SOURCE: "Foreward," "The Cult of the Rule," and "The Rule of Today" in Serving God First: Insights on "The Rule of St. Benedict," translated by James Scharinger, Cistercian Publications, 1985, pp. 3-10.

[In the following excerpt from his Dieu premier servi (Serving God First), originally published in French in 1974, Kleiner comments on the spiritual importance of the Rule of St. Benedict and its enduring role in Christian life.]

Serve God First: there is here a norm, a measure, a hierarchy of values. It appears to be beyond question, yet it is not easy. We hear about the human crisis nowadays. A crisis is a reversal of values and criteria. Man has always had the tendency to want to be served first, but the formulation of a theory, a doctrine of self-service, has been reserved to our own day. An immense process of secularization is under way when God, having become an embarassment to man, is sent away to heaven's furthest corner, when indeed, he be not proclaimed dead. The world turns in upon itself and cuts itself off from God. In the past, secondary causes have sometimes been ignored; today the Primary Cause no longer counts. For many, religion has become a holiday ornament or a last resort against tragedy. Nothing remains of it in daily life, clinically purified as it is of the slightest practical faith. Man looks after himself, and religion becomes folklore or a refuge for those in trouble.

Now, religion is specifically the service of God. Serve God? Love God, yes; but serve? The word makes us uneasy. Yet we accept service to our brothers. Brotherhood is the religion of our times. 'Everything for man' is a slogan which pleases businessmen. Yet God, amazingly, has willed to adapt himself to that solidarity limited to man. In his Son, he became our brother. He came not to be served, but to serve. Having entered on an equal footing into human psychology, he made himself the servant of our salvation, our well-being.

He did all this, however, not to put man in God's place, but to introduce God among men, and to make us understand that we cannot establish durable fraternal relationships among ourselves without a Father who makes us brothers, who puts these relationships in order and gives us the Spirit of brotherhood: his Spirit. This Father is the God of justice, of love, of peace. It is through him that we are brothers.

To serve man well, then, we must know how to serve God. Where God is served first, man is served well. In reality, there is nothing more demanding, more absorbing, often more difficult than to serve man as he is. To be able to serve takes a good dose of self-forgetfulness. Jesus Christ teaches us this by making himself the servant of our well-being; in serving us, he did not turn his gaze away from his Father, because in giving himself to us, he served, obeyed, and loved his Father. Serving his brothers was for him the same as serving his Father. Besides, if man were to be served first, a thousand unanswered questions would immediately arise: who ought to be the first served? How and by whom ought man to be served in the first place? Ought the weak to serve the strong? Ought the strong to serve the weak? We are familiar with these questions.

To serve God first is to assure that man will truly be served, not according to beautiful theories which suppose him to be naturally good, or which impose a so-called universal brotherhood among the privileged while sacrificing others, but according to the divine plan whereby God is the Father of all without discrimination.

This is precisely the image which the Rule of St Benedict suggests. It is a rule of service to God and to one's brothers. From morning until evening, the monk is in service. On entering the monastic life, he learns to recognize 'the duties of his service' (RB 49:5). This is first of all the Opus Dei (RB 16:2, 50:4), but also the full ascetical and community life of the monk (RB 49, 71, 72). At the 'school of the Lord's service' (Prol. 45), the monk learns that all the services he renders to his brother end in God, and that the Lord is always therefore served first.

Vigorously trained by the Rule to seek God in everything he does (RB 58:37), to have God always present (RB 7, 14, 23), to realize that he is continuously seen and observed by God (RB 4:49, 7:13), to think of him and to love him above all things (4:1), the monk lets himself be carried along the way on which he has set out by the Rule he observes, and so does not turn away from his orientation toward God, who becomes more and more the center of his thoughts.

Is this a diversion of human energies toward a God who has no need of the poor services man may render him, while our neighbor remains in trouble? This objection is justified by certain disorders. Some people accumulate riches very negligibly ordained to the glory of God, while at the same time the poor lack basic necessities. The true service of God, far from neglecting man, sees God in one's neighbor and serves God in him. It would be an illusion to want to go to God without passing through creatures. Christ will not receive us if we have not seen him in the hungry, the thirsty, the pilgrim, the poor, the sick, and the prisoner (cf. Mt 25:35ff.). St Benedict has given his Rule a strong Christocentric bent. The monk sees Christ in the abbot (RB 2:2, 63:13), and receives Christ in the guest (53:7), the poor, and the pilgrim (53:15); he serves Christ in the sick (36:1). He who serves his brother serves Christ, God. For the person who believes, there is no problem of precedence in this service. To serve God first means that if he does not serve his brother humbly and sincerely, God is not being served. On the other hand, he will not believe that he can create an excuse from serving God by serving men, especially when he chooses by his own whim those whom he claims to help.

The Rule of St Benedict is imbued with an extraordinary force for normalizing the relations between God and man, and between man and his fellow. It has a rare wholesomeness and capacity for giving man an equilibrium both psychic and physical by re-establishing in him right concepts and by ordering an hierarchy of value in him. There is in it no neurotic affirmation of the rights of man. Where God occuplies his true place, everything sorts itself out in the best way for man. The rights of man are assured where the rights of God are respected.

More than ever, people today live in insecurity. The sources of their ideas are troubled. An anguish without outlet seizes them. Strong personalities make fun of this anxiety; others battle against confusion, even against despair. The remedy is simple; for many it seems too simple: we must order our values. Moral and intellectual health are restored only by re-establishing the normal order of things. The first commandment for man is not to have false gods, to give God his place. By that very fact, man finds his own place, and the rest follows. The Rule of St Benedict possesses this charism of setting a man forcefully and smoothly upon the right track, of assigning him his special place. In this way it renders him happy, balanced, healthy. The logic of the Rule begins with God, and anyone who seeks God will seek man as well.

This is the orientation of Jesus' life. All of his thoughts, his work, his aspirations were directed to the Father. 'I go to the Father' (Jn 14:12, 28). This is the direction of his life. Everything he did he did to orientate his disciples toward the Father and to give life to the world by rendering to God what is God's. Therein lies the entire theme of the Rule: 'That in all things God may be glorified' (RB 57:9).

The Cult of the Rule

Some people use the expression the 'cult' of the Rule—what does it mean? First of all, that we have for our Rule, for that little book crowned with such honor, all the respect due it. Many illustrious men knew it intimately. Is the Rule not one of the most celebrated documents of human thought for the person who seeks God? A rule for a holy and christian life for the Church? Finally, a creative force of true culture for Westem society? The expression 'cult' of the Rule expresses first of all a veneration for its teaching, its orders and directives, and the fidelity of the disciple toward the basic Rule (RB 3:7). Does it not teach the monk a simple and sure route to God?

In view of the extraordinary moral authority of the Rule, it is necessary to define its limits exactly and measure its meaning. Let us admit at the outset that the cult of the Rule could lead us to attribute to it a role which it does not fit, for example, to esteem the letter at the expense of the spirit, or to give a disproportionate importance to details.

First of all, we cannot isolate the Rule, putting it, without realizing it, on the same level as the Gospel. The Rule has no value except in relation to the Word of God. It leads us to the Gospel (Prol. 21); it is an exposition of its message, a manual, a practical résumé, designed for the use of simple men wanting to be monks. It is, through its institutions, a permanent reference to the Gospel and to its summons to the Lord, which it translates into sound practices, wholly bathed in the humble search for God.

If the Rule is a law (RB 58:10), it is one only in order to turn the Gospel to profit (cf. Mt 5:17ff.). For 'the object of the law is Christ' (Rm 10:4). The law of the Gospel binds us to Christ: chains us to make us prisoners of Jesus Christ (cf. Eph 3:1). The yoke of the Rule (RB 58:16) has no other function than to submit us to the sweet yoke of Christ (cf. Mt 11:30). It is our Rule, the norm of our life. The mentality of St Benedict makes him express himself in the same way when he speaks to us of God's service, of the school to which he sends us for our apprenticeship in that service (cf. Prol. 45) through the imitation of Christ (cf. Prol. 50; 7:34).

The role of the Rule as a guide to lead us to the Gospel and to Christ is thus summarily characterized. The Rule is a norm which refers us, in accordance with what is said in the decree Perfectae Caritatis (cf. no. 2 a), to the supreme norm of all religious life: the imitation of Christ.

In this matter, St Benedict, following his predecessors, set himself a task both delicate and difficult: to gather the marrow of the Gospel and extract from it a concrete way of life for his monks. It was necessary not only that he not betray the Gospel in any way by commentaries which might filter out the divine Word, but he had also to transmit all its fullness, all its depth, so that the teaching of the Gospel 'might be spread like the leaven of divine justice in the hearts of his disciples' (cf. RB 2:5).

The high esteem which the Church has given the Rule by irrefutable signs through the centuries testifies to the success of St Benedict. If, along with paternal gentleness, he shows himself very strict in his insistence on the observance of the Rule (cf. RB 3:7, 64:20), this apparent severity, far from obscuring the Gospel's primacy of charity, is but a very realistic manifestation of a love which knows how to support human weakness.

In this way, we avoid another possible danger in the 'cult of the Rule', that of giving an exaggerated importance to small details. The careful reader of the Rule draws from his meditations, the distinct impressions of a perfect and harmonious balance. Each detail remains in its proper place and never in the spotlight. The spirit, with its energetic and clear principles so predominates that no amount of insistence, however strong on particular points, changes St Benedict's intention as to the pastoral aim of the Rule: to lead the monk to Christ. The Rule fades away as soon as the end is obtained, as John the Baptist made way for Jesus. The ladder of humility is an example of this. The day when the monk, having climbed to the top, arrives at perfect charity, all that had to do with fear, that is to say, with the effort of climbing, will have had its day and can disappear. One can see there the provisional nature of everything that is only a means.

The Rule itself therefore has only a relative value. Yet all of its prescriptions do not have the same importance. The novice who still lacks perspective can in his first fervor attach too much importance to rules at the expense of the Rule, and may have trouble establishing a hierarchic order in its prescriptions. One day he will understand that certain superior rules take precedence over secondary ones, and he will also understand that it is through fidelity to the Rule that a certain number of its prescriptions have fallen into disuse and that, paradoxically, it is the Rule itself which has caused the suppression of certain minor usages it mentions. For it is thanks to the discretion, pastoral prudence, a certain pluralism, and above all, the principle according to which means ought to be directed toward the end which individuals, concretely placed in a determined context of time, place, and circumstances, propose to attain, that the Rule of St Benedict adapts itself to very different situations. In this it proves itself to be a masterpiece compiled by one of the most remarkable spirits of all humanity, assisted by Divine Wisdom.

In the course of these conferences there will be no dearth of occasions to go back over the values of the Rule briefly mentioned here by way of introduction.

The Rule Today

Is the Rule still timely? Can St Benedict, the patriarch of Western monks, the fifteenth centenary of whose birth we will soon [1980] be celebrating, still be listened to and understood by people who spontaneously believe that they surpass everything the preceding centuries were able to discover? This author of a famous Rule whose style, diction, syntax, and setting take us back to the sixth century, the very thought of which often reflects situations of another age, how can he pretend to be able to tell anything? Could not men of our own times transmit the message to us far better? Why spend time with this document from another era, whose language is, at least at first glance, difficult for modern man to understand?

This book sets out to give good reasons for attaching ourselves to St Benedict. The Rule has no need of being reformed or reshaped to be up-to-date; quite simply, we must know how to read it, as an ancient book ought to be read in our day. Holy Scripture is not outdated simply because it is dressed in well-worn garments.

Some may object that the Rule is not an historical or didactic book like the Bible, but a law written in a concrete sociological context which no longer exists in our age of technology and urbanization where education is wide-spread and where secularism and existentialism are rife. Who can deny that the human situation in time and space, in relationships to the world and to fellowman and even, phenomenologically speaking, to God, have changed profoundly in fifteen hundred years? The one thing that has not changed essentially is the human person. He remains what he has always been, having come from the hands of his Maker and been deformed by sin. Methods of education may have changed, but the fundamental laws of man's education remain the same. The image of man seen by St Benedict corresponds to the reality of man as truly today as it did in the sixth century. We need only to separate this image from the context of an age now past for it to maintain its vital worth.

This book seeks to show, without apologetics or polemics, the present value of the Rule of St Benedict and why it is still up to date. We should remember that the Church to this day places this Rule among the books richest in salutary effects, recognizing also that for thousands of monks and nuns and for thousands of the faithful of benedictine spiritual orientation, it ponders the practical and concrete norm of the christian life. Might we not add to these the religious who, more recently, and under different forms have drawn and continue to draw from the pure fountain of the Rule? This fact alone proves that the great Legislator is still up to date, as he was during the grand flowering of Christianity and indeed during the ages when the monks, far from the world's hubbub and notice, prepared the coming of better days.

In this precise sense St Benedict is for us, as it were, a contemporary. Under his guidance the person of today, often profoundly uprooted and neurotic, can find healing. Fundamentally, St Benedict does nothing but lead us to the living waters of the Word of God by means of a wise pedagogy embracing, without constraint, the entire course of our life.