. . . whoever among you wants to be great must become the servant of you all, and if he wants to be first among you he must be your slave—just as the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve. (Mt 20:27)
Humility is the prime virtue for St. Benedict, and progress in it is the key to spiritual growth. He portrays it as a ladder with twelve rungs.
The first rung is to never forget that God is always with you.
Credit: James Goodwin Clonney
One way to think about this is, “behave yourself, for God is watching!” Another way is a little more complicated. God is always with you, says St. Benedict. St. Augustine puts it: You are closer to me than I am to myself. Wow. It takes a while, living with this thought, to absorb the implications. You might want to repeat it to yourself as you settle into silence (you do practice silence, right?) Because this is your first pass through the Rule, do not spend too much time on the other rungs.
St. Benedict tells us that having reached the twelfth rung we will arrive at that perfect love of God which casts out fear, and through this love and habitual persistence, all these practices will become effortless--”out of love for Christ, good habit and delight in virtue.”
We are building habits, delighting in virtue, out of love for Christ.
I think that this would be a grand reward to get to the top of the ladder and find all that God has in store.