In the middle of this Roman occupation, in a culture of order and everyday violence and injustice and kinds of oppression, in this world of polarities of all kinds, comes this itinerant Jewish rabbi saying it is possible to live in this world without terror, in fact with confidence and boldness. And because this confidence will not be in any of those things in which the world counts as power and strength, it involves risking and renouncing everything. This is a power unknown to the world.

One thing Jesus asks of those who will follow him, over and over, is to have faith, not to decide in advance what God can or cannot do, not to constantly make provisions for themselves. In other words, to commit themselves not halfway but entirely, without holding back.

This is about risk, both ordinary and extraordinary—ordinary because such a trust is made up of the most ordinary everyday things, and extraordinary because they are asked to press it even in the most trying circumstances. It is really about a love that will risk anything and everything, that will not stop to calculate because it rests on nothing that can be counted.

Benedict organized an orderly way of life where the energy of such love could be channeled, and developed, through simple everyday means, in a place where God could “get at” people if they were willing to take every means given to be available to God. It is why Benedict made the methods as simple and ordinary and concentrated as possible, without asking for grand gestures—and at the same time why it can be so difficult. Yet if they are willing to risk all, this is their way to the most expansive freedom; this is why he begins with the imperative “to listen,” and why those who follow this rule will be able “to run.”