Christocentrism of Charism – Buggert - CarmelStream

poverty, penance, silence, solitude, prayer and fasting, "to follow Christ's law, be available to do all
things in his name, to vest themselves in spiritual armor" xxvii to disarm the forces of evil and above
all to meditate upon the law of the Lord. xxviii In all of this, but especially through meditating upon
the law of the Lord and the recitation of the psalms, they were to be transformed into Christ. xxix It is
this specific form of "walking in the footsteps of Jesus" which is signalled in the Prologue and
further specified in their "formula of life."
How the Obsequium Informs the Rule
I do not intend to analyze or comment upon each reference to Christ in the Rule. I merely
wish first to make some general observations and then show how the very structuring of the rule is
Christocentric.
From the above, one can see how the basic project of walking in the footsteps of Jesus,
signalled in the Prologue, is then articulated in the Rule itself: faithful following of Christ through
obedience to his representative, the prior (chapters I, XVII, XVIII), solitude (chapter III), meditating
upon the law of Lord, vigilance in prayer, reciting psalms (chapters VII, VIII, X), poverty (chapter
IX), penance as fasting and abstinence (chapters XII, XIII), vesting in spiritual armor for spiritual
warfare (chapter XIV), doing all in the Word of the Lord (chapter XIV), willingness to undergo
persecution (chapter XIV), silence (chapter XVI). In all of this Christ is present to the hermit
community as model, teacher, savior and eschatological judge (chapter XVIII and Epilogue). xxx
Within this Christocentric perspective, Elijah and Mary, present only implicitly in the Rule, become
subordinate models or symbols who serve to concretize the obsequium Jesu Christi. xxxi
Even more important than seeing how the various elements of the obsequium Jesu Christi
are taken up in the chapters of the Rule is the Christocentric structuring of the Rule. xxxii And here we
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