Fridays with Benedict: Chapter 59, "We Have Learned from Experience That It Can Happen"

Chapter 59 of The Rule of St. Benedict is a short chapter dealing with the sons of nobles joining the monastery and the temptations they might face. Benedict's directives are as follows:

³As to [the family's] property, they...make a sworn promise...that they will never personally, never through an intermediary, nor in any way at all, nor at any time, give the boy anything or afford him the opportunity to possess anything.

I expect it would have been hard to have trust fund babies in the monastery. The money would have been a constant temptation to, when things got hard, to walk out and live the high life. And this seems to have happened a lot. Benedict dryly observes, "we have learned from experience that it can happen."

I don't think a lot has changed. In the affluent West we are always "opting out" from the hard way of Jesus because, well, who needs all that additional stress in their life? With houses, multiple cars, money and retirement plans we don't really need the hassle.

This is why, as I've written before, I think the gospel comes alive among the poor. God is best seen among the poor as our dependence upon God, a dependence masked by affluence, is made manifest.