Open Your Eyes and Open Your Ears...

To the divine voice who enlightens us, and the divine light that makes us one with God.

"...et apertis oculis nostris ad deificum lumen adtonitis auribus audiamus divina cotidie clamans..." — Saint Benedict of Nursia

Translated into English, this passage from the Prologue of the Rule of Saint Benedict goes like this:

“…and let us open our eyes to the deifying light, and let us hear with enlightened ears the divine voice that cries out to us every day…”

Even a short little Latin passage like this provides challenges to translators. Many English versions of this verse shy away from the profound and powerful imagery found in the original Latin. Deificum, which literally means “divinizing” or “deifying,” often gets rendered as an adjective (“divine”) instead of an adverb (“divinizing”), while adtonitis, a powerful word that means “lightning-struck” or “stunned” or even “driven crazy,” often seems to be missing in action in English language versions of the Rule.

But the Latin is pretty clear, even if hard to translate. Benedict, a great monastic author whose words are meant to inspire those who seek an immersive life of prayer and community, challenges his readers to orient their eyes toward the light of God (that promises to make us one with God), and their ears toward that inner divine voice that stuns us, or leaves us dazed as if struck by lightning — which is why I paraphrase adtonitis to mean “enlightened” — struck by the lightning of divine inspiration.