How to Live: What the rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community. Judith Valente
Like the Prologue, “The Tools for Good Works” dazzles with its practical wisdom. I think of it as a kind of Magna Carta for ethical living. If the Prologue is a road map, “The Tools for Good Works” is like those insets on a map that chart a particular city or metropolitan area in greater detail. This chapter provides the steps we need to attain the Prologue’s broader promises of a more meaningful life.
It begins with a reminder of the Ten Commandments. I prefer the moniker given to them by Benedictine Abbot Jerome Koddell of Subiaco Monastery in Arkansas. He calls them the “Ten Words of God,” meant to guide us out of emotional slavery and “show us ways to live in freedom.”
First of all, “love God with your whole heart, your whole soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:37–39; Mark 12:30–31; Luke 10:27). Then the following: “You are not to kill, not to commit adultery; you are not to steal, nor to covet” (Rom 13:9); “you are not to bear false witness” (Matt 19:18; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20). “You must honor everyone” (1 Pet 2:17) and “never do to another what you do not want done to yourself.” (Tob 4:16; Matt 7:12; Luke 6:31)
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
Never do to another what you do not want done to yourself. That is the blueprint for peaceful living. Then, St. Benedict pushes us further.
You must relieve the lot of the poor, “clothe the naked, visit the sick” (Mt 25:36), and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing … Harbor neither hatred nor jealousy of anyone, and do nothing out of envy. Do not love quarreling, shun arrogance. Respect the elders and love the young. Pray for your enemies out of love of Christ. If you have a dispute with someone make peace before the sun goes down.
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
Benedict lays out these tools in simple, declarative sentences. What he urges might seem straightforward enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Interestingly, he doesn’t call this chapter prescriptions for good works, or recommendations, or even commandments. He chooses the word tools. Tools are items you learn to use well only through practice. A carpenter spends a period of time working as a journeyman with a more experienced craftsman. Every surgeon passes through a rigorous internship and residency. Even reporters don’t start out covering Congress and the White House. They hone their writing and reporting skills covering the police beat, local government, and county courts, and then move on. The difference is that it usually takes only a few years to master the tools of these professions. Wielding The Rule’s tools requires a lifetime apprenticeship. St. Benedict acknowledges as much when he says:
Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may truly be called so …
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
In my own life, as much as I admire these tools and like to think I keep them in polished condition, the truth is that too often I misuse them or let them grow rusty. One of the great sorrows of my life is my relationship with my only brother. We were never close growing up. He is nine years older, and it seemed as if he belonged to a different generation. When I was ten, he was drafted into the army and never lived at home again. When I was in high school, he moved halfway across the country with his wife to live in Texas. When my parents retired, they moved from their home in New Jersey to Texas, at my brother’s urging. I was living in Washington DC at the time. I admit I was sad and not a little piqued that my parents were selling my childhood home and had chosen to live close to my brother and not near me. Did it mean they loved him more?
A few months before my mother passed away, for reasons known only to herself, my mother asked me to handle my parents’ financial affairs if anything happened to her. She put my name on the bank accounts she shared with my father so that I could help him pay bills in the event she died before him. While we were making the funeral arrangements for my mother, my brother found out that my name was on the accounts. He flew into a rage. He believed he should have been placed in charge. It was he, after all, who had watched over my parents for twenty-two years following their retirement. That was true. He accused me of trying to benefit from the small nest egg my parents had saved and of wanting to take over their home. That, of course, was not true.
My response was to lash out at him. How dare he accuse me of trying to steal my own parents’ money? Just because he was older and the only male among my siblings, did that entitle him to be the one in charge? I let my hurt and pride bleed through the rest of our dealings as we tried to give my mother a dignified funeral. I was not yet familiar with these words from “The Tools for Good Works.”
“Do not repay one bad turn with another” (1 Thes 5:15; 1 Pet 3:9). Do not injure anyone, but bear injuries patiently. “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:44; Luke 6:27). If people curse you, do not curse them back, but bless them instead.
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
If I had been paying attention to Benedict’s tools and not my own ego, I might have empathized with my brother’s feeling of being marginalized. I might have focused on all that he had done for my parents in the years they had lived near him and thanked him for it. In fact, it was he who was in the hospital room with my mother when she died. I could have done all that. In anger, I didn’t.
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