Vigils Reading

THE PRECEPTS OF THE RULE

From “The Mirror of Charity” by St Aelred of Rievaulx

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Speaking about things having to do with charity, humility, patience, and

other virtues…what Christian is not obligated to these precepts? Does Benedict

recommend one kind of charity in his Rule and Augustine another in his? Does

not each recommend that charity which Christ recommends in the law and the

Gospel?

We can ask the same thing about the other virtues. Who in his right mind,

in exhorting others to virtue will say that these precepts are his and not rather

those of Christ? What difference will there be then among the precepts of the

different Rules? Surely, how to eat, dress, work, read, keep vigil, sing psalms,

correct and be corrected, and other things like this, because they are found to be

different in the different rules. Consequently, things said to be especially

characteristic of Basil or Augustine or Benedict are not imposed on all

Christians by gospel authority, but are simply proposed to them. To those who

profess these rules, however, they are no longer simply proposed, but they are

also imposed on them.

If these are not the things, what are? Obviously, everything they put into

their rules about charity, humility, and the other virtues, they recommend not

as their own precepts, but as the Lord’s. They invite not only monks but all

Christians to follow them, not as being their own (for who would believe them?),

but as being Christ’s. If obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict means

obeying the precepts of his Rule, and if the precepts of his Rule consist of the

things we have enumerated, how can anyone who does not keep them keep the

essential character of the monastic profession, since that obedience we profess

is the essential character of monastic profession?

He will perhaps say what certainly ought to be said: that we also profess

the first two according to the Rule, and he will affirm that it is not in stability of

place or obedience that diversity among the rules lies—since these same things

are binding on monks, clerics, canons, and bishops—but solely in conversion of

life. Is not one and the same obligation to stability incumbent upon all? Would

anyone be so presumptuous as to transfer from one place to another without the

consent of his superior?

Furthermore, if we do profess conversion of life, not according to the Rule

but simply in an indeterminate way, those who are called penitents in the

Church do the same, as do those who flee the shipwreck of fornication for the

port of marriage. Who among them does not promise conversion of life? Hence

for some diversity to be found among the diverse types of conversion of life

which are professed according to the diverse rules, there is nothing to which we

may have recourse except those traits which constitute the diversity…