The chapter’s title, “At What Hours Should the Brothers Take Their Meals?”, led me to believe I would be reading my way through a thicket of details, with little to find worthy of adapting to my daily life. And the truth is that much of this section does concern itself with the timing and frequency of meals. Without clocks, a monastic community arranges its life around other rhythms: the liturgical year and the ebb and flow of daylight and darkness that come with the changing of the seasons. One could adapt or even adopt this for life outside of a monastery, but it would be challenging, especially when living in a family and amid a community that might not adhere to the same rhythms.

But then, dropped right into the middle of this brief chapter is an amazing sentence: “And so [the abbot] should arrange all things with such moderation that souls might be saved and the brothers can do their work without justifiable murmuring” (RB 41:5).

It seems to me that Saint Benedict says here that even something that might seem so mundane as the scheduling of meals can become an aid or a hindrance to the journey of faith of a member of the community. The key is “…arrang[ing] all things with such moderation that souls might be saved….” That helps me to explore how I can live according to the spirit of the Rule.

There is no detail of my life that is so small that I cannot ask how I might arrange it so that it helps, and does not hinder, my life of faith. Do I eat meals in balance with my need for sustenance and with gratitude to God for his blessings? Do I care for the possessions with which I am entrusted without making of them an idol for celebrating my own tendencies to acquisition? How might I see caring for our pets as a way to express stewardship and loving dominion for God’s creation, but not as a burden that gets in the way of my own, more “important” tasks? When parts of my life devolve into clutter, how can I restore order to them, so that they remain testimonies to the God who creates by bringing order out of chaos and not to the Confuser who delights in muddling and muddying the world to his own devilish ends?

It is only one sentence, but its ability to change how I view my life is boundless. There really is no part beyond its examination, no practice upon which it cannot comment, no patterns it cannot turn to serve spiritual ends.

Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus.