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.