Browsing tag: discipline

  • Comfort The Wayward

    The abbot must exercise the utmost care and concern for wayward brothers . . . .  Therefore, he ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in . . . mature and wise brothers who . . . may support the wavering brother, urge him to be humble as a way of making satisfaction, and console him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Rather, as the Apostle also says: Let love for him be reaffirmed [2 Corinthians 2:7-8], and let all pray for him. (Rule of St. Benedict 27)

    Human beings are not born hard-hearted. They become hard-hearted when parents teach them a sense of impunity. We have to correct our children so that they will learn to distinguish right from wrong. When the child seems ungovernable, the parents need to pray for wisdom.

    But parents should not leave a child to figure out the next step alone. A parent should take care to intervene and to discuss the situation. You have to explain the punishment and point the way forward. A contrary child needs to hear explicitly what behavior the parent wants to see.

    If an older sibling steps up to take on the job of remonstrating with and comforting the wayward child, the parents should let the brother or sister handle the situation. Children can sometimes come up with wacky but effective solutions to domestic problems. Adolescents can at times be more insightful about the dynamics of a conflict than their parents are. It’s a good exercise for an older child to attempt to mediate. It also benefits the younger one to interact with a sibling who is taking on the role of intercessor and adviser.

    Ultimate responsibility of course rests with the parents. We must take care that no bitterness takes root to estrange siblings from each other or to alienate a child from father or mother.

     

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  • Persevere

    For Scripture has it: Anyone who perseveres to the end will be saved, [Matthew 10:22]and again, Be brave of heart and rely on the Lord. [Psalm 27:14].  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.36-37)

    Discipline for a goal always was, and still is worth it.

    People with ordinary faces get up every day and keep going: for the sake of their children; for the sake of what is right and true and good; for love.

    Any goal worth reaching will point you uphill.  Hell is the other way.  There’s a broad, paved road with a gentle slope downhill, and all the cool people are on it, crowds of them.  If you were drifting with them but decide to turn around, you’ll have to fight your way through them, and they shove hard.  You will impede their fun.

    The question that pulses and pants and gets a headache is: what am I doing this for?

    Heaven beckons like a five-star vacation.  The Church promises that it’s already booked and paid for.

    But you’ve got to do the walking.  It’s a long hike through tough terrain.  Hardship doesn’t mean you’re guilty.  Hardship means you’re human, and still trying.

    God is always at work everywhere for good: within you too.  He will sustain you.  Bet your life on it.

    Sure, take a break and see if you can prove something.  But the choice always comes down to going on or giving up.  Therefore, people who are sweating uphill are probably honest when they offer help. Try being grateful, and accept it.  Hoist yourself to your feet.  It’s called perseverance. In other words, it means sending weight to bear on your forward foot when your toes pinch and your heel blisters.

    There’s a clear enough path when you start out. But then it wears thin and blends into the rock you’re balancing on.  Next thing you know, you’re craning your neck up a cliff face.  Walking was the easy part. You tell yourself it’s time to turn around and find that highway you were too good for.

    Others have been this way before: learn from them.  For instance, wear the harness.  Use the ropes.  You will surely slip and fall, but humility will save your life every time.  Free solo climbers will not pray or obey.

    Muscles clench that you didn’t know were in you.  The hissing sound is your own breath.  Fingertips are all the grip you’ve got.

    Someone slips and showers you with dirt and fragments.  The echo of that scream does not fade away.

    Or was that a jumper?  Jumpers are never alone.  They always drag a few others who were strapped to them.

    Certainly there are prayers that God seems in no hurry to answer. But when you pray for strength to do the right thing, he comes through, especially when there’s someone else roped to you and your fingers have gone numb.

    Sometimes he answers so fast that by the end of the day you’re kicking back on a plateau, enjoying the view.  When everyone you care about is getting along and helping each other, you might as well be in heaven.  You’ve already got what it’s all about.

    Pace yourself.  The tough parts push you beyond your limits.  That’s what getting stronger feels like.

    For a long time it’s awful, but the day comes when you flex your fingertips and don’t cramp.  You’re hanging off the next cliff, but it’s your cliff.  You own it.

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  • Love Your Enemies

    Love your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6: 27-35).  (RB 4. 31)

    Loving your enemies sounds like a nice idea until you actually have enemies yourself.

    An enemy is not merely someone with whom you disagree.  You can disagree with your friends passionately and perpetually.

    Nor is an enemy an opponent in a game.  An opponent recognizes the same rules you do.

    “Love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:10), but your enemies will accuse you anyway, even if you haven’t done anything to harm them.  They insult and threaten you when you had no thought of interfering with them at all.  An enemy is someone who acts on the intent to wrong you.

    As Christians, if we must love our enemies, and if love does no wrong to a neighbor, we cannot ourselves be anyone’s enemy, can we?

    So the enemy is not our neighbor. . . .  Aha!

    Nope.  The parable of the Good Samaritan shows that we must be good neighbors to everyone, even longstanding enemies.

    Maybe we’ve misunderstood love.  God is love, but God is not our slave.  Neither are we enslaved to those we love. A Christian concept of love is essentially voluntary.  Love ends where coercion begins.

    Christian love does set aside the self-interest of the moment for the good of the other person.  But the good of the other person is not always what that person demands.  When someone wants something that is not good, you say no, for love’s sake.

    Love yields and sacrifices, but love is not suicidal.  God is the one who called you into being.  Therefore you must exist, and this may include resistance.

    We know that “the Lord disciplines those he loves” (Hebrews 12:6; Proverbs 3:12).  Therefore a Christian concept of love includes setting boundaries and enforcing standards.  Without wronging anyone, you can communicate that you find the insults offensive and the threats alarming.  Make sure your enemies realize how they’re affecting you.  Sometimes people don’t know that they’re hurting you.  It may be that your enemy is not a beast.

    So give the benefit of the doubt.  Make space.  Swim away.  There’s room enough in the ocean for both of you.

    If, after you’ve peaceably turned away from a fight, your enemy pursues you, intent on dominating you wherever you may be, it is time to enforce the principle at issue.  Whatever rule you enforce on your enemy must be one that you yourself are abiding by.  To govern your own behavior by the same standards that you apply to others is one aspect of loving your neighbor as yourself.  And the standard you try to live by was not invented by you.  For example: loving your enemy.

    Like animals, humans will usually decide it’s not worth the trouble of bothering you, once they discover that you’re peaceable when left alone but determined to defend yourself when attacked.  There are occasions when Christians are inspired by the Holy Spirit to set aside their right to self-defense, imitating Christ’s sacrifice.  But no human being has the authority to require someone else’s self-sacrifice.  And if you’re the only one standing between your enemy and someone weaker than yourself, love may require that you fight.

    There may come a time when your enemy is too big for you to handle alone.  In this situation, escape is what you should aim for.  Escape first, and then work on making new friends, so you’re not alone next time.  A cohesive group is unappealing to aggressors.  They’re looking for vulnerable singletons to pick off.

    If only this were the end of it.  We could take a break, go home, be safe.  But sometimes strangers are not the problem.  The enemy is someone close.  Does loving your enemy include suffering wrongs at the hands of the one you love?  These are deep waters, and murky.  Explain the situation to a kind stranger. There are times when it’s the stranger who is your friend.

    And then there’s the enemy who used to love you.  This is the one who will break your heart.  Why did this person despise your devotion and turn against you, treating you with contempt?  There’s nothing quite like the distress of loving the enemy who once was dear.  The world seethes with ex-spouses, ex-lovers and so many other exes who are now enemies.

    On an ordinary day without tragedy, loving any of them comes down to treating people well who do not reciprocate your efforts.  Converse cheerfully with complainers.  Keep calm during a hostile confrontation.  Patiently put up with irritations.  Kindly share with those who’ve been selfish.  Remain reliable even with those who are deceitful.  Retain self-control around those who’ve rejected discipline. Intercede for those who’ve wronged you.

    God himself promises to reward us if we behave well toward those who behave badly toward us.  Nothing anyone can say will ever make this easy, but the Holy Spirit can make it possible.

     

     

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  • Curb Your Urge

    For this reason Scripture warns us, Pursue not your lusts Sirach 18:30.  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.25)

    We live in a culture where it’s supposed to be fun to let yourself go.  People announce that they’re about to let themselves go, and then they do it.  Not only do they not feel shame: they expect you to pat them on the back.  Most of the time they act with good humor, and with no thought of harming themselves or anyone else.  The binge is benign these days.

    Until it’s not.  The fact is that we have countless people who are suffering the tragic consequences of their own impulses–or worse, of someone else’s.  Some of them refuse to admit responsibility.  But others are discouraged, because they’ve tried and failed to change.

    Self-control is not an instant thing.  It’s the work of a lifetime.  It’s the practice of a life well-lived.

    If you want to be an athlete or an artist or any sort of skilled worker, you start at the beginning and practice basic moves first.  Checking your own impulse is one of the most basic moves of all.  It’s an element of any future action.  It’s not just that refraining from one action frees up time and energy for an alternative.  Curbing your impulse also builds strength and skill.  These in turn open up new possibilities that would otherwise have remained out of reach.

    A century of Freudian psychology has led us to assume that checking an impulse means repressing desire.  When you repress a desire, you don’t act on it, but it comes out in some other, weird way that you don’t control and that you may not even be aware of.  So you might as well let yourself go.

    Suffering the consequences?  That’s someone else’s specialty.  Next, please.

    The difference between self-control and repression is that self-control does not suppress desire.  Self-control nurtures and trains desire.  While the binge lets desire loose, without regard for other people, self-control keeps desire on a leash and exercises it with consideration for others.

    The lure of the binge is easy pleasure fast.  But the thrill tends to decrease with repetition.  You work harder to get less.  And you suffer the side effects.  With self-control, on the other hand, you start small, but the enjoyment increases with practice.  And the horizons are infinite.

    The best the binge can claim is not to have harmed anyone else.  But self-control allows you to do good to others actively.

    People who can’t control their impulses only get along with others who want to do the same thing at the same time in the same way.  When a whole collection of individuals are all out of control together, they meld into a mob.  The mob tramples any divergent individual.  But then the frenzy burns out, and the mob disperses.  The same individuals go back to competing ruthlessly against each other.  They separate, each alone with an ungoverned desire.  The endpoint is a life without any relationships at all: just interactions that serve the appetite.

    But self-control allows you to live in community.  Christian community aims not to meld but to harmonize individual desires.  It’s a complex challenge, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we do make a life together.  This calls for active participation on the part of each one, rather than a passive letting go.

    Life in a family is a training ground for harmony.  Baby learns to sleep at night long enough for Mom to get the rest she needs.  Baby learns to go for longer without eating, so that eventually the child’s habits match the habits of the family.  In practice this effort takes years, and every time a new baby arrives, another individual process is thrown into the mix.  Easy is not part of the deal.

    But the endpoint is paradise, which Jesus describes as a banquet Matthew 22:1-14; 25:1-13.  A banquet is a fancy dinner where people dress their best, eat together and enjoy each other’s company.  When you have a family sitting down to a meal together, you have a foretaste of heaven.  The food may be simple.  The clamor around your table may not sound divine.  But consider what you’ve achieved: you’ve taken human beings from a state of chaos to a state of sociability.  Even if it’s not yet heaven, it is the foundation of civil society, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

    Ultimately: heaven.  Here and now: a functioning society.  Earliest of all: a family meal.  But it all begins with harmonizing individual impulses.  And so, each one of us must achieve a measure of self-control.

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  • Hold Yourself Together

    You must not be proud, nor be given to wine Titus 1:7; 1 Timothy 3:3.  Refrain from too much eating or sleeping, and from laziness Romans 12:11.  Do not grumble or speak ill of others.  (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 34-40)

    Hold yourself together. You let yourself go when you begin to imagine yourself superior to other people.  Or maybe you tend to drink too much, or eat too much.  When you don’t bother to take care of the task you’re responsible for, that’s another form of letting yourself go.  And then there’s the letting go of complaining or gossip.

    So keep hold of yourself.  Watch your attitude and your personal habits.  Watch what you say.

    Ask the Holy Spirit to grant you discernment. Then set your goals for the weeks ahead. Don’t try to hit all of them every day. Spread them out over the course of the week.

    Monday: Watch my attitude. Be thankful.

    Tuesday: Watch what I eat.

    Wednesday: Take care of that obligation that’s been sitting on the back burner.

    Thursday: I know, I know…

    Friday: No gossip.

    Saturday: No getting drunk.  (If the party’s on Friday, switch the last two.)

    Sunday: Go to church.  Rest.

    God commands a day of rest most explicitly of all. It’s one of the original Ten Commandments. The purpose of your life is not perpetual accomplishment. Your purpose is to live in harmony with your Creator, who called you into being and who sustains your existence at every moment. When you take a day to rest, you acknowledge that your life and all your efforts depend on the grace of God. You remember that it’s the Holy Spirit who is at work within you to transform you.

    When you’re examining yourself, keep in mind that self-control is like the fortified perimeter around your soul. The devil only needs a breach in one section to move in and out at will. So don’t make the mistake of dismissing your one vice because of how good you are in other areas. Your one vice can ruin your life all by itself. Your one vice can blight the lives of everyone who depends on you. Your spiritual enemy, just like all enemies attacks at the point of vulnerability. 

    On the other hand, don’t make the mistake of obsessing about your area of greatest weakness. It’s a mistake to focus all your energies on your worst habit, because you’ll quickly become exhausted. When you’re exhausted, you’re easily discouraged. Then you want to give up on everything. When you’ve given up, it’s even harder to try again.

    But when you work regularly on all fronts, you’ll do quite well most days without heroic efforts. You’ll accomplish some positive things that make you feel victorious. It’s important to come to an awareness not only of your weaknesses but of your strengths. This helps you keep up hope. By exercising discipline systematically across all fronts, you’ll build up confidence and gain experience. Eventually you’ll be able to tackle that one thing that has always seemed impossible.

    Do expect sabotage attempts. Ask for help. Don’t try to go it alone.

    Five days out of the week you can manage pretty well. One day all hell breaks loose. One day you collapse into the hands of God and lie still.

    Then by the grace of God you get up and try again.

     

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  • Eat Your Vegetables

    Raising Kids

    …we must be vigilant every hour… (Rule of St. Benedict 7.29)

    The kid who is old enough to chew solid food will also be smart enough to realize that you’re cooking peas with his pasta.

    He’s willful enough to feel insulted.

    He’s passionate enough to throw a screaming fit.

    Because you’re a Christian mother–loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and self-controlled–you don’t beat him with your wooden spoon at the end of a long, hard day.  Instead, you pour yourself a glass of wine, turn up the music, get down in his face with the bag of frozen peas and say: WATCH ME.  Then in defiance of his will you add the peas to the ziti while he howls and kicks on the ground at your feet.

    So what if he removes every pea from his bowl and refuses to eat even one?  So what if he peers into each tube of ziti and sticks his finger in it to expel each internal pea?  You’ve held the line.  You’ve retained your principles.  That was the Battle of the Peas, and you won it.

    When he’s a little older, you’ll no longer permit him to remove all vegetable matter from his personal space.  Even if he won’t taste the broccoli, he must tolerate it.  He may not remove it to the table, or throw it on the floor, or foist it onto someone else’s plate.  He must suffer the presence of the hated green thing.  When at last he resigns himself to its existence, you’ve won the First Battle of Broccoli.

    Then there’s the Second Battle to fight: he’s got to taste the broccoli.

    When he gags and vomits at your dinner table, you feel disheartened.  You’ve already toiled through years of cooking for an ungrateful, complaining family.  Now you want to give up and never eat again–not with them.  But the night is darkest just before the dawn.  The little boy who gags on his broccoli will one day volunteer to cook dinner for his whole family (Fettuccine Alfredo; extra Parmesan; no peas).

    Far, far more important than the presence or absence of vegetables are the social principles he has internalized:

    1. Everything the cook serves must be TASTED.
    2. The one who provides dinner must be THANKED.
    3. If you want it different, do it YOURSELF.

    The first two principles are essential to civilization.  The laws of hospitality are older than Abraham. Flaunt them at your peril.  The third undergirds a free society.

    So persevere.  One day you’ll reap the rewards of having trained your children in good habits.  When you feel yourself flagging, just take a look around at the consequences of giving up.  Habits of self-control and principle go far beyond food choices.  Children who’ve learned that food consumption is not an act of self-worship will later be able to put other forms of consumption into context.  Habits acquired in childhood are difficult to break.

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  • Punish For Posterity

    He should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while he can, as soon as they begin to sprout, remembering the fate of Eli, priest of Shiloh 1 Samuel 2:11-4:18….  Strike your son with a rod and you will free his soul from death Proverbs 23:14. (Rule of St. Benedict 2.26-29)

    Punishment is not retribution.  The purpose of punishment is to bar the way to a wrong path and to redirect the child toward the right way.  Punishment is no one’s favorite thing, but it’s an aspect of discipline that sometimes becomes necessary.

    Corporal punishment generally is called for when it’s the only way to teach the lesson.  It is fair to spank the child who throws a fit and kicks her mother.  “That hurts!” she cries.  Yes, and that’s the whole point of why you’re not allowed to kick and hit.

    There is an age that feels like an eon: between the time when a child starts to walk, and the time he learns how to talk.  During this phase, the child may be a mortal danger to himself, but he can’t understand anything you say.  This crazy person responds only to emotion and physical stimulus.  Yet each day he acquires a new skill–you never know which one next.

    Don’t spank with anything but the flat of your hand.  You will feel the sting too, and this will deter you from smacking too hard or too long.  No smack should produce any physical result more severe than transitory pink flush on the skin.  Aim to be habitually gentle and calm, so you’ll make an impression on your child when it really counts. The time to get angry and spank him is when he runs into the street and tries to throw himself in front of a truck. Next time when you call his name in that tone of voice, he’ll look back.

    Sometimes it’s satisfying to all concerned to spank the table or the chair, or whatever inanimate object can take the blame for an unfortunate event.  Children haven’t yet lost their sense of humor.

    Transgression of a law of God requires a serious response.  If the child is old enough to know she should not steal, she must return the stolen object to the owner and also apologize for taking it.  She needs to learn that stealing is not just about the object.  It’s an offense against a human being.

    If she learns not to steal from stores but still pilfers around the house, enforce boundaries.  If she tends to take your jewelry, lock up your jewelry.  Even adults have a hard time distinguishing between accessibility and permissibility.  Make the forbidden thing harder to get, so there’s a clear distinction between what she can use and what not to touch.

    If she goes to her grandmother’s house and steals the new purse that she knew was meant to be her sister’s birthday present, and then lies about it, you’ve got to take forceful action to break a habit that she’s now justifying to herself.

    Punishment to be effective must be aversive.  If it works for other people, but your child is clearly indifferent to it, then you’re going to have to think of something else.  This is especially true if you’re trying to break a bad habit, and your child seems to be factoring in your usual punishment as the price of doing business.  You might consider old-fashioned slapping of the palms with a ruler.  But you must react.  Grind routine to a stop until you’ve dealt with the problem.

    And then you redirect her.  Define what she did wrong, but also detail what behavior you want to see instead, and how she could have behaved differently in the situation she faced.  Tell her that you don’t want her to grow up to be a thief.  You do want her to grow up to be an honest person.

    You get angry because you care.  Parents who don’t care are already long gone.  But if you feel that you’re approaching a point where you can’t control your anger, give yourself a time out.  Walk away, lock the door behind you, and pray.  It’s the responsibility of parents to develop a Christian character, and gentleness is intrinsic to that character.  We practice thanking God for the good things in our lives and allow the Holy Spirit to reassert joy in our hearts.  He wants us to become patient, gentle and self-controlled.  Then we’ll be fit to correct our children when they go wrong.

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  • Discipline To Win

    In his teaching, the abbot should always observe the Apostle’s recommendation, in which he says: Use argument, appeal, reproof 2 Timothy 4:2. This means that he must vary with circumstances, threatening and coaxing by turns, stern as a taskmaster, devoted and tender as only a father can be. (Rule of St. Benedict 2.23-24)

    The purpose of discipline is to train children in good behavior, directing them along the right path.

    Training and language acquisition go hand in hand. Really you do want your children to learn how to argue on their own behalf. So engage the arguing child with a counter-argument, even as you enforce discipline. Surely you have a reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing? Explain it. Sometimes your motivations are beyond logic: verbalize your emotions too. Announce to your children that you’re about to become very, very angry. It does make a difference when you give them verbal warnings, rather than assuming that they can read your mind. And when you reprove the child for an error, spell out how it was wrong.

    There are parents who tolerate no divergence from their own opinions, decisions and emotions. Nor do they consider that they owe any explanation for the punishments they inflict. So, their children may not even understand what they did wrong, or what they should do next time instead. These parents may obtain impressive results in the short run, but they hinder the development of the initiative their children will need in order to function as adults. When they repress honest dissent, they create the conditions for deceit to flourish. As in larger scale dictatorships, the only options are subservience, rebellion or exile.

    At the other end of the spectrum are the parents who abdicate authority. They discuss options even with young children as though they were peers, without enforcing any discipline. They appeal to a child’s good nature without taking action to thwart the child’s bad impulses. Then they reproach the child for bad behavior without imposing consequences. It’s these nice parents who then complain about how disappointing their teenagers are, when they turn out not to have learned any sense of responsibility, compassion or moral obligation.

    Wise parents vary the approach with the circumstances. You threaten sparingly, because at the end of the day when you’re tired, you’d rather relax than inflict punishments–but you will follow through. You coax cautiously, because you know that children can turn the tables on you and transform bribery into blackmail. You’re stern on principles, but you’re tender on feelings. You’re usually clever, but if you make a mistake, you admit it.

    You teach right from wrong not just in theory, but in a practical way. If a young child steals something from a store, you take her back and require her to replace the object where she found it. When she took it, she didn’t have any concept of stealing: now she does. By making her put it back, you enforce the lesson that the thing that does not belong to her must stay where it is. For some children, this simple, mild intervention is all they’ll ever need. Once she realizes it’s wrong, she’ll never do it again.

    Children misbehave because of any number of factors. The challenge for parents is to observe and deduce what the causes may be, and to address those causes first. A hungry child gets fed. An exhausted child gets bedtime. Injuries both visible and invisible get appropriate treatment. Complicated teenage tangles get hours of conversation. Mistakes get the benefit of the doubt. Extenuating circumstances get full consideration.

    When a child is clearly obedient, docile and patient, you extend a gentle appeal. There’s no excuse for hurting the feelings of a well-meaning child who is making every effort to comply with expectations but through weakness has made a mistake.

    Realize that you too experience all sorts of variables that influence your behavior. Maybe you need to let go of something else you’re expending energy on, in order to have the resources you need to discipline your children constructively. Don’t be the father who didn’t bother. Don’t be the mother who always had something else to do. Engage with your children. Come alongside to help. When you slow down to walk side by side with them and focus at their level, you’ll find that you do have the experience you need to sort things out.

     

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  • The Call: Awake!

    Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time for us to arise from sleep” Romans 13:11 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.8)

    This “sleep” is the spiritual stupor of ordinary people who imagine that the front line is somewhere else. They think that they themselves have no responsibility for the outcome of the battle. They presume that they will suffer no consequences for their complacent inaction.

    I myself had an experience of a call involving Scripture and a stirring up from physical sleep, on a particular occasion.  At about 2 a.m., the morning of June 19, 2012, I woke up with the urgent sense that I should post verses of Scripture online.  So I thought, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

    But the urgency increased.  I felt that I must check what the readings for the day were–not in the Upper Room guide to prayer that I’d been using for twenty-two years, but in the Catholic Missal, which I had downloaded on my phone at some point but had never even opened before.  I fumbled with my phone in the middle of the night and read the readings: 1 Kings 21: 17-29 (the Lord sends Elijah to confront Ahab). Then there was Psalm 51 (“…in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense….). The Gospel was Matthew 5: 43-48 (“love your enemies“).  Then I checked the daily Bible verse and saw Acts 17:30-31:

    God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent, because he has established a day on which he will judge the world with justice through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.

    There was a “share” feature on the app to connect to Facebook.  It was urgent that I must do so immediately.  I signed in, and I posted the verse.

    This experience had never happened to me before.  It hasn’t happened again since.  Afterwards, trying to come to terms with it, I explained to God that this was the wrong message to the wrong person at the wrong time.

    First of all, these days God does not “demand” anything.  God is lucky if anyone condescends to acknowledge that he might exist.  Second, if God wants to get a message out to all people everywhere, my Facebook page is not the place to do it.  Third, people these days don’t repent.  A few religious people make a practice of repenting routinely, but the people who do most of the sinning aren’t interested in repentance at all.  There must have been some mistake.  The angel tapped the wrong person on the shoulder.  I don’t have the credentials, the platform, the authority, or the influence.

    But St. Benedict actually gives some insight into the call of God.  Seeking his workman in a multitude of people, the Lord calls out to him and lifts his voice again: “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” Psalm 34:12 (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.14-15)

    There’s a promise here, and it’s not just pie in the sky bye ‘n bye.  The promise of God for those who will heed him is a good life beginning here and now.

    With this conclusion, the Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings.  Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds.  As the Apostle says, “Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repent?” Romans 2:4 (RB Prologue.35-37)

    The call to each of us is to translate into action daily the teachings that we believe to be true.  How do we live them out in ordinary life within a culture that has explicitly rejected them and that organizes itself along opposing principles?

    Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service.  In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome.  The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love.  Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation.  It is bound to be narrow at the outset. (RB Prologue.45-48)

    Every Christian home is such a school.  If the home is spiritually chaotic, then the child may emerge into adulthood unfit for any good purpose.  Discipline costs effort every day.  But the rejection of discipline costs far more. Everyone pays the price in illness, despair, loneliness and worse.  Rather than raging at evil in others elsewhere, let us combat it where we are.  The battle for good against evil will be won or lost in our own homes.

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