Reflections on the Rule - January 2026

---

“Whoever listens to you listens to Me” (Luke 10:16)

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Church of reconciliation, san antonio, TX

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

This verse of Luke is quoted by Benedict under the heading of Obedience, part of our January reading cycle. (p 58 in the Sutera translation with commentary)

Obedience is all about listening. Sister Judith (Sutera), in her commentary for January 22, reminds us that “the word ‘obedience’ shares a common root with the Latin word for hearing/listening.” (p 57-8)

As a teacher, I often remind my students that we cannot listen well to each other in the classroom when we are preparing our answer in our head during another student’s turn to share. I remind students of this knowing from my own experience as a student that this is a nearly impossible task. I offer more than reminders; I create opportunities to practice by allowing students time to think and write as a group before they share individually in order to allow them to focus on each other rather than to be thinking about what they will say when it is their turn. I take out the guess work of when their turn will come by sharing the speaking order ahead of time, and I assure them that passing or skipping until later is always ok. Still, listening to each other in class rather than thinking of what we will say when it is our turn is not easy.

As pastoral care providers and lay chaplains, I wonder what we do to better listen in pastoral care settings? What tools do we have to be obedient to God in the moment, to hear Jesus in the voice of our care recipient so that, in turn, they can hear Jesus in our voice? Another question we might ask ourselves is, simply, how do we use our good listening to get out of the way to let God do what God does?

I learned recently that the word tolerant is derived from Latin tolle or tolerare which mean, respectively, “to lift/remove” and “to bear.” I’ve never thought of the word “tolerate” in this way. With this new derivation in mind, I am coming to think of Jesus as tolerating the cross. If I am to be like Jesus, “to accept this sin sick world as it is and not as I would have it” (Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer), then am I not called to “tolerate” also?

Perhaps that is the greatest tool, then, that I have in my obedience and listening. I must tolerate, first, myself and my own thought process. I must lift and remove myself from the situation. Then, I must tolerate that which I am receiving. I must bear the words I hear.

Whether I am in a classroom waiting my turn to share, I am listening in pastoral care, or living in this sin sick world, I can lift and bear it. I can tolerate it. Can you?

Reflections on the Rule - November 2025

---

Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Church of reconciliation, san antonio, TX

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

Christine Valters Paintner, in The Artist’s Rule, a book-guide using The Rule of Benedict and artistic/creative prompts to “nurture your creative soul with monastic wisdom,” describes the Benedictine vow to stability using a quote from Edward C. Sellner’s Finding the Monk Within: “Stability is perceived as an antidote to the restlessness of mind and heart in which a person searches for new experiences, new relationships, and new geographical locations to escape difficulties or to solve problems by avoiding them.” Paintner says that Sellner breaks this stability into three types: “stability of place, stability of community, and stability of heart. (page 71)

I am currently enrolled in a course on the history of spirituality aptly named “Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics.” We’ve read primary texts by and about Perpetua and Felicity, Bernard of Clairvaux, Antony, Guigo, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Mechtild, and Meister Eckhart thus far.

In Chapter One of his Rule, St. Benedict identifies four types of monastics in his time - cenobites, anchorites, sarabites, and gyrovagues:

It is well known that there are four kinds of monastics. The first kind is cenobites, that is, those in monasteries who live under a rule and a superior.

The second kind is anchorites or hermits, that is, those who, no longer in the first fervor of their conversion, but tested by long monastic practice and the help of many others, have already learned to fight against the devil…

The third kind is the sarabites, the most detestable monastics, who have been tested by no rule under the hand of a master, “as gold is tried in the fire,” (cf. Prov 27:21) but have a nature soft as lead. Still keeping faith with the world by their works, they lie to God by their tonsure. Living in twos and threes or even singly, without a shepherd, they are enclosed not in God’s sheepfold but in their own…

The fourth kind is called gyrovagues, who spend their whole lives drifting from one region to another, staying as guests for three or four days at a time in different monasteries. (Sutera’s translation, pages 25-6)

In her commentary, Sr. Sutera shares that Benedict repeats his classifications from Cassian and the Master. She, like Benedict, finds sarabites and gyrovagues to be lacking in the stability and wisdom and spiritual fortitude of cenobites. Sutera comments that “cenobite” is derived from koinonia - Greek for community. (26-7)

I wonder, how would Benedict (and Cassian, the Master, and Sutera) classify these spiritual classics I’ve been studying? They’ve all exhibited stability in their love of Christ and their commitment to live and even die for their beliefs. They’ve all exhibited stability to the community of believers to which they belonged. They’ve all exhibited stability to the place where they lived. Some, like Bernard and Guigo, lived in communities under superiors and rules. Some like Perpetua and Felicity were part of the world; perhaps they were not monks at all. Certainly history has classified them as martyrs and not monks. The definition of sarabite fits them quite well, although I would never consider them as “soft” or as ones who “lie to God.”

Today, a type of monasticism called “21st Century monasticism" or “new monasticism” has gained attention in scholarship. The name and concept is derived from a comment theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer made in 1935: “The restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ.” (Bonhoeffer, a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick 14 Jan 1935) In essence, Bonhoeffer called us all to be sarabites, possibly even gyrovague-sarabites. But in a way vastly different from the way Benedict perceived sarabites and gyrovagues to be. For Bonhoeffer, new monasticism must be very stable - in place, community, and most especially heart.

As members of Community of Hope, International, we are “new monastics” called to “live[] in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ” when you really look at our mission to “serve others through compassionate listening.”

Listen to the words of the Sermon on the Mount in the NIV:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Here we are in the world, not conformed to it but in it, committed to following Jesus’ teachings in order to love each other more. We go from “house to house” listening for the “still small voice of God” in each person we meet. They may be “poor in spirit,” or they may “mourn,” be “meek” or “hunger and thirst for righteousness”; always we are a stable presence listening to them and showing God’s mercy and comfort.

Their “restless mind[s] and heart[s]” can be comforted by our stable willingness to be part of a monastic community that looks a little different than Benedict’s.

I wonder if there’s power in knowing that we’re still doing things the same way even though we’re doing them differently?

Reflections on the Rule - August 2025

---

The Parable of the Sower

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Church of reconciliation, san antonio, TX

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

The Gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 13 in Year C of the three year lectionary cycle comes from Luke 12. The passage from Luke 12 read and studied shares the words of Jesus teaching the crowd through what we’ve come to call “The Parable of the Sower.”

Now, Jesus shares this parable in response to a man in the crowd asking him to tell the man’s brother to divide the inheritance between them.

Rev. Reagan Gonzalez, at Church of Reconciliation in San Antonio, TX, shares her insights on this passage in her homily:

“This isn’t so much a condemnation of having but of wanting more. Of discontent, of wanting something for the sake of wanting it. The parable doesn’t condemn the man for having barns or for storing food but for wanting more simply for the sake of more. Above all, this man is condemned not for his material possessions alone, nor for desiring to have a good time with friends. Even Jesus indulged in eating, drinking, and merry making all the time. It is his exclusive use of the word “I” and “my” that I believe condemns the man. What should “I” do with all “my” crops? the man asks. “I” will do this. “I” will build larger barns, and “I” will save my soul. The man thinks he can save himself. He thinks he is in charge of his own security, prosperity, and contentment. God asks the man to whom his things will belong after he is gone. He can collect and collect and collect, but one day he will be gone. And what then will his things be worth to him? The man has forgotten to whom he belongs. To whom he owes thanks for all that he has been given.”

I wonder if you can put yourself in a place of imagining the world of Italy in the 7th Century? Sitting with a group of 12 others over bowls of soup and hard bread listening to this Parable and some similar interpretation. Silently nodding your head as you eat your meal and think how true it is that this communal life of asceticism to which you’ve vowed your life fulfills the call you’re hearing to have but not want “more simply for the sake of more.” Pausing to thank God for your companions as you realize that you’ve never thought you could journey alone and have always relied on this faith family, this monastic brotherhood in which you live. And, then, you all stop as you hear a knock on the door.

The Rule of Benedict Chapter 53, On the Reception of Guests, teaches:

Let all guests who arrive be received like Christ, 
for He is going to say, 
"I came as a guest, and you received Me" (Matt. 25:35).
And to all let due honor be shown,
especially to the domestics of the faith and to pilgrims. (Paragraph 1)

Let the Abbot give the guests water for their hands;
and let both Abbot and community wash the feet of all guests.
After the washing of the feet let them say this verse:
"We have received Your mercy, O God,
in the midst of Your temple" (Ps. 47[48]:10). (Paragraph 4b)

That’s how I’ve felt this week. The knock on the door was metaphorical, though. In a regional call with other Center Leaders, we read Chapter 53 on Monday, August 4, as assigned by Sister Chittister in her version of the Rule and Commentary. Hearing this chapter while still contemplating Rev. Reagan’s sermon on The Parable of the Sower was my “knock on the door” bringing Benedictine Hospitality into focus in the context of having, not wanting more, and belonging to God while remembering that we are in community in Community of Hope.

No matter who I am called to bring pastoral care to, I answer the call anticipating an encounter with Christ, and I go knowing the full Community of Hope is with me; “I” cannot do anything alone when I am serving the one to whom I belong and to whom I owe all thanks. And I am confident and content with what I have - in skill as well as material - to do the job to which I am called - because God aligns all things for God’s good - just as The Parable of the Sower and On the Reception of Guests aligned this week.

Amen.

Reflections on the Rule - April 2025

---

Beginning Again

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Church of reconciliation, san antonio, TX

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

Many of us are familiar with the phrase attributed to St. Benedict, “Always we begin again.” Three times a year we “begin again” reading The Rule of St. Benedict as we come to the end of the 73 short chapters, each with a lesson meant to direct Benedict’s monks’ lives. Every Circle of Care meeting is a chance to “begin again.”  Each pastoral care encounter in which we engage is an opportunity for us to “begin again” in “listening with the ear of our heart.”

At the Church of Reconciliation in San Antonio, TX, in the Diocese of West Texas, we are reviving our Community of Hope center after a hiatus; we are about to “begin again.”

On our first day of training, we will read Chapter 69 which is called “The Presumption of Defending Another in a Monastery.” The chapter talks about conflicts in groups, when you break it down. While that might sound harsh, we are all aware of how “taking sides” in a confrontation often divides an entire group. And, as we form a new group, being prepared for potential conflict seems a great way to “begin again.”  Perhaps Benedict’s advice is not a bad idea for a group as it begins its new community.

In Sr Judith Sutera’s commentary, she closes each chapter with a series of questions like those on page 289 of her Inclusive Translation and Daily Commentary (2021, Liturgical Press). Reflecting on the Rule using Sr. Sutera’s guide is a great way to “begin again” with a new Benedictine tradition in the frame of a renewed Community of Hope at Reconciliation.

As we ponder the questions Sr. Sutera asks:

• How defensive am I regarding my own social/religious/political narrative?

• Is there anyone about whom I am overprotective, trying to fight their battles for them?

• Have ties of blood ever complicated my own situation, and was it handled satisfactorily?

Four days after reading about conflict, we will “begin again” after reading Chapter 73 called “This Rule Only a Beginning of Perfection.” The next day we read the Prologue at the start of the book which begins, “Listen carefully, my child, to the instructions of your master, and incline the ear of your heart.” We reread all the Rule and have an opportunity to do better at listening to each other, to new care receivers, to our priest as she guides our service, and to God’s call to us to serve as lay chaplains–always reflecting on our own daily lives in order to remember how to Love God, Love Others, and Love Ourselves.

Reflections on the Rule - November 2024

---

What Day is It?

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

“This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

— Psalm 118:24 (NRSVUE)

Every day is important and for the Lord in the Benedictine tradition, and so must it be for those of us who have accepted the call to COHI lay chaplaincy. We are called to be present, holding space for everyone to do their jobs and for God to intercede whenever and wherever God needs; God is at work everywhere all the time.

As I’m writing, the day is Sunday; the date is November 17, 2024. I’m sitting in the family minister’s office at Church of the Reconciliation (CoR) in San Antonio, TX, awaiting breakfast before formation hour and service.

Our reading in RSB is about the proper amount of food, and here at CoR we are sharing a month-long theme studying food insecurity in combination with a campaign of service and generosity to provide food for those in need in our neighborhood. The breakfast we serve on Sundays before formation and service is a hot meal open to all, and unsheltered folx from the community enjoy dining with us. We have a little food pantry attached to our little free library that we are stocking regularly; the pantry guild is a new addition to the teams of service for CoR.

As a COHI lay chaplain, learning about food insecurity and sharing in these meals and campaigns of service and generosity require that I prepare my heart and mind before I enter the workspace and after I leave the workspace. I have my own weaknesses, burdens, and sorrows, and I have to attend to them with God and my spiritual director and therapist, in my heart (cell?) so that I can be fully present to hold space for God to show up.

Chittister tells us that “Benedict of Nursia never takes food away from the community…Everybody needs something in life to make the rest of life doable and uplifting.” (p. 184-185) As we provide for ourselves in our homes (monasteries?), let us also remember to share what we have so that all may rejoice and be glad in it.

Reflections on the Rule - October 2024

---

Recovering Humility

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

I love October. It’s one of those three times a year we are privileged to read the Humility Ladder together. As a person in recovery, the Humility Ladder is a source of great joy, as Recoverers who practice the 12-Steps can relate their 12 Steps of Recovery to the Humility Ladder with great ease.

““Now the ladder erected is our life on earth, and if we humble our hearts God will raise it to heaven. We may call our body and soul the sides of this ladder, into which our divine vocation has fitted the various steps of humility and discipline as we ascend.””

—

Benedict’s description of the ladder we must set up for ourselves, akin to Jacob’s vision (Gen 28:12), has been oft represented in art and stories. I’ve written to you before of John Edward Crean Jr.’s Benedictine devotional Recovering Benedict in which he reflects on his journey with RSB in conjunction with 12-Step Recovery. His stories and prayers related to the Humility Ladder rival any artwork you might find in emotion and call to compassionate reflection.

As I’ve read Crean again this month, I’ve been renewed and reminded of the amazing work God does every day in providing me with miraculous reminders of why I stay on the ladder and keep climbing.

From Crean’s reflections:

September 26: “Help me remember who I am supposed to be and who you intended me to become.”

September 27: “God is much more focused on my efforts rather than on my successes.”

September 28: “I will trust you, Lord, to provide me with even a few extra moments to consider whether choosing this or that activity will help or hinder me.”

September 29: “You are all Love, Lord.”

September 30: “Cheap thrills don’t last and offer no solutions.”

October 1: “This third step up the ladder of humility requires an open heart.”

October 2: “May the fire of your Holy Spirit prevail over the heat of my own unruly passions.”

October 3: “I cannot reap the full benefits without my humility reaching for that fifth rung, where I conceal none of the evil thoughts that enter my heart.”

October 4: “Lord, please let me just say thanks that I have a job, and then just do whatever I am assigned.”

October 5: “Don’t let me buy into the fantasy that I am large and in charge.”

October 6: “Thank you, Lord, for this one sentence reminding me that humility requires me to adopt, not adapt, twelve-step principles.”

October 7: “Please help me to speak less and listen more.”

October 8: “Lord, please help me to reflect rather than react.”

October 9: “Lord, please make me into a quieter, kinder, gentler, less loquacious person.”

October 10: “Lord, help me to wear humility without being proud of it. Help me to trust you in all things. Help me to be so deeply wedded to your Perfect Love that I may transcend fear and transmit Love. Lord, grant me the gift of humility and the grace to make it my way of life.”

You don’t have to be in recovery to be in recovery and not everyone in recovery does it the 12-step way. Still, Everybody hurts sometimes. We are a Community of Hope steeped in Benedictine spirituality ready to listen compassionately, right?