To Whom Do You Disciple? Part 1

My husband and I recently walked through a valley. You never really expect to walk through a valley until you’re suddenly there, in the dark, wondering how you got there in the first place. I felt like we were no longer walking on stable ground. I found my confidence shaken, asking the questions, “Are we here because of the way we are living? Do we even know how to live well?”

I started wondering who I could ask for help. Who knows how to live well? Who can teach me to live well? I imagine that St. Benedict asked some of those same questions when he went to Rome, hoping to finish his education, but instead found himself surrounded by self-imposed heartache and blinded despair.

Our valley made us take a step back, much like I imagine St. Benedict did. Okay, maybe for him it was less of a step back and more of a step forward... into a cave. Regardless, it was a step. A step out of the world. A moment of statio — time to listen, pause, and reflect. My husband and I knew that after this valley, life wouldn’t be the same. But what would it look like now? What we heard came from Jesus as recorded in John 21:5 — “Behold, I make all things new” — and John 14:6, when He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

I’m smiling thinking that St. Benedict looked to the same Teacher, Jesus, and heard the same thing. Here’s my proof from Chapter 73 of the Rule: “What page, what passage of the inspired books of the Old and New Testaments is not the truest of guides for human life? What book of the holy catholic Fathers does not resoundingly summon us along the true way to reach the Creator?”

Using the Word of God and the traditions from the first followers of Jesus, St. Benedict started to write. He wrote a whole new way of living: The Rule. I’d like to suggest that we could also think of “The Rule” as “The Discipline,” or the Latin Disciplina. It means instruction or training, and it comes from the root word meaning, to learn. What were we learning and who was teaching us?

And yet, you might cringe at the word discipline, thinking of childhood or teenage mistakes and resulting punishments. Or, like me right now, thinking that discipline is how I can convince (okay, force) my three-year-old son to not tackle his sister. Or, perhaps, it’s been given to you as praise. “You work so hard, you’re committed, you’re disciplined.” Maybe that’s been a compliment about how often you get to the gym or how devoted you are to your field of study.

Whatever it is, whether a parent teaching a child the proper way to act or your own learning how to say yes to goodness, the point is that your life is a discipline. You are a disciple! But of what?