My Catholic google-fu is failing me. I’m trying to remember which saint was considered to be such a living exemplar of The Rule of his/her order that it was said if the Rule were lost, it could be reconstructed by observing him/her.
Was it St. Benedict? Or maybe St. Therese de Lisieux?
I’m hoping some ole-timey Catholic will remember this off the top of their head.
To someone outside the church who’s spent time around Catholics anyway, it seems to refer to St. Francis.
OK, what is “The Rule”?
Read more at the Wiki link above. It’s pretty interesting. They’re REALLY detailed. The Rule of St. Benedict became the foundation for many religious orders, i.e., people who live in community and pretty much have to get along, since they’re bound together for life.
The Rule of the monastery (or abbey) in question. Each order of monks or nuns has a “Rule” (for example - the Rule of St. Benedict Rule of Saint Benedict - Wikipedia) which describes how the order works (what happens at what times of day and what times of year, what behavior is required, and what behavior is forbidden, etc.).
To answer the OP’s question, I’ve seen fictional nuns describes as being the Rule personified - for example in Rumer Godden’s “In this House of Brede” but I’m not aware of a real world example.
I’m ghostwriting some remarks for someone to give at an upcoming event. I want to cite this saint, if I can come up with who it is.
Every order, and every monastery in every order, has a Rule, but absent a qualifier, “The Rule” is most likely to mean the Rule of St. Benedict. And the saint in question would therefore almost certainly be a Benedictine monk. Unfortunately that doesn’t narrow it down very much.
I seem to recall that the first Rule was written by Pachomus in the 4th century when monasticism first sprouted in Egypt and Syria.
Nitpick: This isn’t from In This House of Brede, it’s from Kathryn Hulme’s The Nun’s Story.
I do recall that quote from The Nun’s Story. That’s one of those movies that whenever it randomly shows up on TV I have to watch it.
Is there a Rule for Franciscans? I thought he rejected Benedictine monasterial life, for living in the world?
Yes there is; in fact, every Order must have a Rule. People who want to found an Order must present the Rule they want to follow and defend it.
If you don’t have a Rule you’re not an Order, you’re just a bunch of wahoos singing kumbayah.
You mean like the Third Order Franciscans?
Which happen to have a Rule… as do the Tertiaries of any other Order.
Huh, I didn’t even know that any other orders had tertiaries.
In my Catholic high school(run by the Norbertines, Order of the Praemonstratensians[care to guess what THEIR nickname was?])*, we had a few teachers who were “Black Franciscans,” friars(they wore black cassocks, hence their more common name) who had the letters T.O.R. appended to their names. That stood for Third Order Regulars, but we sacrilegiously changed it to Tired Of Religion. They seemed pretty “worldly” to us, so the epithet fit.
There’s been some mention of St. Francis of Assisi, but none of his sister, who founded the Poor Clares, historically an exemplary organization. Might Clare fill the bill?
I’d vote for St Francis. Dude was so humble, he refused to become a priest nor to have any official rank within his own bloody order. Getting canonized after that must have really ticked him off.
She wasn’t his sister unless you were speaking in spiritual terms. Francis of Assisi was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone; Francesco “the French one” as nickname because he’d been born while his dad was in France on business. Clare of Assisi was born Ciara (=Clare) Sciffi. In both cases, the “of Assisi” refers to where they were from.
There’s the Third Order of Saint Dominic also.
St. Therese you can rule out – not that she didn’t follow the rule of her order, but because she is more famously known for her “little way”.