The Rule of Augustine—the oldest monastic rule in the Western church—was originally written for this intimate community around Augustine himself, later taken up as the rule of life for Augustinian monastic communities around the world. The Rule is another example of Augustine’s spiritual realism: it is an honest, unsentimental guide for the challenges of living in community, well acquainted with the heart’s crooked bent toward selfishness, snobbery, greed, and exclusion.
