At Work
A Blessed Life
Benedictine Guidelines for Those Who Long for Good Days
By Wil Derkse
Translated by Martin Kessler
Liturgical Press 2009
Collegeville, Minnesota
ISBN 978-0-8146-1863-9
$11.95
From the introduction:
…Two things are clear at once. Benedict’s program is fully dynamic: we need to hurry to give a good turn to our life. For the rest, it will subsequently appear that we, having made that choice, still have a long and patient way to go.
The second element is that Benedict offers a way of life which grants joy and contentment, a life on which blessing rests. Who does not long for “good days”?
The Benedictine perspective wants to be attractive, as we will read further on in the Prologue. That does not mean that this way is easy, but that is true of everything worthwhile. How much practice is needed before anyone can play the cello concert of Edward Elgar superbly?
Anyone who begins this way is often attracted by something or more often, by someone: an experience of a concert, or the film about the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, or a teacher. It costs a lot of effort and much guidance by experienced musicians to develop into a cellist who in turn know how to touch the souls of others. But what gratification and joy when the music really succeeds! At that point, the patient drudgery and persistent practice is forgotten.
Benedict presents to his candidates a comparable road: “We will therefore establish a training school for the service of the Lord. In its plan we hope to prescribe nothing that is too difficult, or that is too heavy.