Lessons from Saint Benedict: Finding Joy in Daily Life

Part of a collection written over twenty years, Lessons from Saint Benedict contains 26 letters written by Donald Raila, O.S.B., a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey. Using the 1500-year-old Rule of Benedict and Benedictine spirituality as his foundation, Father Donald offers words of spiritual encouragement and guidance for persevering through the journey of daily life. With the Gospel and Rule of Benedict as guides, Raila says, we can learn to see God's graces in every dimension of our lives, even the most seemingly mundane. Father Donald provides both serious and light-hearted examples from his own life to demonstrate how we can renew and strengthen our spirituality through the daily grind, and perhaps even find joy in the process.

Who can deny that the rule of Saint Benedict is one of the great treasures of the Church? It is a wonderfully balanced approach to growing in faith and prayerfulness, and there can be no doubt that it has brought many people closer to Christ over many centuries. Yet often we think that this rule can be employed only within the confines of the cloister. Composed by the Father of Western Monasticism over fifteen hundred years ago, the Rule of Saint Benedict may seem at first glance to be distant from our contemporary life, and we may assume that it has little to say to us. In fact, however, the exact opposite is true. The calm and balance inherent in the Rule of Saint Benedict can be of great benefit to each of us – priest, religious, or layman – as we strive to bring order and perhaps even a moment or two of peace into our relentlessly driven post-modern lives. The Rule of Saint Benedict has helped countless people in their endeavor to turn from the clamoring of the world to the serenity of God. It can help us, as well.

In Lessons from Saint Benedict: Finding Joy in Daily Life Fr. Donald S. Raila, OSB offers us a beautiful and gentle distillation of some of the most important elements of this magnificent rule. Drawing on his long experience as Director of Oblates at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, he presents the Rule in a way that is not only comprehensible to contemporary lay people but is manageable by them, as well. His examples are relevant and helpful, and he is very adept at showing us how to examine our lives in terms of the Rule in a way that exposes our many foibles and failings – things that keep us separated from God but which we rarely even notice. He shows us again and again ways to recognize and eventually even overcome those things that impede our spiritual growth. This is a slender volume of meditations, but its size is deceptive. If properly used it can make a real difference in the lives of many people.

I am very pleased that Father Raila has collected some of his writings and agreed to let them be published here. I am also very excited to see that the works of Blessed Dom Columba Marmion, one of the greatest of Benedictine spiritual writers, are currently being reissued in new translations that are accessible to the modern reader.

Perhaps we are seeing signs of a Benedictine renaissance, an increase in interest in the work of Saint Benedict and the great Benedictine tradition. I hope this is the case, for as Father Raila shows so well, the magnificent Rule of Saint Benedict has the potential to enrich every Christian life and to bring real and lasting joy into every Christian soul.

As a Franciscan I am very aware that my own Seraphic Father was raised by the Benedictines. Even his home parish was attached to a Benedictine abbey, and the Benedictine influence in Saint Francis’s life must have been strong. It has always been my belief that these two great traditions, the Benedictine and the Franciscan, complement each other well and beautifully satisfy both the contemplative and evangelical vocations.