Quotessence
Home / Topics / Rule Of Life Quotes

Rule Of Life Quotes

Browse 35 quotes about Rule Of Life.

Rule Of Life Quotes

“The flesh resists this daily humiliation, first by a frontal attack, and later by hiding itself under the words of the spirit (i.e. in the name of 'evangelical liberty'). We claim liberty from all legal compulsion, from self-martyrdom and mortification, and play this off against the proper evangelical use of discipline and asceticism; we thus excuse our self-indulgence and irregularity in prayer, in meditation and in our bodily life. But the contrast between our behavior and the word of Jesus is all too painfully evident. We forget that discipleship means estrangement from the world, and we forget the real joy and freedom which are the outcome of a devout rule of life. As soon as a Christian recognizes that he has failed in his service, that his readiness has become feeble, and that he has sinned against another's life and become guilty of another's guilt, that all his joy in God has vanished and that his capacity for prayer has quite gone, it is high time for him to launch an assault upon the flesh, and prepare for better service by fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37; 4:2: Mark 9:29; 1 Cor. 7:5).”

GodPrayerSinChristianitySelf DisciplineFastingSpiritual DisciplinesRule Of LifeThe FleshSpiritual Exercises
Book:The Cost of Discipleship
Create image

“To przedziwne uczucie odkryć, że się jest w wieku swojego ojca czy matki. Człowiek nieomal broni się, żeby nie uwierzyć w to odkrycie. Chciałby wciąż być od nich młodszy. Wydaje mu się, że złamana została naturalna reguła życia, że się jest zawsze młodszym od swoich rodziców i będzie się zawsze młodszym aż do swojej śmierci. I jak w dzieciństwie wydaje mu się, że oni są wciąż jego tarczą, za którą się chowa, mimo że ich już nie ma.”

YouthParentsAging ParentsRule Of LifeProtection Of Parents
Book:Ucho Igielne
Create image

“People who are really humble, who know themselves to be earth or humus - the root from which our word "humble" comes 0 have about themselves, an air of self-containment and self-control. There's no haughtiness, no distance, no sarcasm, no put downs, no airs of importance or disdain. The ability to deal with both their own limitations and the limitations of others, the recognition that God in life and that they are not in charge of the universe brings serenity and hope, inner peace and real energy. Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others.”

SpiritualityHumilitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeCallings
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“... nothing is more insidious than spiritual pride; nothing is more impervious to identification. No, the monastic mind0set says, spiritual development is not an event. Spiritual development is a process of continuing conversion. "What do you do in the monastery?" an ancient tale asks. "Oh, we fall and we get up. We fall and we get up," the old monastic answers. In monastic spirituality, we never arrive; we are always arriving.”

SpiritualityHumilitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Real contemplation, in other words, is not for its own sake. It doesn't take us out of reality. On the contrary, it puts us in touch with the world around us by giving us the distance we need to see where we are more clearly. To contemplate the gospel and not respond to the wounded in our own world cannot be contemplation at all. That is prayer used as an excuse for not being Christian. That is spiritual dissipation.”

SpiritualityContemplativeSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“There is no quick and easy way to make the life of God the life we lead. It takes years of sacred reading, years of listening to all of life, years of learning to listen through the filter of what we have read. A generation of Pop Tarts and instant cocoa and TV dinners and computer calculations and Xerox copies does not prepare us for the slow and tedious task of listening and learning, over and over, day after day, until we can finally hear the people we love and love the people we've learned to dislike and grow to understand how holiness is here and now for us. But someday, in thirty years and thirty days perhaps, we may have listened enough to be ready to gather the yield that comes from years of learning Christ in time, or at least, in the words of the Rule of Benedict, to have made "a good beginning.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSpiritual Formation
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Holy leisure... is the foundation of contemplation. There is an idea abroad in the land that contemplation is the province of those who live in cloistered communities and that it is out of reach to the rest of us who bear the noonday heat in the midst of the maddening crowd. But if that's the case, then Jesus who was followed by people and surrounded by people and immersed in people was not a contemplative. ... some of our greatest contemplatives have been our most active and most effective people. No, contemplation is not withdrawal from the human race.”

SpiritualityContemplativeSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Unless we learn in our own personal relationships, as the ancient definition of heaven and hell indicates, to live for someone besides ourselves, how shall we as a nation ever learn to hear the cries of the starving in Ethiopia and the illiterate in Africa and the refugees in the Middle East and the war weary in Central America? What will become of a nation in this day and age that has no sense of community? What, indeed, will become of the planet? the warning of the wise is clear: 'In hell,' the Vietnamese write, 'the people have chopsticks but they are three feet long so they cannot reach their mouths. In Heaven, the chopsticks are the same length, but in heaven the people feed one another.' The message is no less new, no less important today.”

SpiritualityCommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“There are three stages of spiritual development,' a teacher taught. 'The carnal, the spiritual, and the divine.' 'What is the carnal stage?' the disciple asked. 'That's the stage,' the teacher said, 'when trees are seen as trees and mountains are seen as mountains.' 'And the spiritual?' the disciple asked eagerly. 'That's when we look more deeply into things. Then trees are no longer trees and mountains are no longer mountains,' the teacher answered. 'And the divine?' the disciple said breathlessly. 'Ah,' the teacher said with a smile. 'That's enlightenment - when the trees become trees again the and the mountains become mountains.' We pray to see life as it is, to understand it, and to make it better than it was. We pray so that reality can break into our souls and give us back our awareness of the Divine Presence in life. We pray to understand things as they are, not to ignore and avoid and deny them. We pray so that when the incense disappears we can still see the world as holy.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionContemplative PrayerRule Of LifeSacramental Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Into the midst of all this indistinguishable cacophony of life, the bell tower of every Benedictine monastery rings "listen." Listen with the heart of Christ. Listen with the lover's ear. Listen for the voice of God. Listen in your own heart for the sound of truth, the kind that comes when a piece of quality crystal is struck by a metal rod.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSpiritual FormationListening Prayer
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Listening is, indeed, a fundamental value of Benedictine spirituality. More than that, Benedictine listening is life lived in stereo. The simple fact is that everybody lives listening to something. But few live a life attuned on every level. Benedictine spirituality doesn't allow for selective perception; it insists on breadth, on a full range of hearing, on total alert. We have to learn to hear on every level at once if we are really to become whole. The problem is that most of us are deaf in at least one ear.”

SpiritualityListeningSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeListening Prayer
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“It was a happy day when I discovered that in the English of Chaucer's day - which was also the time of the Black Death - the word "silly" meant "blessed." I am not sure when we strayed away from its original meaning, when blessedness took on a churchy aura and silliness became the realm of Monty Python and fourth-grade eschatological humor. As hard-working adults we too often lose the gift for letting go, for delight in simply being. We persuade ourselves that every moment must be lived productively; like the busy little bee, we feel a holy obligation to improve each shining hour. We would do well to take very small children or big silly dogs as our teachers. I have learned much about holy uselessness form Perry, the dog...”

CelebrationRestSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“It is a necessary part of a rule of life to cherish our bodies, care for them, and see the beauty in their intricate design. But too often, most of us - men and women both - come to dislike them as the years pass, or at the very least to feel that they need major remodeling... We fight to stave off aging or at least to disguise it. Yet in his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul reminds us of the sanctity of the body (1 Cor. 6:19-20)...”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“So many of us have found that it is quite helpful - essential to our well-being, in fact - to craft and actually write down a rule of life. The purpose of this rule is to keep us clear and attentive, to enable us to live contemplatively in the midst of activity. The temptation, of course, is to to be overambitious and to set ourselves impossible goals - and then to fail. I think of this as the "first week of Lent syndrome": what begins a bracing change of pace and priorities turns into a real drag after about two weeks. There is also the danger that the structure will become an end in itself so that our spirituality becomes joyless, life-denying, and self-centered. Particularly in regard to "spiritual disciplines," less is frequently more. A good rule can set us free to be our true and best selves.”

Spiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“[My students} ... presented me with thoughtful and candid papers. They had examined their use of time and energy, reflected carefully on their relationship with those whose lives touched theirs (including the difficult and incompatible ones), scrutinied their performance as custodians of God's creation. All in all, it was exemplary work except for one thing: these were grim, dreary schedules that allowed no place for fun. No room for holy uselessness or the joyous and restorative wasting of time, a spiritual discipline that bears absolutely no resemblance to guilt-producing procrastination or avoidance of whatever the next step might be. If they were able to live out the plan that they laid out for themselves, they would be exemplary citizens, conscientious prayer-ers, and ecologically beyond reproach. but they would never have any fun.”

RestSpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“The New Testament is not very helpful about family values. Jesus, unmarried at an age when most Jewish men were husbands and fathers, exhibits a cavalier attitude toward families as he gathers his followers around him. Think about the call of the disciples from their wives' point of view: Jesus meets Peter and Andrew, James and John, as they are tending their nets. he says, "Follow me," and immediately they abandon their livelihood without a second thought. They abandon their families as well: did they ever go home to tell their wives that they would not be there for dinner? Did they make any provision for their families? When, in my imagination, I translate this story into the present time, were I the wife of Peter, Andrew, James, or John, I would be furious. "You did what? What about the health plan? Your pension? College for the children? Are you planning on coming back sometime? How am I going to manage? Who will look after the children if I have to get a job?" ... Jesus might have been an effective healer, but he also certainly knew how to disrupt a household.”

FamilySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeCallings
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image

“The secret, of course, lies in the Benedictine commitment to conversion. I cannot serve God and mammon, I cannot serve two masters, I cannot be both in the world and of it. I cannot have an authentic spiritual life without working at it. The spiritual life is not a matter of religious sleight of hand. It is not the doing of spiritual tricks that we are about. It is an attitude of mind we must develop. It is a way of walking lightly through things that threaten to bind us or bog us down - that is what a true spirituality implies. It is an asceticism without chains. The shock comes when we finally realize that spirituality itself can be a temptation. ... The Rule, in other words, teaches us to cling to nothing, to hold everything - even the best of holy things - with a relaxed grasp.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“One of the Western world's most serious problems is the tension between the group and the individual. Our culture trains people in individualism and then condemns them to live forever in groups, large groups. The Rule of Benedict, however, trains people to live in community. The question is, Why? Isn't the eremitical life the life of complete perfection and total dedication to God? And the answer is, yes it is., for some people. But not for most, and then only after they have learned the virtues that come from life in community (RB 1). Most social beings, however are meant to find their sanctification by living under the authority of society. It is the community that forms community values and virtues in me. It is the community that provides the arena for mutual support. It is from the community that I get an example of life lived well. It is in the community that teaching becomes real. It is in the community that authority is meant to become a gift rather than an instrument of oppression. It is only in the community that I really learn to listen to the voice of God in one another and to see the face of God in the other as well as in my own. It is only in community that I can learn to wield patience as well as power. It is only in community that I can learn to obey the command to serve one another.”

SpiritualityCommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Uniqueness and independence are clearly not synonyms in the mind of Benedict of Nursia. Uniqueness and responsibility go hand in hand in Benedictine spirituality. By all means I should be who I am and have what I need, but you have a claim on those gifts. Those gifts were given to me so much for your sake as for my own. The community does not exist to make me possible. Together we exist to make the gospel possible.”

SpiritualityCommunitySpiritual DisciplinesSpiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“To a nonstop world, the Rule of Benedict brings balance and simplicity. In the face of a complex world with the twenty-four-hour workdays and constant motion, the Rule asks for a life that deals with a little bit of everything in proper measure: work, prayer, solitude, relationships. The Rule, in other words, is an antidote to excess and to human dwarfism. A proverb says, "Wherever there is excess, something is lacking." The Rule of Benedict mandates a measured life.”

Spiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Benedictine conversion, then, is not an assertion of our strength or character. Benedictine spirituality is based on the simple acknowledgment that God will come to life before us and be reborn in us in unexpected ways day after day throughout our entire lives. We must be ready to respond to this God of woods and highways, of gentle breeze and cataclysm, of privacy and crowds - however this Spirit comes. Response is the essence of Benedictine spirituality.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSacramental Life
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Stability says that where I am is where God is for me. More than that, stability teaches that whatever the depth of the dullness or the difficulties around me. I can, if I will simply stay still enough of heart, find God there in the midst of them. Mobility tempts interior stillness to the breaking point, however... But centeredness is an antidote to the fragmentation that comes from never settling in to where I am or what I'm doing or what I'm meant to learn. When the monastic makes a vow of stability it is a vow designed to still the wandering heart. ... There comes a period in life when I regret every major decision I've ever made. That is precisely the time when the spirituality of stability offers its greatest gift. Stability enables me to outlast the dark, cold places of life until the thaw comes and I can see new life in this uninhabitable place again. But for that to happen I must learn to wait through the winters of my life.”

SpiritualitySpiritual DirectionRule Of LifeSpiritual Diciplines
Author:Joan Chittister
Create image

“Since we are always changing and - I hope - growing, a rule does not need to be perfect or complete. Remember it is a provisional document, neither a constricting garment we can outgrow nor a rulebook to be consulted anxiously before every move. Rather, I prefer to treat my rule of life as I treat my grocery list. I organize it meticulously, separating dairy from produce, and baked goods from cleaning products. If I am feeling especially fussy, I organize the menu according to the layout of the supermarket: fruit and vegetables along the near wall, meat and poultry in the middle, dairy along the far wall. Then I go off to shop and leave the list on the kitchen counter. I already know what's in it.”

Spiritual DirectionRule Of Life
Book:At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us
Create image