Today’s Scripture (at OCA)

Today’s Saints (at OCA)

Orthodox Word Podcast

Today is the feast of St. Benedict of Nursia.

Troparion - Tone 1

By your ascetic labors, God-bearing Benedict,
you were proven to be true to your name.
For you were the son of benediction,
and became a rule and model for all who emulate your life and cry:
“Glory to Him who gave you strength!
Glory to Him who granted you a crown!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!”

Kontakion - Tone 6

You were enriched with God’s grace;
your works agreed with your name, O Benedict, helpful servant of Christ God.
Through prayer and fasting you were revealed to be filled with the gifts of the Spirit of God!
You are a healer of the sick, the banisher of demons and speedy defender of our souls!

~*~*~ 

The Holy Art of St. Benedict 

QUESTION: What is the “holy art” that the Abbot must teach his disciples in the monastery?

ANSWER: This is the holy art: first to believe in, to confess and to fear God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God in Trinity, and three in one, three in the one divine nature and one in the threefold power of his majesty. Therefore, to love him with all one’s heart and all one’s soul. Then, in second place to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

Then not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to covet, not to give false testimony, to honor father and mother, and not to do to another what one would not want done to oneself.

To deny oneself in order to follow Christ. To chastise the body for the sake of the soul, to flee pleasures, to love fasting. To relieve the poor, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to bury the dead, to help the afflicted, to console the sorrowing, to make loans, to give to the needy.

To make oneself a stranger to worldly activities, to prefer nothing to the love of Christ. Not to give effect to anger, not to await an opportunity for wrath. Not to shelter deceit in one’s heart, not to make a consciously feigned peace, to keep faith with a confrere, not to love detraction, to do what has been promised and not to deceive, not to forsake charity. Not to love taking oaths, for fear of perjury. To speak the truth in heart and mouth.

Not to return evil for evil, to do no wrongs but to bear patiently those done to oneself, to love enemies more than friends. Not only to refrain from cursing those by whom one has been cursed but instead to bless them. To bear persecution for the sake of justice.

Not to be proud, not given to wine, not a great eater, not a lover of sleep, not lazy, not a murmurer.

To place one’s hope in God. When one sees anything good in oneself, to be aware that it is the work of God and not of oneself; to regard evil as one’s own doing and to ascribe it to oneself and to the devil. To want one’s desires be fulfilled by God. To hope for one’s sustenance not from the work of one’s hands alone, but rather from God.

To fear the day of judgment, to dread hell, to desire eternal life and the holy Jerusalem, ever to keep death before one’s eyes. To be watchful over the activities of one’s life, to be convinced that one is everywhere seen by God. Immediately to shatter on Christ the evil thoughts which come into one’s heart, to keep one’s mouth from evil and depraved speech, not to love much talking, entirely to avoid vain words or such as cause laughter, not to love excessive or guffawing laughter.

To listen willingly to holy reading, to give oneself to frequent prayer, in daily prayer with tears and sighs to confess to God one’s sins of the past, furthermore to correct these failings.

Not to yield to the desires of the flesh, to hate self-will, to be obedient to the admonitions of the abbot.

Not to wish to be called holy before one is so, but first to be holy so that one may and ought to be truly so called. To fulfill God’s precepts daily by one’s deeds, to love chastity, to hate no one, not to be jealous, not to do anything out of envy, not to love strife. To be reconciled to an enemy before the setting of the sun, to obey all good persons with all one’s heart.

And never to despair of God.

Behold, this is the holy art which we must exercise with spiritual instruments.

QUESTION: What are the spiritual instruments which we can use to practice the Divine Art?

ANSWER: What are they? Faith, hope, charity; peace, joy mildness; humility, obedience, silence; above all, chastity of the body; a sincere conscience; abstinence, purity, simplicity; kindness, goodness, compassion; above all piety; temperance, vigilance, sobriety; justice, equity, truth; love, measure, moderation, and perseverance.

from “The Rule of the Master,” (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1977), pp. 115 - 118

~ from the Inner Light newsletter for January 2000.