Holy Rule for May 4
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St. Mary's Monastery
May 4, 2026, 7:52:26 AMMay 4
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Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
January 3, May 4, September 3
Prologue (14-20)
And the Lord, seeking his laborer in the multitude to whom He thus cries out, says again, "Who is the one who will have life, and desires to see good days" (Ps. 33[34]:13)? And if, hearing Him, you answer, "I am the one," God says to you, "If you will have true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from evil and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it" (Ps. 33 [34]:14-15). And when you have done these things, My eyes shall be upon you and My ears open to your prayers; and before you call upon Me, I will say to you, 'Behold, here I am'" (Ps. 33[34]:16; Is. 65:24; 58:9).
What can be sweeter to us, dear ones, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in His loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.
REFLECTION
The tenderness of St. Benedict, as well as his tender image of God, is evident all through this portion, harking back to his fatherly affection at the beginning of the Prologue. The intensity, the sweetness of the last lines today is so great that it borders on too much. This must be St. Benedict at his all but gushingly most sincere, and that is a good time to listen with extra care to him, since he doesn't just gush on every other page!
In the midst of all this sweetness, look at the question he puts in the Lord's mouth: "Who is the one who will have life and desires to see good days?" Granted, it is a quote from the Psalms, but St. Benedict could have used something else, or written his own, or employed a rhetorical question. He didn't, though, he used this one and that is most fortunate.
He does not have God in the teeming marketplace hollering out: "Who wants to be a monk? Who wants to be a nun? Who wants to be an Oblate?" (Chuckle: if God DID call out "Who wants to be an Oblate?", how many people you know would yell back: "What's an Oblate??") No doubt, for some on the monastic way, those may have been the first questions. For many others, it was not nearly that direct.
This question allows us to ponder God’s ways of calling us, ways that are sometimes indirect. Many stories we hear of how people came to the monastic way and to Benedictine life give witness to God's loving methods. God cannot lie and His query here is not a lie, but He can certainly CHOOSE the truth He uses to draw us. Like any parent of a stubborn child, He knows that some approaches work better than others.
How often, when speaking of monastic life, or married life, or any vocation, do we stress its harsher aspects? To some extent, monastic life and married life get the brunt of this: "Oh, it isn't easy, blah, blah, blah...It's no cinch, there's a lot of hardship." OK, there is, no problem there, but there is also a lot of sweetness if any vocation is done right.
How many people would have gotten married if the proposal included a litany of night-feedings and exhausting child care, much less if the proposal could have announced the birth of a severely handicapped child or the paralysis of a spouse, or the tragedy of an awful auto accident far in the future? We do both marriage and monastic life a great harm when we emphasize only the difficult things.
There IS joy in marriage, great joy, and there is joy in the monastic way, too. Just like any good proposal, God asks us to respond to the good things He is offering and they are not slight!
By the way, a traditional joke used when a monastic is writing his or her profession chart is to tell the person to leave a lot of space between the lines: so God can add things later!! He has a way of doing that, with or without the spaces between the lines!!
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
January 3, May 4, September 3
Prologue (14-20)
And the Lord, seeking his laborer in the multitude to whom He thus cries out, says again, "Who is the one who will have life, and desires to see good days" (Ps. 33[34]:13)? And if, hearing Him, you answer, "I am the one," God says to you, "If you will have true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from evil and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it" (Ps. 33 [34]:14-15). And when you have done these things, My eyes shall be upon you and My ears open to your prayers; and before you call upon Me, I will say to you, 'Behold, here I am'" (Ps. 33[34]:16; Is. 65:24; 58:9).
What can be sweeter to us, dear ones, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in His loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life.
REFLECTION
The tenderness of St. Benedict, as well as his tender image of God, is evident all through this portion, harking back to his fatherly affection at the beginning of the Prologue. The intensity, the sweetness of the last lines today is so great that it borders on too much. This must be St. Benedict at his all but gushingly most sincere, and that is a good time to listen with extra care to him, since he doesn't just gush on every other page!
In the midst of all this sweetness, look at the question he puts in the Lord's mouth: "Who is the one who will have life and desires to see good days?" Granted, it is a quote from the Psalms, but St. Benedict could have used something else, or written his own, or employed a rhetorical question. He didn't, though, he used this one and that is most fortunate.
He does not have God in the teeming marketplace hollering out: "Who wants to be a monk? Who wants to be a nun? Who wants to be an Oblate?" (Chuckle: if God DID call out "Who wants to be an Oblate?", how many people you know would yell back: "What's an Oblate??") No doubt, for some on the monastic way, those may have been the first questions. For many others, it was not nearly that direct.
This question allows us to ponder God’s ways of calling us, ways that are sometimes indirect. Many stories we hear of how people came to the monastic way and to Benedictine life give witness to God's loving methods. God cannot lie and His query here is not a lie, but He can certainly CHOOSE the truth He uses to draw us. Like any parent of a stubborn child, He knows that some approaches work better than others.
How often, when speaking of monastic life, or married life, or any vocation, do we stress its harsher aspects? To some extent, monastic life and married life get the brunt of this: "Oh, it isn't easy, blah, blah, blah...It's no cinch, there's a lot of hardship." OK, there is, no problem there, but there is also a lot of sweetness if any vocation is done right.
How many people would have gotten married if the proposal included a litany of night-feedings and exhausting child care, much less if the proposal could have announced the birth of a severely handicapped child or the paralysis of a spouse, or the tragedy of an awful auto accident far in the future? We do both marriage and monastic life a great harm when we emphasize only the difficult things.
There IS joy in marriage, great joy, and there is joy in the monastic way, too. Just like any good proposal, God asks us to respond to the good things He is offering and they are not slight!
By the way, a traditional joke used when a monastic is writing his or her profession chart is to tell the person to leave a lot of space between the lines: so God can add things later!! He has a way of doing that, with or without the spaces between the lines!!
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
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