10 benedictine hallmarks: a general discussion and personal reflection

The 10 Benedictine Hallmarks: A General Discussion and Personal Reflection

In Compliance with the requirements of BENE2 Selected Topics of the Rule of St. Benedict.

In this page I write about the 10 benedictine hallmarks in two views. The first is a general view, one that I see may be applicable in general or for one that finds this page from a search engine and may find it interesting. The second view is on a personal perspective. How this hallmarks have been present in my life and its effect on events that happened in 21 years of living in this world.

A brief background on the 10 benedictine hallmarks

The Benedictine Hallmarks were developed by the Association of Benedictine Colleges and Universities for the development of virtues for a good life and the Common Good. There are ten core values that can be distilled from the Rule of Saint Benedict. Love, prayer, stability, conversation, obedience, discipline, humility, stewardship, hospitality and community.

The 10 benedictine hallmarks:

Love

General perspective:

Love means love of Christ and neighbor out of an astonished response to what we know and see as God’s amazing love for us first. This love is against all human selfishness and is in fact selflessness, which animates us and is our grounding principle. Love, in this sense, is a cultivated habit of mind and behavior as an action.

Personal perspective:

Love is a very sensitive and strong topic for me personally. I believe there are different kinds of love and different characteristics, all of which may be a combination of any. Love may be liquid or solid or both. Love may be changing, love may not be changing. It actually depends on how you would describe love because there is no exact universal definition of love. Even the bible defined love very lengthy. I the question to what is love, is answered with, it depends. But definitely it can always be defined, and once defined can be both helpful, or destructive. Love has been present in my life since the day I was born. The love of my family nourished me until I have come to age and is still nourishing me until today. I have also experienced love from other people not within my family like from friends and special persons in my life. I identify love when I see it as an action of unconditional giving and inspiration. When there is an imposed condition to that giving and inspiration to that person, I don’t see it as love anymore. But long before I was born, love has been present in me already, which I discovered as I was growing up and still discovering its mysteries. That is the love Christ to me and to the whole mankind. Christ’s love is perfect and ultimately unconditional and God’s love through his Son, Jesus Christ, has been so powerful to me that I have dedicated myself and my ultimate love to Him also.

Prayer

General perspective:

Prayer is the rhythmic communication between God and us as a community and individually. Communal prayer can be the Mass or community prayers before events. Individual prayers are silent meditation, attentiveness to God and lectio divina, the slow purposeful reading of Scriptures or spiritual writings while listening for God within us.

Personal perspective:

There are two kinds of prayer for me. Reading the bible slowly and reflecting on that scripture. Second is communicating to God, thanking him, asking for forgiveness and blessings. God has a plan for each and every one of us. We also have plans for ourselves through our needs and dreams or wants. In order for God’s plan and ours to coincide, to work, deep communication has to be established. Ive learned that Man proposes and God disposes. We propose to God our plan and God disposes to us his plan to us. We can only hope that our plan would be the same of God’s but I believe that if we propose that plan to God and do our very best to achieve that plan, God will grant us that plan in God’s will. In order to do so, we have to propose to him and communicate to him every step of the way which is prayer. The medium for communication to God and Man is prayer. I personally pray all the time and propose to God my dreams for myself and my family and im grateful that God has blessed me with more than things I pray to Him. My prayers to God are simple enough for me to achieve but God has disposed to me things or results more than that of what I prayed to Him. God’s will has been very present in my life and I believe that deep and constant communication to Him has been very helpful to me and to my family. I have also done mistakes in my life and forgiveness has always been something I asked from God which he has always provided. I believe prayer is a very strong action one can do in his life because the more we communicate to God, the more we realize God’s plan for us which is always better than what we plan for ourselves. Deep and constant communication with God through prayer is stronger than any action we can do in order to realize the mystery of our existence.

Stability

General Perspective:

Stability is the commitment of the daily life of Benedictine University, its heritage and tradition. We resolve to pursue our hearts’ deepest desire, together, day in and day out, in good times and in bad, through the span of our lives. We commit to share our intellectual and other passions, our bewilderments and breakthroughs with one another. Persevering together in the pursuit of wisdom—as opposed to engaging one another only enough to achieve private understanding—builds strong and lasting relationships and makes remarkably powerful growth possible for all.

Personal perspective:

Stability for me is consistency. The day to day basis of success and week to week, month to month and year to year. Its like stock charts going up, not straight or down. I believe self realization is an upward spiral of learning, committing, and doing. Some people live their life at the edge, like trying to put themselves in danger. I believe that is contradictory to being stable. I believe a stable life or consistent life is just making sure that you made a successful day and if you don’t, make sure you do tomorrow and over and over again. Not giving up, and striving to be better than what you were yesterday. Sometimes people strive really hard and live their life too hard, when they get what they want, they just stop striving for more. I believe that consistency is lived through a little crisis events in life. Leaving all the non changeable crisis, or not within the circle of your influence crisis be the only crisis you’ll have in your life. The rest activities, those that are within your circle of influence, you do it on a slow but steady pace. Never cram, just prepare and everything will be alright. This way, you’ll still get what you want and not get burned out and after getting what you want, you’ll want to want more and more and more. You just keep on going, slowly, but never stopping and one day, when you look back, you’ll see that you have been through a long way and you will thank yourself for putting yourself in the position where you are now, which has been so far that you cannot fathomhow you got there, but you know you did. Remember that we all have that dream and we will be able to achieve this dream through stability or consistency.

Conversatio

General perspective:

Conversatio is the aim in life of all people in the Benedictine Tradition to be transformed in every part of one’s life so that God’s very image becomes palpable and transparent. Conversatio is letting go in day to day life of self-centered preoccupations and false securities so that the divine life at the core of one’s being becomes manifest in an authentic pattern of living. It starts in small steps and leads to larger ones over a lifetime. Move out of your comfort zone!

Personal perspective:

When we’re born in this world, we’re known to be dependents to our parents. We become less dependent and more independent as we grow up. But I learned that were social beings and that’s there more to being independent in life. Some call it as being interdependent, a higher stage after being independent. They say you can only be interdependent, when you become independent. I believe that as you grown more as an independent person, you grow more as an interdependent person also. This is the conversatio that is present in my life. Interdependency is being able to be trusted significantly and knowing how to trust others also. It’s true that only independent persons can do this because I believe that private victory comes first before public victory. As I was growing up, I saw in myself that I was taking care of myself more and more and less dependent upon others to take care of me, I started to deal with hard decisions in life and live with its reward or consequence. I started to know what was right or wrong then figured how to live all by myself until I become independent and be able to live all by myself with my parents just sending me money until I graduate college and apply for a job and earn my own money. During my life living alone, I learned that being independent was not enough. You get to want more but you can only do so much. This is where I learned the concept of interdependence. Trusting and relying to others and being able to be trusted also. Committing, keeping that commitment, and following through. Trusting others and learn to be patient and be sensitive to others. Interdependence is the key to an awesome community.

Obedience

General perspective:

Obedience is a commitment to listening and putting into practice what is learned by “listening with the ear of my heart” (RB, Prologue). We respect the integrity of disciplinary methods of study with a zeal for truth, wherever it leads. We seek to understand each other and put into the practice we learn from one another.

Personal perspective:

Obedience, when youre young, is defined as being able to follow instructions and execute them well. As you grow older, it was then defined as never questioning authority and being able to be initiative in your tasks. As you become interdependent, you find that these definitions are wrong. Obedience is listening, very carefully, not only through your ears, but using all your senses. I have learned that there are four communication methods we have. One reading which you are doing right now, second is writing, which im doing, third is speaking, and lastly, listening. As far as I can remember, Ive had years of training in reading, writing and speaking, but classroom academics don’t teach much on listening. They may always tell us to listen but never to teach us how to listen, what was proper and improper in listening, and allotting time during classroom hours in listening. I believe all four communication methods are equally important. Most of the time, its in listening that we care less, but listening is as much as important as reading, writing, and speaking. I believe there is an art in listening and there also different kinds of listening which we should also give great importance in learning. Going back to obedience, this does not end with listening, but doing something about what you just heard, being able to be trusted upon when you hear something and be part of something great.

Discipline

General perspective:

Discipline is the focusing of energy on what matters most in all areas of life. It is the hard work of stretching beyond the comfort level and being committed to mastery of all areas of our study. The goal is to move from an outward imposed discipline to a mature self-discipline in which a person possesses a robust love of learning and, in setting his or her own goals, is able to imagine and pursue the steps necessary to achieve those goals.

Personal perspective:

Discipline was one of those words I often heard as a growing child but never really understood it. It was like the word “constitution” to me. I often hear it and always knew what they were trying to convey through reading or listening between the lines but I never really knew the concrete definition of the word. I started dealing with the word hardly and more frequently when I went to the seminary. Most middle schools would tell you about their vision mission like stewardship, honor, and the like, but the seminary tells you one thing. DISCIPLINE. The seminary is almost, but not entirely, about discipline. We had a day-to-day schedule from Monday to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Mondays to Fridays schedule was a 5-replica schedule of 1. Which means we did the same thing each day from Monday to Friday. For me, it was a complete disaster. I was a spontaneous person and I liked being spontaneous. I liked the unpredictability and thrill of not knowing what life will come for me tomorrow. But in the seminary, I knew what the week had installed for me, I could predict its results, and found it no fun no more. After a year being no fun no more, summer came and I became fun again. I became unpredictable, no plans, just do it, nike said, and so I did. That was how I realized that, the schedule was for a purpose. A purpose that was not clear to me in the beginning, but was clear to me now. Sometimes, its easier to connect the dots when you start from end to beginning. The schedule’s purpose was to realize a goal. And the goal of the seminary was to produce or make us seminarians. They did that through discipline, and it worked. My faith was strengthened in the seminary and because of that strong faith, whatever wave life brings me, may it be a small wave or a tsunami, but that faith is a heavy anchor I worked hard with, worked hard with discipline, and it keeps me from being lost because of the waves of life.

Humility

General perspective:

Humility is the accurate knowledge of self, a pervasive awareness of God’s presence in our lives, and the overwhelming sense of God’s love which drives out fear (RB7). Humility recognizes a dependence upon others and creation itself. It recognizes our limitations without losing hope.

Personal perspective:

One noon, during lunch, I told my father that I don’t usually tell my friends about me because I wanted to be humble and I don’t want them to feel like im bragging the blessings of the lord. He told me “why be that humble, if you’re not that great” the sentence looked grammatically confusing to me, but I knew well enough my father that he would never say something grammatically wrong, or if he would, he would definitely correct himself. I awaited for subsequent additional words, but I heard none. Just a quick stare he did. I concluded, it may be something out of Shakespeare. Everything Shakespeare said sounded like a complete violation of the proper English noun and verb agreement, but nobody tried correcting him because they knew it was made in complete artisan, as an artist many believed Shakespeare was. I thought about my dad’s sentence over and over again and finally understood it. What he really meant was, you cannot be humble if you don’t have something to be humble about. In order to be humble about something, that something should be that great because its not humility if what youre trying to be humble about is something like 1 peso. He wants me to know that there is a difference between showing humility and giving yourself some credibility. I believe that it’s a common misnomer that humility was discrediting yourself from other people. That was what he really meant and wanted to tell me, just so much shorter. That was one of things I like about my dad, he shows me that he trusts me well enough that even in small sentences he knew I could solve my problems. This was my whole definition of humility. Always remembering that there is a difference between humility and credibility, and also remembering that we are I am a Son of God, therefore I am that great, therefore I should be that humble.

stewardship

General perspective:

Stewardship is based upon the Rule’s fundamental reverence toward the creation that God has made. Stewardship is to regard all the tools of our vocation as sacred vessels of the altar (RB 31.10). We encourage the creative and sustainable use ofresources and their just distribution for the good of all.

Personal perspective:

Trust is the most fundamental and valuable principle in our society. A principle that is very powerful, many rely on it, but can be so destructive when one does not use it. As ive said, we’re all social beings, and in order to work with one another and be more productive in working together than working alone, trust is the basic principle we rely upon. It’s hard to trust people, and sometimes hard to be trusted upon also. But success literature would tell us that most people that are successful in life, although a relative term, relied highly on trust. Ive been reading literature about how to micromanage and macromanage yourself. Micromanagement is your scheduling, keeping that schedule and putting a lot of effort in realizing it. Also flexing your schedule for sometimes urgent and highly important that asks for much needed attention come up short of notice. Remembering that your schedule is made for you and not that youre made for your schedule. Being social beings, micromanagement is not enough, macromanagement has seen far greater results, although micromanagement is a prerequisite of macromanagement. You cannot macromanage if you cant micromanage. It’s like, arithmetic first, before algebra. You wont be able to learn algebra without arithmetic first. But in all studies, there’s  always a key. And in macromanagement, the key is delegation. I’ve learned that in delegation, there are two ways. One is the gofer delegation, the method where you instruct somebody and want them to do exactly how you instruct them. The second is called stewardship delegation. This is where trust is highly leaned upon. In stewardship delegation, you don’t tell them what to do, you tell them what you want and trust that the person you delegate with, uses his or her resourcefulness and creativity in achieving that desired result. This is also what the Benedictine hallmark is about for me. That God has a desired result and he wants me to use my resourcefulness and creativity to achieve that result. God’s desired result is peace and equality throughout his creations.

hospitality

General perspective:

Hospitality is the openness to the other as the person of Christ in our midst(RB 53.1). We agree to put aside individual plans and preoccupations in order to let the unexpected person in, let them feel established and have their needs met. We bless and are blessed in the offering and receiving of hospitality.

Personal perspective:

Foreigners who stay in the Philippines often say that they find the Philippines and its people very hospitable. No matter what’s going on inside our houses, whether we’re taking a bath and shampoo is bubbling all over our head, once a visitor knocks, we stop what were doing and let them in. It’s a common Filipino trait I have always been proud of. Hospitality for most Filipinos is natural to us. Instinctive. This Benedictine hallmark has always been very easy for Filipinos and I’m proud to say that hospitality is a trait I grew up with, without a flaw. Once we let them in, we offer them food and drinks even if they say no. we put them on the center table and leave it there. We don’t care if they don’t eat it, but we care if its not enough. Once we see our offerings to our visitors lacking already, we give them more without asking them if they want more. We don’t care if we have stocks in the house, we send somebody to run at a nearby store to buy. Some actually climb the buko tree to pick up fresh buko just for the visitors to enjoy. And we do this without asking or expecting anything in return. Once they leave, the smiles in our faces never fades as if a happy thing just happened to us, but the truth is, were just happy to have them and grateful for their visit. That’s pure hospitality and it’s a principle I grew up with as a Filipino which im very proud of.

Community

General perspective:

Community is the selfless participation in the well-being of all through the fostering of the Common Good. The “Common Good” is respect for the person, concern for the social well-being and development of the group and the requirement of stability and security of a just order. Community is practical, open to human history and the global experience. It welcomes the wisdom of the past and global perspectives to enrich the now.

Personal perspective:

No man is an island, they say. We never see each other to be living alone, and we never looked at ourselves as being alone. Even our priests and sisters live in a community. This hallmark is a principle very important to us because it is what gives color to our lives. The sense of community for us gives a powerful image of life full of other lives. This is what brings us together and trusts one another. This also develops and nurtures us as persons and get us to want giving and serving others. The sense of community has greatly touched our way of behavior and sense of compassion to others. Trades and industries created are basically encompassed within the colors community gives us. Serving others and receiving services from others. Giving others and receiving. This is what community is all about. That each one of us, under God’s eyes, are one but the same, His children, His creation.