SOURCE: "A Psychological Approach to Humility in the Rule of St. Benedict," American Benedictine Review, Vol. 39, No. 4, December, 1988, pp. 404-29.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1976, Vergote offers an interpretation of humility in the Rule of St. Benedict, tracing the ideals of obedience and self-knowledge expressed in Benedict's text and in the Christian scriptures.

I humbly beg you to listen, for you have given me a stiff challenge: I must speak to you about a text which is so familiar to you and about which I know so little. And I must do this before exegetes, historians, philologists and I don't know what.

I must confess the shock I felt on reading a text I had not picked up in thirty years: it really seemed very strange to me. I also gave it to friends of mine, Christian laypeople, and they reacted the same...