St. Benedict and the Fear of the Lord

Throughout the ancient world the God’s were something that people loved and hated. They did have a certain fear from their gods, but it wasn’t like that kind of fear of the Middle Ages. With Christianity coming into full stride, the mentality of the time was that God was something to be feared. This is something of importance, the middle ages are riddled with the fear of god and people spend their whole lives in that constant shadow.

This is noticeable in our first reading. In The Rule of St. Benedict he goes about on how to live a monastic life, and what the proper procedures are. The main goal that I feel is, is to not make God angry. Humility and obedience, the building blocks for anyone’s life. This amount of fear and the practice of fear is very visible in the reading, from following the words of the apostle that says, “Reprove, rebuke, exhort” to the daily life of a monk and the rules to which a monk needs to follow.

The two main rules that a monk has to follow truly show the “signs of the times” Obedience and Humility. Obedience being the first grade of humility, the part that we are interested in is the part of “if you don’t obey then you should burn in hell…” for someone today this excerpt, I feel, wouldn’t affect them as much as if did back then. Some main reasons for this being, the fall of the Roman Empire, people were sick and tired of being pushed around by tyrants and idiot kings; they were ready for a change. But this change was only going to come around if they obey fully to what this new god had to say.

The Humility, well now that just gives it all away. Just reading the first sentence, “…keeping ever before one’s eyes the feat of the lord…” and it goes on to talk about people talking back and burning in hell. We now see just how scared the people really were, so it comes down to, talk back to God and you will burn in hell. Will people really fall for this? It so happens that people do, they believe that with this newfound king they will HAVE to obey the rules no matter what. Now remember these rules are for monks, but if we look into the daily lives of people they too follow the same procedures.

So the transition from the Ancient world to the Middle Ages becomes a transformation of not just loving your god, but fearing him with all you’ve got. The main reason that this is contributed to is, now people don’t have a “king” to refer to. The Empire has fallen and they must look towards the heavens. But the new goal for life is not to increase the land, or get riches, it becomes, “I must not do anything to make my God angry.”