Do your daily routines reinvigorate you?

Few things bring us happiness like deeply rooted daily routines. There is something about healthy routines and rituals that leads the human person to flourish.

Most people struggle to establish and maintain strong routines. Creating strong routines around sleep, prayer, work, diet, exercise, and communion with friends and family doesn’t come easily. It takes continual effort…and a willingness to stop making excuses.

Saint Benedict harnessed the power of daily routines to ignite a new era of flourishing in the Church.

Benedict was born and raised in Italy in the late 5th century. As the Roman Empire was gasping its final breath, Benedict’s parents sent him to Rome to finish his education. There, his teachers and peers focused on pleasure, empty rhetoric, and gaining influence. Benedict was horrified by this shallow view of life, rejected his inheritance, and fled to a small village where he could embrace a routine of prayer and solitude.

After years living as a hermit, Benedict began to attract followers, whom he helped establish many monastery communities all across Italy. To help these communities flourish, he wrote his masterwork: The Rule of Saint Benedict.

This simple guide became the foundational document for thousands of religious communities from the Middle Ages to modern times. This book is a way of life laid out in seventy-three short chapters containing spiritual insights about how to live a Christ-centered life. It also contains practical and administrative guidance for monks and for the whole community regarding how to run a monastery.

The central precept of the work is the maxim ora et labora, which is Latin for pray and work. The monks devote eight hours each day to prayer, eight to work, and eight to sleep. These life-giving routines and rituals create a powerful rhythm in the monk’s lives.

Benedict’s commitment to daily routines reshaped the face of the Church. And his Rule has been helping men and women connect with God and themselves for 1500 years.

Do you have powerful routines and rhythms that ground the days of your life in health, happiness, and holiness?



Feast Day: July 11

Feast Day Shared By: Saint Pius I

Patron Saint of: Students, Europe, The Dying, and Against Poison

Symbols: A Bell and a Raven

Canonized: 1220 

Canonized By: Pope Honorius III