From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   The cost of discipleship   
      
   One prospective follower, a scribe who was an expert in the Torah (the   
   law of God in the first five books of Moses in the Jewish bible), paid   
   Jesus the highest compliment he knew. He called Jesus "teacher". Jesus   
   advised this would-be follower: Before you follow me, think what you   
   are about to do and count the cost. A disciple must be willing to part   
   with anything that might stand in the way of following Jesus as   
   Teacher and Master. Another would-be disciple responded by saying that   
   he must first bury his father, that is go back home and take care of   
   his father until he died. This disciple was not yet ready to count the   
   cost of  following Jesus. Jesus appealed to the man's heart to choose   
   for God's kingdom first and to detach himself from anything that might   
   keep him from following the Lord.   
      
   ===============   
   July 11th - St. Benedict, Abbot and Confessor   
      
   WHAT does it take to live like a Christian? The life of Saint Benedict   
   is one answer to this question, and such an effective one that it made   
   history. The saint was born in the Italian town of Nursia, about the   
   year 470, and as a young boy was sent by his family to be educated at   
   Rome. An education in Rome at that time was "liberal" in more than the   
   academic sense. Student life was one long dissipation, and Benedict   
   soon realized that, unless he wanted to be drawn into the revelry, he   
   would have to leave the city.   
      
   Benedict had come to Rome with an elderly family nurse, sent along to   
   look after his needs. With the old woman, he went eastward from Rome   
   into the Sabine Mountains, stopping at the small village of Enfide.   
   His stay there was short because of a miracle he worked for his nurse,   
   the mending of an earthenware sieve. This was only the first miracle   
   of many that were to attract people to Benedict, and when the people   
   of Enfide heard of this particular occurrence they began to visit him   
   in crowds.   
      
   Realizing that he was about to become a public exhibit, Benedict   
   decided to move. This time he went alone, climbing higher into the   
   mountains. Benedict finally found himself in a desolate region called   
   Subiaco. A few monks lived in the area, and one of them helped   
   Benedict install himself in a cave high up in the wall of a cliff,   
   where he remained for the next three years. His only contact with the   
   world was through the friendly monk, who occasionally lowered food to   
   him in a basket.   
      
   Prayer and penance were Benedict's main activities during this time.   
   It was a trying period, made harder by terrible temptations to return   
   to the pleasures of the world. But Benedict mastered himself and at   
   the end of three years decided that God wished him to continue living   
   in solitude as a monk. As God arranged it, Benedict was to continue   
   living as a monk but not by himself.   
      
   Monks from the nearby monastery of Vicovaro had heard of this unusual   
   young recluse and, when their abbot died, they sent a deputation to   
   Benedict, requesting him to be their new abbot. Benedict agreed; but   
   when he arrived at the monastery and began some much-needed reforms,   
   trouble began. Most of the monks enjoyed their loose ways and decided   
   to have no more of the young abbot's reforms--indeed, to have no more   
   of him at all. One evening, poison was put into Benedict's cup of   
   wine. When the wine was brought to him and Benedict made his usual   
   sign of the cross over the cup, it shattered immediately as if it had   
   been hurled against a rock. With a reproachful look, Benedict told the   
   monks to find an abbot more to their liking, left the monastery, and   
   returned to his cave.   
      
   But a solitary existence was impossible for him now; his reputation   
   had grown and crowds of people flocked to see him. Most of these were   
   serious-minded men who were concerned with leading a Christian life in   
   a society that had little use for Christianity. Benedict saw that   
   these men needed guidance and consented to leave his cave to become   
   their leader. Founding twelve monasteries in the neighborhood of   
   Subiaco, he settled his followers in them and established himself in   
   the monastery of Saint Clement. Later, he went to Monte Cassino,   
   southeast of Rome, and there founded the monastery that was to become   
   the largest and best known in Europe.   
      
   When Benedict began to organize his monks at Subiaco and Monte   
   Cassino, he realized that something different was needed from the   
   general type of monasticism then prevalent. This was of Eastern origin   
   and had degenerated into a very haphazard affair. Monks had no common   
   life, they tried to outdo each other in austerities, and they wandered   
   about from monastery to monastery as their fancy dictated. In place of   
   all this, Benedict substituted a life centered around a common   
   task--the chanting of the Opus Dei, or Divine Office--and dedicated to   
   useful labor, both intellectual and physical, as well as to private   
   prayer and reasonable forms of penance.   
      
   At Monte Cassino Benedict wrote his regulations for monastic life in   
   his Rule, which was to become one of the most important documents in   
   the history of Europe. This Rule, which is summarized in the   
   Benedictine motto of ora et labora (pray and work), was to become the   
   inspiration of most of the monasticism of the West. European   
   civilization itself was largely preserved through the work of   
   Christian monks who had Benedict as their spiritual father, and by   
   others who adapted the wisdom of Benedict's way of life to their own   
   circumstances in the world.   
      
   The saint lived his last years at Monte Cassino, and Saint Gregory the   
   Great (whose Dialogues are the only source we have for Benedict's   
   life) informs us that sometime about the year 547, not long after a   
   last visit with his sister, Saint Scholastica, Benedict died a most   
   happy death, surrounded by his monks and looking toward heaven.   
      
   http://www.geocities.com/barats2000/JulyFeast.html   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   “Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ; discipline your body; do   
   not pamper yourself, but love fasting.” -St. Benedict   
      
   “Prefer nothing, absolutely nothing, to the love of Christ.” -St. Benedict   
      
   “Be careful to be gentle, lest in removing the rust, you break the   
   whole instrument.”   
   --St. Benedict   
      
   “He who labours as he prays,   
   lifts his heart to God with his hands.”   
   “Whenever you begin any good work   
   you should first of all,   
   make a most pressing appeal   
   to Christ our Lord to bring it to perfection.”   
   --St Benedict   
      
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   Shine through me Lord!   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)