What is a Rule of Life?

- The Rev. Jay Rozendaal

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First, a “Rule of Life” is not like the sign by your local swimming pool — No running, No glass, No diving, No animals. It is not that sort of rule. 

This Rule is a guide for living faithfully — a tool for shaping and balancing your life in Christ.  A Rule provides structure for your spiritual life. Like all relationships, our relationships with God and God’s people grow richer and stronger with consistency and commitment.

All monastic communities have a Rule, which shapes their life together.  It may contain specific guidelines for the community’s corporate and individual prayer, for organization and leadership, and may discuss the community’s guiding values and principles.  The idea of a personal Rule of Life is based on this tradition.  The Rule is an expression of a community’s or an individual’s faith as it is lived on a day-to-day basis. 

If the word is uncomfortable for you, you can find another one.  A friend of mine who found the idea of “rule” too confining decided to create a “compass of life” based on nested cycles of time: days, weeks, months, seasons, and years.

Check out these links:

Order of St. Helena, Rule for Associates (click on “Associates” and “Rule of Life”)

Order of the Holy Cross, Rule for Associates

Brotherhood of St. Gregory, Associate’s Rule