More than anything
I know:
School just around the bend;
Summer fun about to end.
They wait not for Labor Day.
This journey never ends;
Happy I am for friends.
They help me walk the Way.
Along with you my present-day friends, we have friends from days, years, centuries gone by: even Benedict of Nursia and the Wesley brothers. Today I came across something about Benedict, taken from the Prologue of Book Two of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great.
There was a man of venerable life, blessed by grace, and blessed in name, for he was called "Benedictus" or Benedict. From his younger years, he always had the mind of an old man; for his age was inferior to his virtue. All vain pleasure he despised, and though he was in the world, and might freely have enjoyed such commodities as it yields, yet he esteemed it and its vanities as nothing. moreAfter reading it I was reminded of a verse in one of Charles Wesley's hymns.
Dead to the worldSee you this Sunday for another time together, and bit more on the Wesleys, before we move on to the 20th century and C.S. Lewis for our last two meetings. In short, we will meet three times in August: the 3rd, the 17th, the 31st.
And all its toys,
Its idle pomp and fading joys,
Be Thou alone my one desire.
2 comments:
I just have to add one additional comment, from Esther de Waal's book, p. 13:
"It [the Rule] has in the past fifteen hundred years been the way by which countless Christians living under the vows in a monastic community have found God, but it speaks as well to all those of us struggling to follow our baptismal promises in the world."
From de Waal, p. 17:
"St. Gregory wanted his readers to see in St. Benedict an example of God at work in a man's life. He illustrates the law of paradox; genuine fruitfulness comes from what at first seems sterile; life comes out of death. Again nothing touches more closely the thinking of the Rule itself, with its central theme of dying and rebirth."
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