Rules for Gentlemen: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Listen, my child, to the teachings of the Master, and incline the ear of your heart. Receive freely and carry out effectively your loving father’s instructions, that by the labor of obedience you may return to Him whom you have fallen away from through the idleness of disobedience.

To you, therefore, my words are now directed, who are renouncing your own whims to do battle under the Lord Christ the True King, by taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

In the first place, whatever good thing you begin to do, beg of Him with most earnest prayer to perfect it, so that He who has counted us worthy to be His sons and daughters need never be grieved by our wrongdoing. 

For we must always serve Him with the good things that He has given us, that He should never as an angry father disinherit his children, nor ever as a dreadful master provoked by our wrongdoing, hand us over to everlasting punishment as wicked servants who shrank away from following Him to glory.

Let us then arise at once, since Scripture stirs us up by saying: “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep;” and opening our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with attentive ears the warning that the divine voice cries daily to us, saying: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts". And again: “He that has ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” And what does He say? — “Come, my children, listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord: Run while you have the light of life, lest the darkness of death overtake you.”

Notice that it is battle that a gentleman is called to. And that this battle consists first and foremost in ruling over yourself, and then in bringing the peace of harmony with God into the world around you. As a gentleman, you are called to uphold justice and to resist injustice, to serve that which is holy in the world, without reservation and without salary, to care for the weak, the persecuted, and the wronged, to take care of creation as it groans, and of the bruised reed, because it is God’s will that it not be broken.

Excerpt from Rules for Gentlemen: A Code of Chivalry.