SOURCE: "Humility" in Reading Saint Benedict: Reflections on the "Rule," translated by Colette Friedlander, 0. C. S. O., Cistercian Publications, 1994, pp. 75-100.

In the following essay, originally published in French in 1991, de Vogüé undertakes an exegesis of the seventh chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict, which describes a monk's spiritual ascension to heaven upon the ladder of humility. Footnote numbers designate line numbers of the Rule throughout this essay.

This chapter [the seventh], which is longer and more important than any other, does not simply describe one of the monk's great virtues. Because that virtue, as we have seen, encompasses the other two, the chapter contains the whole of the Rule's spiritual teaching. Moreover, this description of humility is drawn from a passage in Cassian (Inst. 4.39) which outlined the monk's journey toward perfection, from initial fear of God to the love which drives away fear. Integrated as...