The Benedictine Oblate route offers you a path toward spiritual growth and maturity.
The Benedictine Oblate exercises and practice are not in lieu of your Orthodox faith or Orthodoxy; rather it is intended to complement your faith. After all, St. Benedict is Orthodox…as was all of Christianity at that time. It could also be said that we were all Catholic. To state one or the other, as thought it is a zero sum decision, is an intellectual and spiritual error. There was, during St. Benedict’s lifetime, one holy catholic and apostolic church.
Spiritual growth and its maturation process is a process wherein one can pursue a regimen to learn how to pray…listen, incline, and practice one’s faith.
What the Short Breviary offers is an integration of the Bible with prayer – a path toward bible-based spirituality. What you are seeing on the website is only the surface, not the fullness of what may be gleaned from this path.
St. Benedict wrote the Rules to stand in their entirety – as a whole. For example, look at Prologue 1 and Rule 73.8 – Benedict was a genius! Only in these two places does he use imperatives. He begins and ends the Rules in essentially the same manner. All the while, in between the Prologue and Rule 73.8, he is seeking spiritual obedience from the monks (and, now, Oblates) to the Church, its Traditions, and its bible. When one is ‘schooled’ and or engages in a spiritual practice in a deliberate and disciplined manner, only then can one’s bible-based spirituality grow amplified by the Church, Tradition, and Patristic Fathers…more importantly, by God.
In my ministry I’ve seen too many people jump to the end – assume a very intellectual approach and hope their spirituality comes closely behind them. I am constantly asked, “How do I pray? What is spirituality? How do I become more spiritual?”
Spirituality does not just happen. Being Orthodox does not just happen. Both are a process of continual growth – spiritual maturation. Both are a way of life premised our Triune God and The Church which gave us our Holy Tradition and the Bible.
Relying on the intellectual approach alone is wrong, very wrong. Too many seminaries pursue the growth of the intellect and pay little attention to a candidate’s spiritual maturation. Too many parish priests do the same thing with their parishioners. This is not the Orthodox tradition.
Consider the child: he or she learns by listening and observing; the child then begins to emulate, to put into practice that which he or she has heard and seen. It lives the life his/her parents taught them long before it could begin to intellectualize the process. The Oblate approach is no less different.
Rely not on your intellect. Rely on your heart and your love of God…and He will teach you. Let Him teach you.
When was the last time you prayed?
Benedictine Orthodox Christian Oblates 