"Our hearts and our bodies must, therefore, be ready to do battle under the biddings of holy obedience; and let us ask the Lord that He supply by the help of His grace what is impossible to us by nature."
The temporary UNION OF BODY AND SOUL (that is, the definition of "being alive") in the face of death’s certainty is central to the urgency of the Rule.
Benedict does not speak of the “soul” so much as the visceral language of the heart and body. Even if he did adopt more otherworldly terms, the Latin “anima” has more in common with the word animality than it does the spirit as moderns understand it.
The Rule is a very embodied discipline as we shall see: community domestic rules, sleeping time, the observing of the liturgical hours, the management of economy, virtues of temperance, silence of the mouth, the role of corpreal punishment, etc., etc.
The body is the site of spiritual warfare-- just as important as the "interior world" of the conscience. The lack of Cartesian boundaries of a centered "I" and the "world" reminds us of the Rule's antiquity where the self was far less buffered and more porous.
You would think this focus on the external would be unsatisfactory given its crudity at first blush but there is also a very sweet part of this day’s reading is the emphasis on “we" throughout this day's reading on steeling the senses.
Benedict could have used the second or third person but the plural reminds that man is not facing this predicament alone of what to do with his life given to us by God.
Thus it is that one can truly help another and is in a true position to understand this shared condition between us. Thus his charity is true and fixated on an object of mutual comprehension.
How can I better explain?
We are all in a ditch but we can use each others bodies to climb out whereas being alone we could not. Is this not the metaphor of the cenobite?
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