ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 11, 2025 /
05:00 am
Archbishop Enrique Benavent Vidal of Valencia in Spain encouraged the faithful to take advantage of summer vacation to read and delve deeper into the Rule of St. Benedict, as it contains “insights that are useful” for the daily life of all Christians.
In his July 5 weekly letter, the prelate observed that on Friday, July 11, the Catholic Church will celebrate the feast of St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe who lived between the fifth and sixth centuries.
“The goal that completely guided his life,” Benavent explained, “is reflected in the prologue to the rule he wrote for the monasteries he founded: ‘Who is the man who desires life and wishes to see happy days?’”
St. Benedict “always lived with the desire to achieve an authentic life, ‘true and perpetual life,’ which can only be achieved in the tent of God on his holy mountain. His entire gaze is fixed on this goal. He lives and teaches monks to live this life with their gaze fixed on true life, on God,” he said.
However, the Spanish archbishop pointed out that while St. Benedict originally wrote this rule “to serve as a spiritual path for monks and to organize the life of monasteries, we find insights that are useful for all Christians.”
In his letter, Benavent uses as an example the rule that calls for “not putting anything before the love of Christ.”
“Nothing should come between the Lord and the disciple. The authentic Christian,” the prelate explained, “is one who, in everyday life, values friendship with the Lord above all else and lives all aspects of his life (work, possessions, family life) in such a way that nothing and no one can cause him to lose that friendship.”
He then quoted part of the rule’s prologue, which states that “(they will rest on your holy mountain) those who, fearing the Lord, are not proud of the uprightness of their conduct.”
The archbishop of Valencia noted that “with this advice, St. Benedict enters the depths of the heart and warns us against a temptation that is very common in those who consider themselves ‘good’: Those who strive to live holy lives easily come to attribute good works to their own strength and to praise themselves, forgetting that ‘by the grace of God I am what I am’ and that ‘let he who glories, glory in the Lord.’”
Finally, he mentioned St. Benedict’s exhortation “not to desire to be called a saint before being one, but first to be one.”
Benavent pointed out that this is “a warning to those who live thinking more about appearances than about the reality of their lives,” because “those who live by appearances are more concerned with what others might think or say about them than with the actual reality of their lives. Christians seek above all to live in the truth.”
The archbishop of Valencia ended his letter by stating that “these counsels are not only for those who have embraced monastic life but are criteria that, if we make them a rule of life, correctly guide the spiritual life of every Christian.”
“This rule that St. Benedict wrote for his monks could be good reading for meditation during the summer,” he noted.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Eduardo Berdejo has a Journalism degree from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru). He has been a member of the ACI Prensa team since 2001. He has covered Pope Francis’ visits to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. He also holds a diploma in Comparative Literature from the University of Piura (Peru) and has completed the Comprehensive Course on Style Correction at the Lima Publishing School (Peru).
