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New Year Resolutions

While everyone else is making (and breaking?) their New Year Resolutions, Benedictines are back at the beginning again, on the first page of the Rule of St Benedict. I am surely not alone in experiencing a little thrill of joy whenever I hear anew those beloved words "Obsculta, O fili, praecepta magistri" (Listen carefully my child to the teaching of the master). As the Prologue unfolds, we are reminded that it is our failure to listen, especially with the ear of the heart, that is quite literally at the root of disobedience and sin and hence of our brokenness and ill-at-easeness. The remedy is simple: stripping ourselves of self-will, as though it were an encumbrance, and allowing our wills to align themselves with God's. Simplistic? Too theoretical? Anyone who has tried it will realise what a struggle it involves, and how impossible it is without prayer. That's why St Benedict encourages us, right at the start of the Rule, to begin every good work with prayer. That's not a bad idea for those New Year Resolutions, either.