Listening with the Heart – Listen

“Listen carefully, my son, to the guidance of your master. Open not only your ears but your heart. Receive these words willingly and put them into practice with faithfulness. In doing so, through the hard but life-giving work of obedience, you will return to the One from whom you have wandered through the neglect of disobedience.”

The Rule of St Benedict, Prologue 1

A Beginning

For more than fifteen hundred years, Christians have turned to the Rule of St Benedict as a guide for living faithfully. Written around AD 530 for a community of monks in Italy, its influence has reached far beyond monastery walls. It has shaped families, churches, schools, places of work and countless ordinary lives.

Although the Rule was written for monks, Benedict was not trying to create extraordinary Christians. He wanted to help ordinary people become faithful disciples of Christ by learning to pray, to work, to love others well and to persevere in the daily work of holiness.

The language of many English translations reflects the beauty of an earlier age, but it can also place a distance between Benedict and the modern reader. Throughout this series I will use a contemporary rendering of the Rule. My aim is not to rewrite Benedict or to soften his teaching. It is to allow his voice to be heard as clearly today as it was by those first communities who gathered to listen to his words.

This series is an invitation to walk slowly through the Rule together. We will not rush.

So let us begin.

Listen

The first word of Benedict’s Rule is carefully chosen.

Listen.

Benedict could have begun with prayer, with discipline or with holiness but instead he begins by asking us to listen. That is because listening is the beginning of every relationship with God. Long before we speak to Him, He has spoken to us.

When Benedict speaks of listening to “your master,” he is writing as a spiritual father to those entering the monastery. Yet Christians throughout the centuries have heard these words as an invitation addressed to them as well.

The opening words of the Rule echo the great confession of Israel. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”Jesus repeated the same invitation throughout His ministry. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Benedict stands in that same tradition. Yet he asks us to do more than listen with our ears.. He tells us to listen with the ear of the heart.

That phrase has echoed through Christian spirituality for centuries because it captures something we instinctively recognise. We can hear words without receiving them. We can listen politely while remaining unchanged. Benedict is speaking about a deeper kind of listening. The kind that reaches our desires, our decisions and our willingness to be changed.

The heart, in Scripture, is the place where we love, trust, choose and worship. If the heart is closed, no amount of information will draw us closer to God. If the heart is open, even the quietest whisper can be transformative.

A Practice for the Week

Set aside ten minutes each day this week and simply be still before God and listen.

Read the opening paragraph of the Rule slowly.

Resist the temptation to analyse it or move quickly to prayer requests.

Ask only one thing:

“Lord, what are You saying to me?”

A Prayer