CHAPTER 32
60 The Rule, Chapter 32
CHAPTER 32
The Tools and Goods of the Monastery St. Benedict expects us to be good housekeepers. We monks probably do remarkably well for a bunch of bachelors. If St.
Benedict were to show up, however, and give this monastery the white-glove test, he might find some dust. ' 'Whoever fails to keep the things belonging to the monastery clean or treats them carelessly should be reproved/'
He is rather fussy about the goods of the monastery, "that is, its tools, clothing or anything else. . . /'He wants the abbot to keep a list of the articles being used in the monastery
"so that when the brothers succeed one another in their assigned tasks, he may be aware of what he hands out and what he receives back." Modern-day abbots do not keep an inventory of the things that are being used in the monastery. But monks are still conscious of the care they should take in using the tools and goods of the monastery.
St. Benedict did not like to see things fall apart. WTien he abandoned Rome and before he went to Subiaco, he and his housekeeper, Cyrilla, lived in a place called Affile. One day a tray she had borrowed from the neighbors fell off the table and broke. St. Gregory records what happened:
The poor woman burst into tears; she had just borrowed this tray and now it was ruined. Benedict, who had always been a devout and thoughtful boy, felt sorry for her when he saw her weeping. Quietly picking up both the pieces, he knelt down by himself and prayed earnestly to God, even to the point of tears. No sooner had he finished his prayer than he noticed that the two pieces were joined together again, without even a mark to show where the tray had been broken. Hurrying back at once, he cheerfully reassured Cyrilla and handed her the tray in perfect condition.
The Rule, Chapter 32 61 There is another incident of breakage in St. Gregory's Life of St. Benedict. A Goth, who had entered the monastery at Subiaco, was assigned to clearing away weeds at the edge of a lake. The iron blade slipped off the handle of the sickle and flew into the water. St. Benedict repaired the sickle. Taking the handle from the Goth, he threw it into the lake. "Immediately the iron blade rose from the bottom of the lake and slipped back onto the handle. Then he handed the tool back to the Goth and told him, 'Continue with your work now.
There is no need to be upset/ " Nowadays we have to depend on Elmer's Glue to put things like these back together.
What lesson does this short chapter of the Rule have for us in our age of hardware supermarkets? If tools can't be repaired, they can easily be replaced. Even so, St. Benedict wants us to take good care of everything we own and use. He is concerned about the quality of life in a home. He wants us to show some responsibility in the way we live. He is great on orderspiritual order and material order too.
We can profit from the reminders St. Benedict gives us.
Whatever is broken he likes to see repaired— the borrowed tray, the Goth's sickle, us. When it comes to caring for human beings, he warns about not "rubbing too hard to remove the rust
[for fear of breaking] the vessel" (ch. 64).
62 The Rule, Chapter 33
CHAPTER 33
Monks and Private Ownership Chapter 33 gets to the point in the first sentence. " Above all, this evil practice must be uprooted and removed from the monastery/ Obviously, St. Benedict has a very strong opinion about private ownership. So has Karl Marx. St. Benedict is not at all in favor of monks owning things individually. Not even
"a book, writing tablets or stylus— in short, not a single item, especially since monks may not have the free disposal even of their own bodies and wills/ ' St. Benedict prefixes this statement by saying: "We mean that without an order from the abbot, no one may presume to give, receive or retain anything as his own, nothing at all." Permission may be obtained, but we clearly understand that this is not one area in which St.
Benedict wants to be particularly lenient.
St. Gregory tells us about a monk St. Benedict assigned to give conferences at a nearby convent:
After one of these instructions they presented the monk with a few handkerchiefs, which he accepted and hid away in his habit. As soon as he got back to the abbey he received a stern reproof. "How is it," the abbot asked him, "that evil has found its way into your heart?" Taken completely by surprise, the monk did not understand why he was being rebuked, for he had entirely forgotten about the handkerchiefs.
"Was I not present," the saint continued, "when you accepted those handkerchiefs from the handmaids of God and hid them away in your habit?" The offender instantly fell at Benedict's feet, confessed his fault and gave up the present he had received.
Until recent times such a practice was followed to the letter of the law in monasteries. When I was being formed in monastic ways, I would have been expected to take a gift of handkerchiefs to my superior and ask his permission to keep