Española, Adrienne C.
Benedictine spirituality is not a spirituality of escape. Benedictine spirituality is a spirituality that fills time with an awareness of the presence of God. Benedictine spirituality is a way of life that helps a person to seek God and his will daily. It encourages a life balance between corporate worship, spiritual reading and work in the context of community.
The core values in Benedictine spirituality are stability, obedience (to God), personal transformation, humility, and hospitality, care of the ill, living a life style of love centered in Christ and listening for God in all of life.
St. Benedict was born around the year 480 in Nursia, a city in Southern Italy, into a noble Roman family. After his childhood years, his parents placed him in the schools of Rome for an education in fine arts. This led to a turning point in his life. When he saw many of his companions in the great metropolis giving themselves up to vice, he was led to heed the call of God and flee from the world and its corruption.
He left Rome at the age of 14 to seek salvation and perfection in solitude. Living a solitary life for three years in a cave near Subiaco, Benedict was given the vision to start a monastery. Leaving the cave, Benedict later formed small monasteries of 12 monks or more.
In this period he wrote his famous Rule for monks, distinguished for its discretion and clarity of thought. In 73 chapters he regulates the entire monastic life by combining the principles of the Gospel into a clear, concise set of guidelines for monastic life. Millions of people in the years since, both inside monasteries and out in the wider world, have befitted from applying the simple, Christ-centered principles of the Rule to their own lives.
Saint Benedict died on 21 March 547 in the church where daily he had sung the praises and celebration of the Sacred Mystery. He was buried in the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Monte Casino.
When St. Benedict wrote his Rule for Monks in the 6th century, he organized the life of the community around the daily rhythm of prayer and work. Writing that “nothing is to be preferred to the work of God,” St. Benedict set times for prayer throughout the day, to remind his monks that each day was a gift from God.
It may seem odd that some of the best guidelines for achieving balance in our world today, where "stress" has become the norm, come from a Sixth century Italian monk who at one point chose to live by himself in a cave. Yet through the centuries, millions have found the teachings of St. Benedict of Nursia and his Rule for monastic life key to their own spiritual wholeness.
The spirituality of St. Benedict has offered those who follow its path a way to faith-filled living through work, prayer, learning and living in community. This is not a spirituality that requires a departure from everyday life, but rather a way of being that embraces and becomes fully engaged in the holiness that permeates our daily existence and the call to follow Christ in all that we do.
When we live an integrated life, we express the true identity that God created for each of us. Our every encounter and activity revolves around our longing to be connected to God. St. Benedict's wisdom can help us center ourselves in God even while we live day in and day out in a culture that may work against us. Moreover, it shows us how those who share our lives are part of the spiritual way.
Although the emotional content of the spiritual response - feelings of connection, significance, serenity, acceptance – is common to all spirituality, the background beliefs and specific practices vary tremendously. Almost all of us have the biological capacity to feel spiritually transported, but the cognitive context of those moments and the techniques to induce them are a matter of our culture. A fascinating variety of spiritual traditions have arisen, ranging from the rigorous, ascetic regimes of Zen meditation to the ecstatic communal celebration of a Sunday morning gospel service, and each tradition has its own conception of the world and the individual’s place in it. Stemming from these beliefs there are a multiplicity of spiritual objects of veneration, of deeper realities to be encountered: God, Earth, Nature, Emptiness, angels, devils, ancestors, previous incarnations, the Force, you name it. For each tradition, spiritual experience is taken to be the direct appreciation of the ultimate truth about the world, a way to transcend one’s limited everyday perspective in the quest for meaning, unity, and serenity. “
Another salient characteristic of traditional spirituality (Christianity, for instance) is that it reads purpose into the universe: existence has a goal or teleology which gives us a role to play. The cosmos has been designed by a purposeful agent (God), and by dutifully fulfilling our mission in his cosmic drama we discover life’s ultimate meaning. Given our tendency to look for agents and intentions in ordinary life, to figure out who’s doing what and what things are for, it’s natural that we might seek to assign a purpose or intent behind all of creation, and this we do by supposing, literally, that it has been created. Part of the cognitive context of Christianity is that there is something essentially personal or agent-like in (or above) nature, something that has us "in mind," so as we suffer in this vale of tears we find consolation in knowing we’re part of the grand design. Life has meaning, finally, because a supernatural agent endows it with meaning.
Spiritual experience, in Christianity and other non-naturalistic traditions, is interpreted as putting the individual in direct contact with the agent/creator, or with at least some aspect of the spiritual realm. The feelings that arise during spiritual practice are construed as evidence of the realm’s existence; they are the quasi-perceptual apprehension of God or Spirit. Thus, in this traditional cognitive context, spiritual experience is taken to be a special way of knowing ultimate truths about the world, a way quite different from ordinary empirical modes of knowing. The individual sees directly the face of God, and needs no further corroboration. Nor could any be forthcoming via normal sensory channels, since after all these are only capable of detecting physical appearances.
Benedictine spirituality is not a spirituality of escape. Benedictine spirituality is a spirituality that fills time with an awareness of the presence of God. Benedictine spirituality is a way of life that helps a person to seek God and his will daily. It encourages a life balance between corporate worship, spiritual reading and work in the context of community.
The core values in Benedictine spirituality are stability, obedience (to God), personal transformation, humility, and hospitality, care of the ill, living a life style of love centered in Christ and listening for God in all of life.
St. Benedict was born around the year 480 in Nursia, a city in Southern Italy, into a noble Roman family. After his childhood years, his parents placed him in the schools of Rome for an education in fine arts. This led to a turning point in his life. When he saw many of his companions in the great metropolis giving themselves up to vice, he was led to heed the call of God and flee from the world and its corruption.
He left Rome at the age of 14 to seek salvation and perfection in solitude. Living a solitary life for three years in a cave near Subiaco, Benedict was given the vision to start a monastery. Leaving the cave, Benedict later formed small monasteries of 12 monks or more.
In this period he wrote his famous Rule for monks, distinguished for its discretion and clarity of thought. In 73 chapters he regulates the entire monastic life by combining the principles of the Gospel into a clear, concise set of guidelines for monastic life. Millions of people in the years since, both inside monasteries and out in the wider world, have befitted from applying the simple, Christ-centered principles of the Rule to their own lives.
Saint Benedict died on 21 March 547 in the church where daily he had sung the praises and celebration of the Sacred Mystery. He was buried in the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Monte Casino.
When St. Benedict wrote his Rule for Monks in the 6th century, he organized the life of the community around the daily rhythm of prayer and work. Writing that “nothing is to be preferred to the work of God,” St. Benedict set times for prayer throughout the day, to remind his monks that each day was a gift from God.
It may seem odd that some of the best guidelines for achieving balance in our world today, where "stress" has become the norm, come from a Sixth century Italian monk who at one point chose to live by himself in a cave. Yet through the centuries, millions have found the teachings of St. Benedict of Nursia and his Rule for monastic life key to their own spiritual wholeness.
The spirituality of St. Benedict has offered those who follow its path a way to faith-filled living through work, prayer, learning and living in community. This is not a spirituality that requires a departure from everyday life, but rather a way of being that embraces and becomes fully engaged in the holiness that permeates our daily existence and the call to follow Christ in all that we do.
When we live an integrated life, we express the true identity that God created for each of us. Our every encounter and activity revolves around our longing to be connected to God. St. Benedict's wisdom can help us center ourselves in God even while we live day in and day out in a culture that may work against us. Moreover, it shows us how those who share our lives are part of the spiritual way.
Although the emotional content of the spiritual response - feelings of connection, significance, serenity, acceptance – is common to all spirituality, the background beliefs and specific practices vary tremendously. Almost all of us have the biological capacity to feel spiritually transported, but the cognitive context of those moments and the techniques to induce them are a matter of our culture. A fascinating variety of spiritual traditions have arisen, ranging from the rigorous, ascetic regimes of Zen meditation to the ecstatic communal celebration of a Sunday morning gospel service, and each tradition has its own conception of the world and the individual’s place in it. Stemming from these beliefs there are a multiplicity of spiritual objects of veneration, of deeper realities to be encountered: God, Earth, Nature, Emptiness, angels, devils, ancestors, previous incarnations, the Force, you name it. For each tradition, spiritual experience is taken to be the direct appreciation of the ultimate truth about the world, a way to transcend one’s limited everyday perspective in the quest for meaning, unity, and serenity. “
Another salient characteristic of traditional spirituality (Christianity, for instance) is that it reads purpose into the universe: existence has a goal or teleology which gives us a role to play. The cosmos has been designed by a purposeful agent (God), and by dutifully fulfilling our mission in his cosmic drama we discover life’s ultimate meaning. Given our tendency to look for agents and intentions in ordinary life, to figure out who’s doing what and what things are for, it’s natural that we might seek to assign a purpose or intent behind all of creation, and this we do by supposing, literally, that it has been created. Part of the cognitive context of Christianity is that there is something essentially personal or agent-like in (or above) nature, something that has us "in mind," so as we suffer in this vale of tears we find consolation in knowing we’re part of the grand design. Life has meaning, finally, because a supernatural agent endows it with meaning.
Spiritual experience, in Christianity and other non-naturalistic traditions, is interpreted as putting the individual in direct contact with the agent/creator, or with at least some aspect of the spiritual realm. The feelings that arise during spiritual practice are construed as evidence of the realm’s existence; they are the quasi-perceptual apprehension of God or Spirit. Thus, in this traditional cognitive context, spiritual experience is taken to be a special way of knowing ultimate truths about the world, a way quite different from ordinary empirical modes of knowing. The individual sees directly the face of God, and needs no further corroboration. Nor could any be forthcoming via normal sensory channels, since after all these are only capable of detecting physical appearances.
http://www.explorefaith.org/livingspiritually/benedictine_spirituality/index.php
http://www.naturalism.org/spiritua1.htm#Characteristics
https://www.ewtn.com/library/SPIRIT/BENESPIR.TXT
http://www.naturalism.org/spiritua1.htm#Characteristics
https://www.ewtn.com/library/SPIRIT/BENESPIR.TXT
