Prayer and Community: The Benedictine Tradition (Traditions of Christian Spirituality)

by Columba Stewart

Book Overview

This exploration of Benedictine spirituality provides the perfect introduction to St Benedict and his Rule. The book places Benedict and his Rule within the extraordinary world of early Christian monasticism and explores his key insights about awareness of the presence of God and meeting Christ in other people.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570752192
• ISBN13: 9781570752193
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Orbis Books
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

excellent introductory material to Benedictine traditions

Columba Stewart did a fine job at distilling the essences of the Benedictine Tradition. The Rule of Benedict has survived for over 15 Centuries and is noted for it's simplicity. Traditions of Obedience, Humility, and Community that have much to offer our busy new millenium lifestyles.

Excellent overview of 1500 years of lived experience

Columba Stewart isn't just another author of a book on Benedictine spirituality. He is a monk of St. John's Abbey in Minnesota, holder of a D. Phil. from Oxford, a teacher in the Theology department at St. John's University, and one of the world's best scholars on John Cassian. Given his background, this book easily could have been very scholarly, very dry, and very academic. So it is a real pleasure to say that his overview of Benedictine spirituality fills a gap in the growing list of books in this area. As with other authors such as Esther de Waal and Joan Chittister, Stewart's intent is to provide an overview of this important stream in Christian spirituality and it's applicability/relevance to modern day concerns. However, Stewart takes a different perspective in his approach, using as a dual focus both the text of the Rule of Benedict and the lived experience of monastic communities during the ensuing centuries. As a result, this book conveys to the reader a much better sense of how Benedictine communities have struggled with how to live by the spirit of the Rule of Benedict even as the world around those communities has changed in ways unimaginable to Saint Benedict. If you are looking for an overview of how to incorporate Benedictine spirituality into your daily life, this book is probably not the best place to start. For that, I would highly recommend books by Esther de Waal and Joan Chittister. I have read several books by these two authors and they have been extremely valuable in my own attempts to live out my faith. But what I gained from reading Stewart's book was a much better sense of how the major themes in the Rule of Benedict have been lived out over the centuries and how the understanding of those themes has in some ways changed and in other ways remained the same during that time period. As an oblate since 1998 of a Benedictine monastery in California, I found Stewart's perspective very helpful in further enriching my own understanding of the Benedictine tradition. I've also found this book very, very helpful as the starting point for a presentation to a men's group in my parish on Benedictine spirituality. Another reviewer of this book criticizes it for it's "deviation from Church teachings". I should state at this point that I don't share the same perspective as this reviewer, in part because I am Episcopalian. For those who share the other reviewer's concerns about faithfulness to the teachings of the Roman Catholic church from what I sense is a traditionalist perspective, this book may not be the best choice. For those individuals, Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic, who are sincerely interested in further exploring the Benedictine tradition and it's connection and power for life today, Stewart's book is one that I would highly recommend that people read.