Holy Rule for March 4

[St. Mary's Monastery]

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

March 4, July 4, November 3
Chapter 27: How Solicitous the Abbot Should Be for the Excommunicated

Let the Abbot be most solicitous in his concern for delinquent brethren, for "it is not the healthy but the sick who need a physician". (Matt 9:12) And therefore he ought to use every means that a wise physician would use. Let him send senpectae, that is, brethren of mature years and wisdom, who may as it were secretly console the wavering brother and induce him to make humble satisfaction; comforting him that he may not "be overwhelmed by excessive grief" (2 Cor. 2:7), but that, as the Apostle says, charity may be strengthened in him (2 Cor. 2:8). And let everyone pray for him.

For the Abbot must have the utmost solicitude and exercise all prudence and diligence lest he lose any of the sheep entrusted to him. Let him know that what he has undertaken is the care of weak souls and not a tyranny over strong ones; and let him fear the Prophet's warning through which God says, "What you saw to be fat you took to yourselves, and what was feeble you cast away" (Ezec. 34:3,4). Let him rather imitate the loving example of the Good Shepherd who left the ninety-nine sheep in the mountains and went to look for the one sheep that had gone astray, on whose weakness He had such compassion that He deigned to place it on His own sacred shoulders and thus carry it back to the flock (Luke 15:4-5).

REFLECTION

Here it is. The good part to all this penal code, the loving Father! If you remember the Prologue, the kindness and enthusiastic, loving zeal that St. Benedict showed there, you will find the more difficult things he has to write easier to read. All because you will see them through the lens of his loving concern, his gentle compassion. In this chapter, that compassion has full rein! This will have a lot to say to parents and others in authority, too.

Notice at once the difference between Benedictine punishment and the penal system of the world - in Benedict's day and our own. The secular, warehousing view of punishment gives little more than idle lip-service to rehabilitation or genuine conversion. It is pretty much reducible to punishment for its own sake, a fact that should leave us far less than surprised at its ineffectiveness. It fails because it does not love the offender, nor seek to heal. Offenders are quick to grasp this fact.

Benedictine punishment has no reason other than healing, conversion and love. This chapter makes that perfectly clear. It is a collective human striving to better image the perfect will of God, Who "desires not the death of the sinner, but that he be converted and live." Its entire rationale is love for and healing of the erring monastic.

I find it interesting that St. Benedict does not stress in these preceding chapters the harm done to a community in dealing with offenses. Obviously, it sometimes happens that all are harmed, or at least shaken by one's actions. It would have been easy enough to include this as a rationale for punishment, even as a secondary one, but he does not. It leaves us with a pure view of loving concern for the guilty one.

Look at the senpectae, the old, wise ones St. Benedict would send, as it were "secretly" to console the afflicted one. They are a cherished monastic tradition, because they point clearly to the kindness involved in the whole process. In a sense, St. Benedict is telling the Abbess to play an acceptable form of "good-cop-bad-cop" to help the guilty one to conversion, to a return to spiritual health.

We confuse the stewardship of authority with the selfishness of mere power. St. Benedict urges us to never do that, because he knows it will fail. Love, only love and the mercy which attends it triumphs! Mercy and love burnish the image of God in ourselves to a wondrous sheen. So polish up, folks, polish up!

Br. Jerome Leo Hughes, OSB (RIP)