Rule of Saint Benedict, The

he teaching of Saint Benedict has two characteristics: first of all, it is not addressed to the individual, but to the entire monastic family--in fact he wants to teach us how to live together wisely and in a Christian manner; and secondly he doesn't speak to us about the seven dwelling places of the inner castle, but tells us how to sleep, eat, serve each other, how to speak, converse, how to treat objects, how and when to study, when to get up, when to be silent, etc. And isn't this precisely what daily life is about? What teaching could be more useful for a family? But you might say, we already know these things! Is this really true, though? Is it really the case that families today know how to live together? Is it really true that husband, wife son and daughter who want to live together wisely and in a Christian manner are helped in this by their family and the habits within the home? Or rather is it not the case that what is now the alsmost universally imposed state of affairs which no one has the courage to correct suffocates every best intention made by as individual member of the family? But if every member of the family listens to Saint Benedict in order to learn how to live Christian communitty life wouldn't things be so much better?

There is a need to change life experience: in fact, society today is, in many respects, anti-Christian and in some ways similar to the decadent society of the last Roman Empire. If the project suggested here were to discreetly spread rapidly, with God's blessing, it could perhaps bring about a silent revolution, transforming different families and parishes into something similar to Benedictine manasteries at the time of the fall of the western Roman Empire.

DON MASSIMO LAPPONI was born in Rome in 1950 and was solemly professed in the Benedictine Monastery of Farfa in 1973. He was ordained priest in 1977 and graduated in Theology from Rome's Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in 1991. He is a lecturer in Moral Phylosophy and the Philosophy of Religion at Rome's Pontificio Ateneo S Anselmo and has published a number of books and musical compositions.