18 August 2025, Monday of the 20th week, odd year
Judges 2:11-19; Matthew 19:16-22
Homily
In the Prologue to his Rule, St. Benedict describes a symbolic scene in which God passes through the public square and asks, ‘Who desires life?’ The monk for whom Benedict writes his Rule is obviously the one who answers, ‘It is I!’ And at the end of the Rule, at the conclusion of chapter 72, which is the last written by Benedict (chapter 73 having been written earlier as the conclusion of the Rule in its first form), he recommends that ‘we prefer nothing at all to Christ; may he lead us all together to eternal life.’