Holy Rule for May 27
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St. Mary's Monastery
May 26, 2026, 5:38:51 PM (4 days ago) May 26
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Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
January 26, May 27, September 26
Chapter 7: On Humility (10-12)
The first degree of humility, then, is that a person keep the fear of God before his eyes and beware of ever forgetting it. Let him be ever mindful of all that God has commanded; let his thoughts constantly recur to the hell-fire which will burn for their sins those who despise God, and to the life everlasting which is prepared for those who fear Him. Let him keep himself at every moment from sins and vices, whether of the mind, the tongue, the hands, the feet, or the self-will, and check also the desires of the flesh.
REFLECTION
Not just the ascent to humility, but every aspect of the spiritual journey may be improved by meditating on the ends to which our actions will lead us. How many times does a parent tell a child who is discouraged and about to quit that the child must think of the reward at the end of the efforts. "How nice it will be to have that!" Precisely! It is not just children whose flagging spirits can be bolstered by recalling the achievement to come!
A great deal of the monastic struggle is just plain distastefully hard and unpleasant. Fail to lighten the load a bit by recalling the joys to come and you heighten the chances of failure. Heaven is real or our lives mean nothing at all. Trust its reality, think about that reality, remind yourself often of the wonders at hand.
We must also believe hell exists, it is a dogma of the Church. It is real. It may be empty and we must (out of charity,) hope to find it so, but hey, we COULD be wrong. It wouldn't be very nice, but it is just slightly possible that the spheres and wheels of eternal reward do not spin on the axis of our opinion! Nothing says things have to be the way we personally think they will be. Nor do the many visions of hell seen by saints seem to bear out this hope. They saw people there, alas.
Hell is as real as heaven. Choices as real as those which lead to heaven can lead to hell. Choose something really dumb which would lead to hell and it is not a wise practice to assume one will have leisure to repent. Maybe. Maybe not. A well-timed 18-wheeler truck may just have your name on its front bumper before lunch today. We never know.
[But, even in the event of that 18-wheeler, we never know what happens between God and the soul in the last moments, when we can no longer perceive any activity or change. Pray and fondly hope that all may be saved in the mystery of that hidden time!]
I'll bet all of us have done things we would NOT want to do within seconds of death and facing God. That's what these meditations on hell and heaven are about. They point out forcefully to us that we ought not to do things that would put us in that sort of bind.
It is, however, crucially important to think on our ends. Don't freak out on the road to heaven, because Jesus said: "I am the Way." As such, all the road to heaven is heaven (as St. Catherine of Siena said,) even when it seems otherwise, because Jesus IS that Way. On the other hand, rightly and wisely freak out like crazy on any path of action that leads away from heaven, away from Christ. That is a scary road, indeed!
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule
January 26, May 27, September 26
Chapter 7: On Humility (10-12)
The first degree of humility, then, is that a person keep the fear of God before his eyes and beware of ever forgetting it. Let him be ever mindful of all that God has commanded; let his thoughts constantly recur to the hell-fire which will burn for their sins those who despise God, and to the life everlasting which is prepared for those who fear Him. Let him keep himself at every moment from sins and vices, whether of the mind, the tongue, the hands, the feet, or the self-will, and check also the desires of the flesh.
REFLECTION
Not just the ascent to humility, but every aspect of the spiritual journey may be improved by meditating on the ends to which our actions will lead us. How many times does a parent tell a child who is discouraged and about to quit that the child must think of the reward at the end of the efforts. "How nice it will be to have that!" Precisely! It is not just children whose flagging spirits can be bolstered by recalling the achievement to come!
A great deal of the monastic struggle is just plain distastefully hard and unpleasant. Fail to lighten the load a bit by recalling the joys to come and you heighten the chances of failure. Heaven is real or our lives mean nothing at all. Trust its reality, think about that reality, remind yourself often of the wonders at hand.
We must also believe hell exists, it is a dogma of the Church. It is real. It may be empty and we must (out of charity,) hope to find it so, but hey, we COULD be wrong. It wouldn't be very nice, but it is just slightly possible that the spheres and wheels of eternal reward do not spin on the axis of our opinion! Nothing says things have to be the way we personally think they will be. Nor do the many visions of hell seen by saints seem to bear out this hope. They saw people there, alas.
Hell is as real as heaven. Choices as real as those which lead to heaven can lead to hell. Choose something really dumb which would lead to hell and it is not a wise practice to assume one will have leisure to repent. Maybe. Maybe not. A well-timed 18-wheeler truck may just have your name on its front bumper before lunch today. We never know.
[But, even in the event of that 18-wheeler, we never know what happens between God and the soul in the last moments, when we can no longer perceive any activity or change. Pray and fondly hope that all may be saved in the mystery of that hidden time!]
I'll bet all of us have done things we would NOT want to do within seconds of death and facing God. That's what these meditations on hell and heaven are about. They point out forcefully to us that we ought not to do things that would put us in that sort of bind.
It is, however, crucially important to think on our ends. Don't freak out on the road to heaven, because Jesus said: "I am the Way." As such, all the road to heaven is heaven (as St. Catherine of Siena said,) even when it seems otherwise, because Jesus IS that Way. On the other hand, rightly and wisely freak out like crazy on any path of action that leads away from heaven, away from Christ. That is a scary road, indeed!
Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)
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