Listen! I'm speaking to you.

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Benedict, whose Rule for Monasteries continues to be an enduring guide for Christian life.

When I first read The Rule of St. Benedict, my initial response was: Is that all there is? The Rule was so much shorter than I expected it to be. As is the case with many first impressions, it was simply wrong. There is a great deal more to The Rule than one gets after one reading. Any monastic will affirm that it probably takes a lifetime to plumb the wisdom contained within its pages. That is probably why St. Benedict mandates that The Rule be read to the novice several times during the period of the novitiate--a time of prolonged reflection and study on The Rule. Benedict also counsels that The Rule be read daily in the life of the monastic community. Undoubtedly, Benedict knows well the human tendency to hear something and then to promptly go off and forget it.

Benedict wants the reader to do more than simply read or hear The Rule. Benedict's first word is: Listen! Listening is more than just hearing. Listening is attending. It is being attentive to more than words. It is being attentive to the speaker, to the speaker's person and voice, to the speaker's message, meaning, and call. It is being attentive to the full range of communication. Benedict's expression for this type of attention is to "attend with the ear of the heart". The first requirement of this type of attentiveness is to "shut up"--to stop the chatter, whether of tongue or thought--and to turn one's attention to the Other who is addressing us.