Holy Rule for April 25
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St. Mary's Monastery
Apr 24, 2026, 4:36:33 PM (6 days ago) Apr 24
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Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
April 25, August 25, December 25
Chapter 67: On Brethren Who Are Sent on a Journey
Let the brethren who are sent on a journey commend themselves to the prayers of all the brethren and of the Abbot; and always at the last prayer of the Work of God let a commemoration be made of all absent brethren. When brethren return from a journey, at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God on the day they return, let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and beg the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road, through the seeing or hearing of something evil, or through idle talk. And let no one presume to tell another whatever he may have seen or heard outside of the monastery, because this causes very great harm. But if anyone presumes to do so, let him undergo the punishment of the Rule. And let him be punished likewise who would presume to leave the enclosure of the monastery and go anywhere or do anything, however small, without an order from the Abbot.
REFLECTION
Lay people, in St. Benedict's time and for centuries afterward, were more cloistered in the sense of media isolation than most religious are today, especially so in rural areas. We have to put ourselves into their perspective to see what St. Benedict is saying here. There was no postal service, let alone electronic media of any sort. Couriers and outriders, official or self-appointed were the only sources of news. Gossip and hearsay were the only news media available to most. It was, in comparison to our own day, a rather cloistered world.
Today's active Benedictine educator or health care provider or parish minister could ill afford being so out of touch, much less Oblates in the world with jobs and families. Still, it is important to see that St. Benedict stressed this value as strongly as he did and try to find out why he did so.
Fast forward to a Benedictine value we haven't mentioned much lately, but a central one: purity of heart. Purity of heart is the focused, singular monastic way of searching for God, of the spiritual struggle. Purity of heart, as Kierkegaard said, really IS to will one thing. For the Benedictine, that one thing is God, union with God.
A very old monastic principle, one more alive in the East today than in the West, held that whatever did not help one in the monastic quest was actually harmful. Under that theory, there was no middle ground of neutrality. It helped you become a better monastic or it didn't. If it didn't, it wasn't considered extraneous, it was considered harmful, even evil. Since St. Benedict doesn't say that things heard from outside "can" cause great harm, but rather that they flat out do cause it, it may be to this earlier concept that he refers.
Our lives and vocations are so varied and our differences are so wide, but our quest is the same. Somehow, each of us, in every milieu, has to find a way to carve out a little bit of that isolation for ourselves. I love Ann McPhillips' phrase: we must be "gatekeepers of our hearts." Face it, we live in an age where we can easily be in touch with virtually everything and it is not always good for us.
What St. Benedict was aiming at was knowledge of outside events. We look at knowledge as always good, but it is not necessarily so. Knowledge can change us, upset us, disrupt us. Sometimes these stirrings are good, but other times they can get carried away.
I became a REAL news junkie after the war began in Iraq. I am sure others could say the same thing: my heart was there much of the time for a LONG time. Much of that was good, much of it was prayerful, but not all. I got carried away at times. I didn't need ALL the data I channel-surfed for and got.
When I got carried away, my focus was distorted, if not destroyed. THAT'S what St. Benedict was worried about. I think the war is a perfect example of the fact that some knowledge actually removes us, in a sense, from our place and leaves us riveted, even gored on the tragedy. Prayer for the victims is one thing, obsession quite another.
It's about focus, it's about the times in one's life that one must carve out for oneself, times in which "only one thing is needful." When a cacophony of things become needful, purity of heart is drowned out. Maybe we have noisy families or lives, maybe we honestly cannot get the respite we seek. That's when we have to really struggle to build it in our hearts, to find God, as St. Teresa of Avila did, among the pots and pans.
Our hearts may, in truth, be the only monasteries we have, the only gates we shall ever keep, but that does not matter. God knew from all eternity exactly the environments in which we would have to seek Him and He tailor-made them for us, even though in the midst of them, that may be hard to see at the time. He knows what He is about. We need to build that "one thing needful" as a place within us. For many of us, that will be the only desert to which we can ever fly.
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
April 25, August 25, December 25
Chapter 67: On Brethren Who Are Sent on a Journey
Let the brethren who are sent on a journey commend themselves to the prayers of all the brethren and of the Abbot; and always at the last prayer of the Work of God let a commemoration be made of all absent brethren. When brethren return from a journey, at the end of each canonical Hour of the Work of God on the day they return, let them lie prostrate on the floor of the oratory and beg the prayers of all on account of any faults that may have surprised them on the road, through the seeing or hearing of something evil, or through idle talk. And let no one presume to tell another whatever he may have seen or heard outside of the monastery, because this causes very great harm. But if anyone presumes to do so, let him undergo the punishment of the Rule. And let him be punished likewise who would presume to leave the enclosure of the monastery and go anywhere or do anything, however small, without an order from the Abbot.
REFLECTION
Lay people, in St. Benedict's time and for centuries afterward, were more cloistered in the sense of media isolation than most religious are today, especially so in rural areas. We have to put ourselves into their perspective to see what St. Benedict is saying here. There was no postal service, let alone electronic media of any sort. Couriers and outriders, official or self-appointed were the only sources of news. Gossip and hearsay were the only news media available to most. It was, in comparison to our own day, a rather cloistered world.
Today's active Benedictine educator or health care provider or parish minister could ill afford being so out of touch, much less Oblates in the world with jobs and families. Still, it is important to see that St. Benedict stressed this value as strongly as he did and try to find out why he did so.
Fast forward to a Benedictine value we haven't mentioned much lately, but a central one: purity of heart. Purity of heart is the focused, singular monastic way of searching for God, of the spiritual struggle. Purity of heart, as Kierkegaard said, really IS to will one thing. For the Benedictine, that one thing is God, union with God.
A very old monastic principle, one more alive in the East today than in the West, held that whatever did not help one in the monastic quest was actually harmful. Under that theory, there was no middle ground of neutrality. It helped you become a better monastic or it didn't. If it didn't, it wasn't considered extraneous, it was considered harmful, even evil. Since St. Benedict doesn't say that things heard from outside "can" cause great harm, but rather that they flat out do cause it, it may be to this earlier concept that he refers.
Our lives and vocations are so varied and our differences are so wide, but our quest is the same. Somehow, each of us, in every milieu, has to find a way to carve out a little bit of that isolation for ourselves. I love Ann McPhillips' phrase: we must be "gatekeepers of our hearts." Face it, we live in an age where we can easily be in touch with virtually everything and it is not always good for us.
What St. Benedict was aiming at was knowledge of outside events. We look at knowledge as always good, but it is not necessarily so. Knowledge can change us, upset us, disrupt us. Sometimes these stirrings are good, but other times they can get carried away.
I became a REAL news junkie after the war began in Iraq. I am sure others could say the same thing: my heart was there much of the time for a LONG time. Much of that was good, much of it was prayerful, but not all. I got carried away at times. I didn't need ALL the data I channel-surfed for and got.
When I got carried away, my focus was distorted, if not destroyed. THAT'S what St. Benedict was worried about. I think the war is a perfect example of the fact that some knowledge actually removes us, in a sense, from our place and leaves us riveted, even gored on the tragedy. Prayer for the victims is one thing, obsession quite another.
It's about focus, it's about the times in one's life that one must carve out for oneself, times in which "only one thing is needful." When a cacophony of things become needful, purity of heart is drowned out. Maybe we have noisy families or lives, maybe we honestly cannot get the respite we seek. That's when we have to really struggle to build it in our hearts, to find God, as St. Teresa of Avila did, among the pots and pans.
Our hearts may, in truth, be the only monasteries we have, the only gates we shall ever keep, but that does not matter. God knew from all eternity exactly the environments in which we would have to seek Him and He tailor-made them for us, even though in the midst of them, that may be hard to see at the time. He knows what He is about. We need to build that "one thing needful" as a place within us. For many of us, that will be the only desert to which we can ever fly.
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
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