Preparing to read The Rule

St. Benedict Delivers His Rule to the Monks. Image via Wikipedia

The Oblates will join the Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery in reading The Rule of Benedict straight through, beginning on January 1.  For this to work, each of you needs to have a copy of the The Rule, preferably with verse marks or daily divisions. There are several slightly different divisions of The Rule for daily reading; for our purposes, it doesn’t much matter which one you choose, as they keep pace with each other pretty well. Following are some options:

• Daily Readings from the Rule of Benedict – a free online resource using the traditional Leonard Doyle translations. Even-numbered chapters refer to a female superior and monastic, odd-numbered to males.  This edition can also be delivered to you each day by email from the Subscription Page (it’s free)
• Study of the Rule of St. Benedict – a free online study with commentary by the monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.  Divided by chapters rather than reading dates, but verse numbers are available.
• Rule of Saint Benedict in English (RB 1980) – this is the little red book of The Rule that most of you received when you became Oblate Candidates. It does not have the division into daily readings, but it does have the verses marked.
• The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century seems to be an updated version of  Sister Joan Chittister’s beloved commentary book on The Rule, The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (Crossroad Spiritual Legacy).
• The Rule of St. Benedict  a Kindle edition for 0.99 with text-to-speech enabled (probably a very old translation)
• A Reader’s Version of the Rule in Inclusive Language paraphrase from Benetvision Press
• A Life-Giving Way: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, the classic commentary by Anglican Esther de Waal, which seems to contain each chapter of The Rule as she comments on it.
• Saint Benedict’s Rule, Patrick Barry’s modern paraphrase / translation. Many monastic communities have used this at some of their readings, because the language has been paraphrased to be more general, referring to community members rather than monks and leaders rather than abbots.
• Rule of St. Benedict, Latin & English, a translation by Fr. Luke Dysinger.  This is actually my favorite translation, and it’s no longer in print. The link takes you to a downloadable MS-Word document.  Fr. Dysinger arranged the document with words in black when they were unique to St. Benedict and brown where they overlapped with the text of The Rule of the Master – so readers of this translation see the heart of Benedict shining through uniquely.

As you can tell, there are many choices for reading The Rule; there are other little books and older translations still in circulation that are also fine.  The simplest, for most of you, will be to read the little red copy that you already have.  However, as you can tell, there are opportunities to read The Rule for free online, or to download and print your own copy.

If any of the Oblates or Oblate candidates has difficulty getting a copy of The Rule, please be in touch with me: I will be happy to work with you on it.

Related articles

• Becoming an Oblate (oblatejourney.wordpress.com)
• Musings on the Rule – 15xi2011 (andrewdoohan.wordpress.com)

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