Ealing Abbey

Daily Reading from the Rule of St Benedict

CHAPTER 5: OBEDIENCE
THE first step in humility is obedience without delay.
This is right for those who reckon nothing dearer to them than Christ. Because of the holy servitude they have professed, whether for the fear of hell or for the glory of eternal life, as soon as a command has been given by a superior, they may not tolerate any delay in carrying it out, just as if it was a direct command from God. It is of these the Lord says: ‘As soon as they heard ‘they obeyed me’ (Ps. 17), and to teachers he says: ‘He who hears you hears me’ (Luke 10).
So men like these, at once laying aside their own interests and abandoning their own will, drop their work, and leaving what they were doing unfinished stand ready to obey and follow up the word of command with direct action; in barely one moment of time the uttering of the master’s order and the completion of it by the disciple are both rapidly accomplished as a single act, in the swiftness of the fear of God, by those who are impelled by the urge of getting to eternal life. And so they hurry along the narrow way, of which the Lord says: ‘Narrow is the way that leads to life’ (Matt. 7). Not living at their own choice or obeying their own desires and attractions, but walking by the judgment and command of another, living in monasteries of the common life, they really want to have an abbot over them. Without any doubt men like these are practising that saying of the Lord: ‘I have come, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (John 6).