In St. Gregory’s dialogues he talks about Benedict visiting a hermit who had chained his ankle to the wall of the cave and Benedict wasn’t very impressed. Later on he sent a monk down to the Brother monk in the cave and said, "You should have Christ as your chain and not the iron." So the monk cut the iron and by focusing on Christ he remained faithful.

We wonder if that kind of commitment is in the Rule. I think if you look at an odd chapter, Chapter 22 in the arrangement of the bedding of the monk, there’s a statement that we are to be in bed with our habits on and our belt so that when the signal comes we are ready and respond. In that particular passage we have a summary of a good bit of the gospel passages that deal with the parables that talk about being ready and to watch! They talk about the fact that the person has a significant relationship with Christ, to such a degree, that they are impelled to hurry to chapel to pray the vigils.

I don’t know when you get up in the morning and start, O Lord open my lips, whether that disposition is in you. That presupposes that you are going to encounter Jesus when you come to pray and that encounter has some significance in your life and begins to feed the rest of your day. How is it that Christ is in your life and that you want to please him in the whole day?

I know for me I go over things and I look at people that I meet, no matter who they are, how do I really relate to them? Are there any people I really snub, ignore or are negative toward? Even if they respond differently does it matter? The question is, because the gospel’s clear, what you do to others, you do to him.

The second one, of course, is circumstances. If we really believe that our life is in God’s hands then circumstances are no accident. So how do we handle difficulties especially, because that seems to be the hardest thing for human beings to integrate, humiliation, rejection, opposition, hard work, that’s where we falter. Yet that’s the place, if we understand the degrees of humility at all, that’s especially the place where God wants to transform us. So how dowe look at situations, and do we find God in them?

Then of course, we came to the monastery to remove ourselves from the world and some of its dimensions so that we would not be cluttered with all the things that go on in the world and we could pay more attention to our thoughts and inspirations. Our motivation. We should be more aware of our thoughts and what are the shapes of our thoughts without being introspectionistic, that is, always watching our belly button, but being aware of the kinds of thoughts that push and pull us around or the kind of inspirations that are present. How long and how often does God have to inspire you with something before you really put it into practice. For instance, you may know that you should be praying more and you keep telling yourself I should pray more but you never do it. So even though God is inspiring you you don’t listen to his voice in you and respond because it takes grace to respond.

So the statement in Chapter 22 is really a strong statement. It means the monk is aware that his journey to Christ is real and that he needs Christ in all these circumstances and that he wants to please him and he wants to grow in his relationship in and through them.

How do you look at the people in your life and how do you respond? How do you look at the circumstances and respond? How do you look at inspirations and how are you responding?