Holy Rule for March 2

[St. Mary's Monastery]

+PAX
Br. Jerome Leo’s Daily Reflection on the Holy Rule

March 2, July 2, November 1
Chapter 25: On Weightier Faults

Let the brother who is guilty of a weightier fault be excluded both from the table and from the oratory. Let none of the brethren join him either for company or for conversation. Let him be alone at the work assigned him, abiding in penitential sorrow and pondering that terrible sentence of the Apostle where he says that a man of that kind is handed over for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (1 Cor. 5:5). Let him take his meals alone in the measure and at the hour which the Abbot shall consider suitable for him. He shall not be blessed by those who pass by, nor shall the food that is given him be blessed.

REFLECTION

Justice demands that the punishment fit the crime, and St. Benedict gives the two points between which a spectrum of other methods may be employed. He does not want a one-size-fits-all system of correction and clearly says so more than once.

Think of any parent or authority figure you have ever heard criticized. If punishment was in any way involved, it is most likely that the fault was in doing too much or too little. A cruel person can make employees or children or monastics live in terror. Punishment is relentless and swift and often comes without warning.

This may result in slavish compliance or outright rebellion, but it seldom results in a healthy self, for authority or subject. Hopefully, we will never have to live in dread of unwittingly angering some intransigent despot, whose whims may be dangerous, indeed. We should live in peace and mercy: to receive it and to give it to others. That is true of all monastics, superiors and those governed.

But, we are not called to peace at any price whatsoever, which is the fault of those who do too little to correct. Fear of the governed is as stupid and pointless as fear of the governor and neither helps anyone. While too much control may lead the community to fear the Abbess, too little will leave them equally afraid of each other!

Note carefully that the missing ingredients in either extreme are love, real charity, as well as a trusting prayer for grace and guidance. If we are not showing His love to all, something is very wrong. If mercy does not temper justice and justice does not temper total inaction, something is quite amiss.

Really peaceful people do not avoid confrontation at all costs, if they do, even they will never have peace. They will have nothing more than an uneasy truce or more or less perpetual fear. That is not the loving way to deal with a problem.

The Benedictine way is, as usual, the middle way. Some would put down the middle way, call it weak, but, as we have seen, it takes a tremendous amount of strength and grace to do it well. Our way is quite the reverse of a cop-out: it requires genuine courage and grace, to say nothing of its chief component, a lot of very frank and truthful LOVE! Ah, yes, and that mercy which is a mirror of the Divine Mercy, too!

Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)