The 3rd Step. We are called to submit!

Benedict understands that this task of listening for and hearing the word of God can be a bit complicated. Joan summarizes it by simply saying we must be willing to submit ourselves to the wisdom of others. We're not the last word, the final answer, the clearest insight into anything.

We are but one word among many. Humility lies in learning to listen to the words, directions, and insights of those around us who are a voice of Christ for us today.  These are the relationships of which sanctity is made.  Invite Him to join with you, walk with you, and listen for His word in the other.

The 2nd Step. Born to do His Will

...we shall imitate by our actions that saying of Christ's: "I have come not to do my own will, but he will of the One who sent me"

Have all of us been born to do His will?

We are His.  We are such willful creatures. Our eyes and our hearts flip from one desire to another. Is it even possible to steal our minds to the point that we can even hear God's will for us?

Sister Joan asks 

"how do we tell the world of God from our own? How do we know when to resist the tide and confront the opposition and when to embrace the pain and except the bitterness because "God will it for us."

I believe the answer lies and our willingness, and our ability to listen quietly for his voice. For his will. 

It will come to us as a gentle nudge or maybe even a shove. If we're willing to listen. 

Humility

Sister Joan makes it quite clear....

...if the preservation of the globe in the 21st century requires anything of the past at all, it may well be the commitment of the rule of Benedict to humility.

Let us begin by realizing that humility is not humiliation. Joan says it most eloquently when she invites us to recognize...

... a proper sense of self in a universe of wonders. When we make ourselves, God, no one in the world is safe in our presence. Humility… is the basis for right relationships in the life.

Sister Joan, and I believe Benedict, believes that no spiritual maturity can be achieved in the absence of a clear sense of God's role in our development. 

Not surprisingly, Benedict chose to use Jacob's ladder as a metaphor for our ascendance and descendants. Pointing out that we descend by exultation and can only ascend by humility.

The 1st step...

We are called to keep the reverence of God always before our eyes. God must be the center of our existence. We must recognize Him and begin no act without inviting Him to join us. When we love him, and all He loves hyphen--we will be carried by Him and impeled to love all God's children.

It may sound a little trite, but to begin, we need only open our eyes, and look at the world around us. God is within us to be realized, and not outside of us to be stumbled upon.

Sister Joan uses a beautiful story to illustrate this connection between God and ourselves.

"How does a person seek union with God? the seeker asks.

"The harder you seek," the teacher said, "the more distant you create between God and you."

"So what does one do about the distance? "

"Understand that it isn't there, "the teacher said.

"Does that mean that God and I are one? "The seeker said.

"Not one. No two."

"How is that possible? "The seeker asked.

"The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and the song. Not one. Not two. "

We are in union with God by our very nature. He's there for us to recognize.

 

We must want...

Benedict begins by calling our attention to 2 Corinthians 9:7 reminding us that God loves a cheerful giver. And by so doing he invites us to recognize that we must grow to deeply want to serve.

You must give yourself to it wholeheartedly. You must enter into it with Hope and surety. You must not kick and kick against the goad.  (A goad is a pointed stick to prod animals.) 

This, Benedict says, is not obedience. This is only compliance, and compliance kills, both us, and the community, whose heart is fractured by those who hold theirs back. Real obedience depends on wanting to listen to the voice of God in the human community, not wanting to be forced to do what we refuse to grow from.

We must want to grow – grow in our love for Him and 

our love for others – all others.

This is our call

As a monastic, Sister Joan lives in community.  As a author and teacher of the Rule, she understands the world in which we live.  And so she sees and is quick to respond to Benedict's opening call....

The Tools for Good Works

Sunday, January 18, 2026

Chapter 4

First of all, "love God with your whole heart, your whole soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37-39; Mk 12:30-31; Lk 10:27)." 

Sister Joan sees and lives in Benedict's opening call, not for prayer or sacrifice or devotion or asceticism but a call for love, 

for "that most valiant kind of monastic heart," who sets out to find the holy in the human. The call to contemplation to not simply to see Christ in the other but to treat the other as Christ. Benedict calls us first to justice: love God, love the other, do no harm to anyone.

...to be engaged in the great Christian enterprise of acting for others in the place of God. 

This is our call. 

A gift from Aloka

Wisdom is....

Benedict speaks today on the importance of the community coming together to offer council to the prior or prioress and to one another. We must be willing and able to fully listen to those whom our decisions affect. To listen to those around us with whom we live.

Sister Joanne observes these collective life experiences do count – remarking that wisdom is simply it's distillation.  

This is a most interesting idea – what if the knowledge we have gained over the course of our collective lives could be catalogued and index so that all of our experiences could be easily referenced. There is so much truth, so much to be gained from the collective wisdom of the community that surround us every day. This is such a simple truth.

Teach us Lord to open our ears and our hearts 

to our community – to the wisdom 

that surrounds us on every side.

Call to Lead

Life in a retirement community is full and enriching.  Surrounded by the wisdom of years and experience, we each have the opportunity to continue to grow.  In our Benedictine community, this growth includes not only the earthly and worldly wisdoms of aging but the true insights of faith and spiritual growth.

Benedict and Sister Joan open the door to another realization--we are all called to lead within our community.  The call is clear.  We are all responsible for our community and its spiritual development--called to quietly lead by example--through the quality and integrity of our own lives.

Faced with the litany of emotional responses found in all human communities: anger, frustration, disappointment, rejection, failure – we are each called to resist the sin of resignation, despair, depression, and false hope. We are never to stop trying. We're never to give in to the lesser in life. We are never to lose hope in God's mercy. 

Benedictines are called to birth souls of steel and light; they are called to live the life they lead; their call to live in discriminately; their call to favor the good, not to favor the favorites; they are to call the community to the height and depth and breath of the spiritual life; they are to remember and rejoice in their own weaknesses in order to deal tenderly with the weaknesses of others; they are to attend more to the spiritual than to the physical aspects of community life; and finally, they are to save their own souls in the process, to be human beings themselves, to grow in life themselves.

Trial by Faith

We are called to learn to survive life's trials by faith in His strength--surrendering to not only survive but to grow in His name.   We are each called to service in His name--disciples in name following The Way.  

We are called to struggle in life with those around

us--to grow in depth, in sincerity, and in holiness, 

to grow despite weaknesses, to grow beyond our 

weaknesses.

 

 

How do we grow?  We surrender trusting in His word.  We must give Him our willful spirit.  He will wake us up to the tomorrow that can be--not to remain in the dark world of today.

We must learn to humble ourselves at all time.  Do the work we are called to do.  With Him by our side and by His Grace we will prevail.

 

To Enshrine The Way

Benedict focuses again today on the importance of the prior and prioress leading a life which they seek to enshrine in others. Sister Joan brings it to life for us today.

The abbot and prioress are to make of themselves the light that guides
 and the crystal that rings true. Otherwise, why should anyone else 

attempt The Way at all?

If you have not already done so, let me again invite you to read Practicing the Way, by John Mark Comer.  I believe Saint Benedict devoted his life to teaching how we are to make Practicing the Way our life's work.

A reminder...

 

Norman Rockwell, 1961

Pray for our country....

Norman Rockwell, in 1961, offered us a vision of humanity’s shared dignity: men, women, and children of every nation, faith, and complexion gathered under the golden words of the Gospel’s Golden Rule. That canvas spoke not just of America, but of God’s dream for humanity: that we might look into each other’s eyes and see not threat or stranger, but brother and sister. It was painted during the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, and the uneasy dawn of global consciousness. It was aspirational—a reminder of who we might be, not who we were.

If the Creator—by whatever name invoked in our different traditions—were to look upon America today, I believe He/She would see a people both blessed beyond measure and broken by their own choices:

• Blessed, because we still carry extraordinary freedom, creativity, resources, and the ability to speak, gather, and worship. These are gifts entrusted to us, not earned by us.

• Broken, because division, anger, suspicion, and greed have crept into our common life. Many see neighbors not as fellow children of God, but as enemies. Our politics often reward outrage more than compassion. We live in an age of abundance, yet millions go hungry or are crushed under debt. The Creator must surely weep that after so many years, we still struggle with racism, violence, and indifference.

The eyes of the painting—serious, compassionate, longing—ask us whether we have grown closer to the dream Rockwell imagined, or drifted further.

Can we be humble enough to ask for help?

Humility is the only path back. We must admit:

• We cannot fix this by clever policies alone.

• We cannot heal by shouting louder than the other side.

• We cannot find peace until we are willing to kneel—each in our own way of prayer, silence, or surrender—and confess that we have fallen short.

Humility is not weakness. It is the courage to say: 

We need help. We need grace. 

We need wisdom greater than our own.

We stand again before Rockwell’s vision, sixty-five years later. The world is watching whether we can live into the words: 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

This is not sentiment—it is the Creator’s law written in every faith tradition: in Torah, in the words of Jesus, in the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), in the wisdom of the Buddha, in the counsel of the Bhagavad Gita.

Let us begin with small steps:

• See the humanity of the neighbor with whom you disagree
• Choose kindness when cruelty is easier
• Teach children not just to succeed, but to serve
• Pray—not only for your family—but for the stranger

If enough of us do this, then perhaps in another sixty-five years, a new artist might paint not just the dream, but the reality of a nation—and a world—that finally took the Golden Rule seriously.

We must take responsibility

God waits for us. We are indeed called to see God. We are responsible for our own souls. Personal decisions are still decisions, personal judgments are still judgment, free will is still free will.

We must take responsibility for ourselves – what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will do. Therein lies the challenge – we fall we get up, we fall we get up. This is our constant effort.

Might there be a time when we begin to feel less and less? The gospels and Benedict seek to share an answer with us.

Pray without ceasing, read, meditate, and reflect on the word, listen with the ear of the heart. God will see us. God will hear us. And by his grace, the day will come when we realize we are drawing nearing – that God is at hand.

We must be willing....

Sister Joan Chittister starts her discourse today on what she calls the social revolution of the rule. She points out that the superior of the Benedictine monastery is to be a Christ figure, simple, unassuming, immersed in God.

She then takes this gentle discussion of the qualities of the prior or prioress and extends it into a way of living for you and me. She reminds us that the spiritual journey takes time. That we must place Him before ourselves beyond all else. We must recognize that, in time, the practices living in us will bring us into full communion with God.

She makes a very interesting point too, about the role of the prior and prioress as a model. They are not to be idolized, but they are indeed models. In truth as each of us is call to be a disciple. However, we should never lose sight that is our goal to allow Him to find us.  We must learn to trust in Him and then surrender – opening ourselves up to his love and wisdom.

While living in this secular world, fulled of distractions, we must build His moral code within our weak and often unwilling selves. 

Your Rule of LIfe

Obedience to your Rule of Life is the most important task in front of you each day. If we follow the rule--we move toward our life goals. How easy to say and so very difficult to do daily.  

Your Rule of Life is your guide to walking through 

the universe whole and holy.  Listen, pay attention and attend

to the important things in life. Let nothing go by without

being open to being nourished by the inner meaning 

of that event in life.