SEASEM models its Rule on one of Egypt’s earliest monasteries, St Macarius Monastery, in the Wadi Natrun desert. Founded in 360 A.D. by Saint Macarius, the Christian Coptic monastery has only one law – the Rule of Love.
‘This love is at once the motive and aim of all our actions, efforts and sacrifices…We are not guided by predetermined principles, but by the Spirit of God in us…’
SEASEM’s Rule is based on this Rule of Love. It is a love revealed to us by Christ on the cross, unified in the Father. It is a transformative and uniting love that ever renews and remakes us. A heart swelled by this love lives a life of interior liberty and joy. And it is this love that we afford all other persons. By this Grace of Love, we become spiritual persons, our will becomes one with the will of God, and our day to day example witnesses the inner light of the Spirit of God to our community and to the world.
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.’
Individually, and as a community, by faith and in partnership with God, extended to us through the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we abide by this commandment of Love. We actively endeavour to realise this Love through the partnership of human and divine wills knowing that in so doing we increase in our own Father fusion and uplift Christ’s desire for the whole world to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.