The Prologue and the Rule (Prologue 2)

2 Jan. 3 May. 2 Sept.
Let us then at length arise, since the Scripture stirreth us up, saying: “It is time now for us to rise from sleep.” And our eyes being open to the deifying light, let us hear with wondering ears what the Divine Voice admonisheth us, daily crying out: “Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” And again, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches.” And what saith He? “Come, my children, hearken to Me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Run while ye have the light of life, lest the darkness of death seize hold of you.”

2 January 2026
Prologue vv. 8-13

The traditional rubrics for the reading of the Holy Rule in Chapter make a clear distinction between the Prologue and the Rule proper; during the reading of the Prologue the text is introduced as ‘From the Prologue of Our Holy Father Benedict to his Rule’. At the beginning of Chapter 1, the rubrics read ‘The beginning of the Rule of Our Holy Father Benedict’, and from that point on the reading is introduced as ‘From the Rule of Our Holy Father Benedict, Chapter N [for a new chapter]’, or ‘From Chapter N of the Rule of Our Holy Father Benedict’.

This may seem like fussing over rubrics; in fact the rubrics aim to help convey a sense of the literary makeup of the Holy Rule, which like the literary form of the Scriptures themselves is the means which the Holy Spirit has chosen to use to convey his truth to us. Study of the literary structure of the Holy Rule is certainly not the most important aspect of understanding it, but it can be quite helpful all the same.

For our purposes today, it is worth noting that the Prologue represents a quite distinct element of the Holy Rule—so much so that, properly speaking, as the rubrics suggest, it is actually not part of the Rule as such, but rather, as its name implies, the word which comes before it, preparing us to receive the Rule in the proper spirit. Father Terence Kardong notes: ‘While the Rule itself is mostly a dispassionate arrangement of practical cenobitical life, the Prologue is a warm, engaging allocution addressed to an individual.’ Further, ‘[t]he occasion seems to be one of initiation, whether that of baptism or monastic profession.’ (Terrence G. Kardong OSB, Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996 [hereafter, Kardong], p. 26)

It has been suggested by a number of commentators that the body of the Prologue is based on an ancient baptismal sermon. There is certainly much here that is an allusion in some way to the baptismal grace, particularly, in today’s passage, the image of light. We hear of the ‘deifying light’, and are told to run while we have the light of life. Such language, for the early Church, would easily have called Baptism to mind, for ‘enlightenment’ (photismos) was one of the names by which Holy Baptism was called. ‘Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.’ (Eph 5:14)

Those last words, given by Saint Paul as a quotation, are often thought to come from the early Christian baptismal liturgy. We, in turn, recall them as the words said to us after the prayer of monastic consecration. For we know that an ancient tradition, a tradition quite possibly reflected in this passage of the Holy Rule, views monastic profession as a second baptism. People today are sometimes uncomfortable with such language. Kardong expresses the common contemporary concern with the danger of ‘an elitist ideology that posits an inner circle of monastic Christians who have actualized what ordinary Christians have achieved only in potential terms.’ (Kardong, p. 27) However, Kardong notes that Saint Benedict avoids this problematic ‘elitism’, and he quotes another modern commentator, Burckhard Neunheuser, on the legitimacy of the baptismal motif: ‘Today, many are wary of the traditional metaphor of monastic profession as a second baptism, for it seems to relativise the sacrament, and it also sounds like self-salvation. But the notion probably stems from Origen’s rich and complex view of Christian life as dynamic growth….the original sacrament must be merely the beginning of a long process of growth, culminating in final union with God.’ (Kardong, p. 28)

Of course, it would be an error to think that monks are the only real Christians. At the same time, the Church has always recognised the objective excellence of the monastic state, and seen in it a necessary witness in the Church to the radical demands that the Gospel makes on every Christian. For those who receive the grace of the monastic vocation, properly tested and recognised by the Church, the monastic life is indeed an indispensable means for living our baptismal vocation, and advancing towards the perfection of divine union, of deification, which begins with the deifying light given in Baptism.