Most glorious Father,
in whose School
I live and hope to die,
God grant I may observe thy Rule,
For in that all doth lie.
For no perfection can be named,
Which us it doth not teach.
O happy she, who in her soul,
The sense thereof doth reach!
But many praise Obedience
And thy humility,
And yet conceive not as they should,
What either of them be.
The simple humble loving souls
Only the sense find out
Of any discreet, obedient Rule,
And these are void of doubt.
Yea, under shadow of thy wings
They up to heaven fly,
And taste here in this vale of tears
What perfect peace doth lie,
Hid in performance of thy Rule
That leadeth unto heaven;
O happy souls who it perform,
The ways so sweet and even!
By Prayer and Patience it’s fulfilled,
Charity, Obedience,
By seeking after God alone,
And giving none offense.
The more I look upon thy Rule,
The more in it I find;
O do to me the sense unfold,
For letter makes us blind!
And blessed, yea, a thousand times,
Be thou who it hast writ,
And thy sweet blessing give to them,
Who truly perform it.
For those are they which will conserve
This house in perfect peace,
Without which all we do is lost,
And all that’s good will cease.
And praised be our glorious God,
Who gave to thee such grace,
Not only him thyself to seek,
But also out to trace
A way so easy and secure,
If we will but thee hear,
To have relation to our God,
Who is to us so near.
For at this thou dost chiefly aim:
That our souls God do teach.
O if we did truly obey,
He would by all things preach
His will to us by everything
That did to us befall;
And then as thou desir’st it should
He would be all in all
pray dear Father that he ever be,
our only love and all eternally. Amen.

Holy Scripture, brethren, cries out to us, saying, “Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” In saying this it shows us that all exaltation is a kind of pride, against which the Prophet proves himself to be on guard when he says, “Lord, my heart is not exalted, nor are mine eyes lifted up; neither have I walked in great matters, nor in wonders above me.” But how has he acted? “Rather have I been of humble mind than exalting myself; as a weaned child on its mother’s breast, so You solace my soul.”

Hence, brethren, if we wish to reach the very highest point of humility and to arrive speedily at that heavenly exaltation to which ascent is made through the humility of this present life, we must by our ascending actions erect the ladder Jacob saw in his dream, on which Angels appeared to him descending and ascending. By that descent and ascent we must surely understand nothing else than this, that we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility. And the ladder thus set up is our life in the world, which the Lord raises up to heaven if our heart is humbled. For we call our body and soul the sides of the ladder, and into these sides our divine vocation has inserted the different steps of humility and discipline we must climb.

St Benedict “Rule of Benedict”