Posted on: July 13th, 2012 Benedict’s Rule: Children vs. “Hired Hands”
In her commentary on The Rule of St. Benedict, Joan Chittister writes,
To be a member of a Roman family, the family whose structures Benedict understood, was to be under the religious, financial, and disciplinary power of the father until the father died, whatever the age of the children. To be disinherited by the father was to be stranded in a culture in which paid employment was looked down upon. To be punished by him was to lose the security of family, outside of which there was no security at all. To lose relationship with the father was then, literally, to lose one’s life [italics mine]. Chittister, OSB, Joan. The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages (New York: Crossroad, 2008), 21.
There is a connection here with the story of the “prodigal son,” from Luke 15. In that passage the to-be-inherited-land which is coveted by both sons is referred to as “bios,” or the Greek word for biological life.
The implications here for the manifold biblical teaching on “inheritance” (Gen 48:6; Nu 16:14; Nu 18:23; Dt 15:4; Ps 16:6; Eph 1:11; Col 1:12; Heb 11:8; 1 Pet 1:4) are vast. (Too vast for me to begin to write about here!)
