Day by Day with Saint Benedict, and: Perspectives on the Rule of Saint Benedict, and: Monk Habits for Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants, and: Engaging Benedict: What the Rule Can Teach Us Today, and: The Benedictine Tradition (review)

The Rule of Saint Benedict is one of those classical spiritual texts (the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola is another one that springs to mind) that is not meant to be read as much as to be performed. To put it simply, it is a guide for a certain manner of living with its meaning only revealing itself in performance. An uninitiated person might find it a bit daunting to peruse, but it is imperative to keep in mind that for over a millennium and a half it has been, in fact, lived out by men and women who take it as the rule (regula) of life—a yardstick for how one is to make sense of and give shape to one's existence. Few manuals for living have managed to have the longevity of this small work.

Benedict himself made only modest claims for the utility of what he wrote down. In his moving concluding chapter (RB 73) he thinks that its observance might lead one to some degree of virtue and beginnings of the monastic life. He acknowledges that the earlier writings of the monastic fathers makes his own generation blush with shame as slothful, unobservant, negligent. However, he adds, with the help of Christ some may undertake his "little rule written for beginners."

However diffident Benedict may have been about his rule, it is clear that within it, a precise vocabulary, frequently rooted in the language of scripture and the earlier monastic writers, manifests itself in a sensible but demanding manner. That vocabulary has been the object of intense scrutiny over the centuries and in our own time. That careful research has brought forth, like the biblical householder, both ancient riches and new insights. The commentary tradition on the Rule is a long one. For our purposes, it may be handily divided into scholarly and more popular explications. We will take up each approach in turn since these four books under review reflect both approaches.

Terence Kardong is a well known scholar of Benedict's Rule. His book, Benedict's Rule: A Translation and a Commentary (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996), reflects a lifetime's engagement with both the text of the Rule and the scholarly literature attached to it. This current work aptly describes its content: Day by Day with Saint Benedict since for each day of the year Father Kardong provides a simple line or two from the Rule along with a page or so of careful reflection. As one would expect, what Kardong gives us is far from pious paraphrases. He has a knack to tell what Benedict meant in a few words, and then to extrapolate from that explanation, a sensible application for readers today.

The obvious target audience for this book would be, in the first place, fellow Benedictines and the many oblates who attach themselves to Benedictine houses, but, by extension, anyone interested in nourishing their spiritual life. What I found most attractive in this book is Kardong's repeated observation about how Benedict first sets out the heroic and demanding but then quickly ameliorates those demands by not proposing anything designed to discourage the halting striver. Thus, in RB 49 Benedict says that a monk should live as if it were Lent all year but, he quickly adds that few can do that, so he asks them...