Psalms but to meditate upon them until they become our own story. We ask, "Where is this psalm speaking to my life today?" Sometimes the answer is immediate. At other times we must sit quietly, allowing the words to work upon us rather than demanding that they immediately yield their meaning. This slow reading is what Benedict knew as the patient work of conversion.

Here the wisdom of the Desert Fathers becomes invaluable. Evagrius Ponticus taught that Scripture is a mirror revealing the hidden movements of the heart. One does not master Scripture; Scripture gradually unmasks the soul. John Cassian urged monks to memorize the Psalms so thoroughly that they became the language of their own interior lives. In time, he wrote, the Psalms cease to be merely words on a page. They become our own prayer because they uncover emotions we scarcely knew we possessed.

The Desert Fathers also warned against reading merely for information. Abba Poemen repeatedly emphasized that transformation comes not through many words but through allowing one word to penetrate deeply. The purpose of Scripture is not to increase knowledge but to purify the heart. Every psalm, therefore, becomes an invitation to self-examination. Why does this verse comfort me? Why does another disturb me? Why do I resist these words? Such questions are themselves acts of discernment.

This ancient practice speaks powerfully to our own century. We often read quickly, seeking answers and information. The monastic tradition invites us instead to linger, to listen, and to allow the text to read us. We do not merely ask, "What does this psalm mean?" We ask, "What is God revealing about my heart through this psalm today?"

Perhaps this is why Benedict insisted upon the entire Psalter. Left to ourselves, we would repeatedly choose our favorite passages and avoid those that unsettle us. The complete cycle prevents us from constructing a God in our own image. Instead, it allows God, through every mood and every season of the Psalms, to reshape us into the image of Christ.

In the end, praying all 150 psalms is not about completing a weekly assignment. It is about allowing every dimension of human experience to be brought into God's presence until, little by little, our hearts learn to beat in rhythm with His. That is the true work of discernment. The Psalms do not simply teach us how ancient Israel prayed. They teach us how to become fully human before God.

A willingness to change and grow....

The disciple comes seeking an end to his discomfort. The holy one offers something far more demanding: transformation. Relief soothes the symptoms; cure reaches the disease. Relief allows us to remain essentially the same person. Cure requires that we become someone new.

This theme echoes through the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. When a young monk came to Abba Poemen seeking peace, he was not given techniques for feeling better. He was taught to die to self-will. The Fathers understood that the greatest obstacle to communion with God was not suffering itself but the ego that insists on arranging the world according to its own desires. As long as the self remains enthroned, neither God nor neighbor can truly enter.

Sister Joan's challenge is especially sharp in an age that prizes autonomy above almost every other virtue. We are trained to ask whether a choice serves us, fulfills us, advances us, or makes us comfortable. Yet Benedictine spirituality asks a different question: Does this choice strengthen the community? Does it enlarge the circle of compassion? Does it make room for another person to flourish? The movement from "What do I want?" to "What does love require?" is the beginning of the cure.

The ancient monks knew that self-centeredness is remarkably resilient. We surrender one preference only to discover another waiting beneath it. We seek relief from loneliness but resist the demands of relationship. We seek relief from conflict but avoid the work of reconciliation. We seek relief from inconvenience but hesitate to serve. Thus, much of what we call spiritual growth is merely the search for comfort in religious clothing.

The cure is painful because it asks us to relinquish the illusion that we are the center of the story. It requires the humility to recognize that our lives find meaning not in self-fulfillment but in self-giving. The Gospel, the Rule of Benedict, and the wisdom of the saints all point toward the same paradox: we discover ourselves precisely when we cease making ourselves the primary concern.

Perhaps the holy one's question remains before each of us today: Do you truly want a cure? For the cure will not merely ease your discomfort. It will change your heart. It will teach you to see Christ in the neighbor, the stranger, the difficult person, and the community itself. Relief asks little and passes quickly. Cure asks everything, but in giving everything, it gives us back our truest selves.

For more on today's reading from the Rule, I invite you to follow the link to Abba Poemen and read more about the Sayings of the Desert Fathers under our Links of Interest.

We are all responsible....

Sr Joan's reflection touches a theme that runs like a river through many spiritual traditions: grace is freely given, but it must be received in a heart willing to be transformed. The Sufi story of the bitter gourd captures this truth with striking simplicity.

The lesson is obvious and uncomfortable: we may surround ourselves with holy things, attend worship, recite prayers, read sacred books, and even dwell among saints, yet remain unchanged if our hearts are closed to conversion.

The Desert Fathers understood this well. One of the elders said, "A man may dwell in his cell, but if his heart wanders, he is far away." They knew that holiness is not acquired by geography or ritual alone. Abba Moses taught that one must "sit in the cell, and the cell will teach you everything."

The point was not the cell itself but the inner work of surrender,
humility, and self-knowledge we pray the solitude will reveal.

Centuries later, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing warned that religious practices become empty when they do not lead us to a deeper love of God. Likewise, Teresa of Ávila reminded her sisters that prayer's true test was not mystical experience but growth in charity. If prayer does not make us more patient, more forgiving, more attentive to the needs of others, then we have mistaken the means for the end. John of the Cross taught that God works most deeply when He strips away our illusions and teaches us to love without seeking our own satisfaction.

Benedict would have recognized the wisdom of the bitter gourd immediately. His monastery was never intended to be a refuge from transformation but a workshop for it. The monastery existed so that imperfect people could learn, through daily life together, to become instruments of God's peace.

The Divine Office, the common table, the work of the hands, and obedience
to one another were all means by which rough edges were worn smooth. This is why community is so essential. 

We are not transformed alone. The person who irritates us teaches patience. The person who suffers awakens compassion. The person who disagrees with us teaches humility. Each member contributes a portion of the work of conversion in the lives of the others. We become, as Saint Paul suggests, members of one body, each carrying the burdens and blessings of the rest.

By grace, God offers transformation. Yet grace does not force itself upon us. The bitter gourd remains bitter when it resists the work being done within it. We are called instead to listen with the ear of the heart, to allow God's wisdom to penetrate our stubbornness, and to let the ordinary encounters of daily life become occasions of conversion.

The true pilgrimage, then, is not to a distant shrine but into the depths of the heart. There, through prayer, service, humility, and life in community, the bitterness of self-centeredness is slowly transformed into the sweetness of love. Such change is never our achievement alone. It is God's work within us. But it becomes possible only when we consent, day after day, to be changed.

The Practice

Psalmody is the practice of praying, chanting, singing, or reciting the Psalms in a structured and communal way. The word comes from the Greek psalmos (psalm) and ōdē (song), literally meaning "the singing of psalms."

In the Jewish tradition, the Psalms formed the prayer book of Israel. They expressed every dimension of human experience before God: praise, thanksgiving, lament, repentance, trust, wisdom, and hope. Jesus himself prayed the Psalms, and the early Church inherited them as its principal language of prayer.

In the Benedictine tradition, psalmody is far more than reading sacred poetry. It is a way of allowing the mind and heart to be shaped by Scripture. By praying the Psalms day after day, people religious gradually learn to see the world through God's eyes and to bring every human emotion into God's presence.

Saint Benedict writes in the Rule that "our minds should be in harmony with our voices." Psalmody is therefore not performance but transformation. The words become our words; the prayers of ancient Israel become the prayer of the Church and of the individual believer.

Thus, psalmody is the praying of the Psalms; the order of psalmody is the sacred rhythm by which those Psalms are arranged and prayed, shaping a life that listens continually for the voice of God.

A mindless moment....

Sister Joan asks a deceptively simple question: Why do we memorize so many things, yet so few prayers? We can effortlessly recall telephone numbers from decades ago, childhood songs, favorite quotations, sports statistics, and passwords. Yet many of us struggle to summon a prayer when our hearts are weary, our minds troubled, or our faith tested.

St. Benedict understood the importance of carrying prayer within. Most of his monks could neither read nor write. If they were to pray the Divine Office throughout the day, they had to commit its words to memory. The psalms, versicles, Gospel canticles, litanies, and above all the Lord's Prayer became part of the very fabric of their lives. Prayer was not something they reached for; it was something that dwelt within them.

This was more than an exercise in memorization. Benedict knew that the words we carry in our hearts shape the lives we live. A memorized prayer becomes a companion on the journey. It waits quietly within us until fear, sorrow, joy, gratitude, or uncertainty calls it forth. Then, when our own words fail, the prayer speaks for us.

Sister Joan reminds us that authentic prayer is never superficial. It may be brief, but it is never careless. It is not "a glancing thought, not a shrug or a gesture or a mindless moment of empty daydreaming." Prayer is an act of attention. It is the deliberate turning of the heart toward God. Even a few words, prayed sincerely, can open the soul to grace.

Perhaps the question for us is not how many prayers we know, but which prayers have become part of who we are. What words are available when anxiety rises in the night? What prayer surfaces when we hear difficult news? What do we whisper when gratitude overwhelms us?

For many, it may be something as simple as:

Lord, hear my prayer...

Four words. A lifetime of meaning.

In that simple petition we invite God to enter our confusion, calm our fears, examine our motives, heal our wounds, and strengthen our resolve. We acknowledge that we are not self-sufficient. We turn once again toward the One who knows us better than we know ourselves.

The goal of memorized prayer is not recitation but relationship. The words become pathways leading us back to God throughout the day. They remind us that prayer need not wait for a church, a book, or a special hour. It is always as near as the next breath.

And so, when the mind is restless and the heart is heavy, perhaps the simplest prayer is enough:

Lord, hear my prayer...

And in the silence that follows, listen with the ear of the heart.

We are invited....

Benedict, following the psalmist, marks the day with praise: morning, work, noon, weariness, evening, night. The hours are not interruptions of life; they are reminders of why we are here. Again and again the bell calls the heart back from distraction, self-importance, anxiety, and sleep. Again and again, we are reminded: it is for the God within us that we live and serve.

“Seven times a day I praise you,” says the psalm; “at midnight I rise to give you thanks.” Benedict receives these words not as poetry only, but as a pattern for living. The Roman world may have supplied the shape of the hours, but Scripture supplied their soul. Time itself becomes an altar.

Most of us cannot live by the full monastic office. Yet all of us can learn its wisdom. We can pause before we speak. We can bless a meal. We can offer kindness. We can surrender irritation. We can turn worry into intercession. We can let silence open the ear of our heart.

To pray without ceasing is to live increasingly aware of the living God within each of us: in labor and rest, in certainty and confusion, in daylight and in the midnight of the soul. The call is simple and lifelong: return, remember, praise, begin again.

An endless chant of joy...

Rarely does Benedict write—and rarely does Sister Joan reflect—without returning us to a single, essential truth: God is to be at the center of our lives. Again and again, they remind us that the spiritual journey is not primarily about our accomplishments, our insights, or even our efforts. It is about recognizing the presence of God, surrendering ourselves to His loving will, and allowing Him to shape us into the people we are called to become.

When we gradually come to this realization, something within us changes. We begin to understand that faith is not merely a set of beliefs but a way of living. We discover that, despite life's sorrows, disappointments, and uncertainties, we are indeed Easter people. The Resurrection becomes more than an event we remember; it becomes the lens through which we view our lives. Hope rises above fear, love triumphs over division, and "Alleluia" becomes not simply a word we sing but the enduring cry of our hearts.

Yet this transformation does not begin with activity. It begins in silence. It begins with a willingness to listen.

In a world filled with noise, distraction, and self-assertion, we are invited to quiet our restless and willful minds. Benedict's counsel is simple but demanding: "Listen." Listen not merely with our ears, but with what he calls "the ear of the heart." In that sacred listening, we begin to hear God's gentle invitation—a call that is often less a command than a quiet beckoning.

What do we hear? We hear the call to trust. We hear the call to surrender. We hear the call to live lives marked by faith, compassion, mercy, and love. We hear the call to recognize the living Christ in every person we meet and to care for His world with reverence and gratitude.

The spiritual life is not a quest to find God somewhere far away. It is the lifelong practice of becoming attentive to God within.  Here.  Now.  In silence, in prayer, in community, and in service, we learn to listen. And in listening, we discover the One who has been calling us all along.

Let me close today by inviting you to read Listening for God in the Silence  

under our Links of Interest in the right hand margin.

Forgive us as We Forgive

...because thorns of contention are likely to spring up... 

Benedict reminds us that we need His help daily to curb our vices, not the least of which is the ever-present risk of animosity toward others.  The reminder is a wonderful reflection of our call to live in peace with our brothers and sisters.

forgive us as we forgive

Sr. Joan builds on this theme reminding us of Benedict's call to never omit from our prayers our need for continual for blessings and our need for continual forgiveness...

... a sense of God's greatness and our dependence;
a sense of God's grandeur and our fragility.

And so it is that we are reminded of the role of repetition in our spiritual development.

A New Beginning

Sr. Joan reminds us that....

Prayer is the development of an attitude of mind that is concentrated and contemplative...always special, always meant to take us back to the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega, the Center of life. 

I invite you to visit this short essay on contemplative reading. 

Now visit again the Rule and and Sr. Joan's short commentary.  Each seeks to waken in us a new beginning.  But we must be attentive to the still small voice within—ours and His.

 

Never Neglect and Never Exaggerate

I write to you this morning from Normandy, France. Seven days ago, on June 6, 2026, the world marked the 82nd anniversary of D-Day—the historic moment when the Allies restored freedom (liberté) to Europe. As we tour the local museums and beaches, immersing ourselves in the history of that era, it is clear that those events represented a perilous turning point for Europe and all of humanity.

Why should this history matter to a Benedictine reading this post today?

Sister Joan reminds us to never neglect and never exaggerate, but rather to live life normally, thoughtfully, and profoundly. The massive undertaking of D-Day was undoubtedly a moment in world history that demanded exactly this kind of intense, devoted effort.

This environment has drawn me back to Living the Rule, which I had neglected since April 26. I had allowed myself to be pulled away by excuses and tasks that seemed more urgent at the time. Yet, there is truly nothing more important than reading, reflecting, and meditating on the daily message of the Rule as we begin our day. We are invited to start no task, and begin no day, without first inviting Him to join us.

We have to allow it to happen....

Life gives us many moments when we are called to grow beyond ourselves. Benedict knew this well. And he knew the importance of the resulting growth. Sister Joan recognize these as those moments when...

 we are incapable of assessing our own limits, our real talents, our true strength.

It is in these moments that we are called to stretch beyond our limits and to turn the clay into breathless beauty, but first, of course we have to allow it to happen

Happy Birthday Sr. Joan

This weekend, April 25-26, is Sr. Joan Chittister's 90th birthday. In what follows, Judith Valente revisits and celebrates the life of this most beloved Prophet of our age—Sister Joan Chittister.

Every age has its prophets. They are the ones who impart a wisdom that speaks not only to the current age but addresses the ages. One of the truly prophetic voices of our time is Benedictine Sister and prolific author Joan Chittister. Sister Joan, who turns 90 this weekend, probably has done more than any other spirituality writer of our time to help those of us in living the frenetic, secular world become what I call “everyday contemplatives.”

Her life and contributions deserve not only our gratitude, but our celebration.

Many of us found our way to Benedictine spirituality through her more than 25 books on “The Rule of St. Benedict.” In them, she plumbs the timeless wisdom of a text written some 1,600 years ago for people living in monasteries, yet whose words continue to guide those of us in every age seeking to live the Benedictine values of listening, community-building, hospitality, humility, simplicity, service, prayer and praise in daily life.

If you have been fortunate enough to meet Sister Joan in person, it was likely an unforgettable experience. I cherish each of the times I was able to be in her company.

The first time I saw her I actually knew little about her. I went as a reporter for PBS-TV to cover a conference organized by the peace organization Pax Christi USA. She was the keynote speaker. I don’t remember exactly what she talked about, but I never forgot her presence or the powerful way in which she spoke, which caused the audience to jump up when she finished in a sustained standing ovation.

The next encounter was through her books, “The Rule of St. Benedict: Insight for the Ages” and “Wisdom Distilled from the Daily” when I was first discovering Benedictine contemplative spirituality. Afterward, I had the good fortune to be seated next to her at a dinner given by a TV program I worked for in Chicago.

At the time, I was in the midst of writing a memoir that became “Atchison Blue: Search for Silence, a Spiritual Home and a Living Faith” about my extended stays at Mount St. Scholastica Monastery in Atchison Kansas.

That evening, Sister Joan gave me some of the best advice I’ve received as an author. She told me to take myself out of my usual surroundings and go somewhere we I could focus only on the book. I just wish I had been smart enough to take her advice more often!

I subsequently spent several days with her at her monastery, Mount St. Benedict in Erie, PA, for a profile I reported for PBS-TV. She was less interested in talking about herself than taking me to see the many ministries her monastic community was sponsoring in Erie, including a children’s art center, a soup kitchen, and a community garden.

She was proud of the fact that the building that once housed the girls’ academy her sisters had to close had been converted into a center for helping newcomers and immigrants to Erie.

“Our purpose is to present the most humane, spiritual, moral, communal model of life for a world in chaos around us — to be an island of care and cohesion,” she told me during our interview.

Even as she entered her senior years, she kept up a grueling schedule. It included writing regular columns for National Catholic Reporter, authoring an average of a book a year, and leading groups on pilgrimage.

I met up with her again in Rome at the World Congress of Benedictine Oblates (oblates are lay associates of monasteries) where she gave a keynote address. Slowing was not a word in her vocabulary.

One of her books is about aging, interestingly enough titled, “The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.” In it she writes: “It is important that age be no impediment to the magnet of life in us. But life is not about breathing only. Life is about becoming more than we are, about being all that we can be. Whatever we are doing, however old we are.”

She confessed that she was perhaps too young to be writing such a book, as she began working on it when she was “only seventy.” She reserved the right to amend it in the future. One can hope.

“Age comes only to the truly blessed,” she writes in “The Gift of Years.” We have been blessed to have this marvelous woman with us for 90 years. May she bless us for years to come. May she continue to have “the gift of years.”

Judith Valente