CHAPTER 22
44 The Rule, Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
The Sleeping Arrangements of the Monks Now St. Benedict is getting down to practical matters. He says that monks are to sleep in separate beds and that they are to use bedding that is " suitable to monastic life." In chapter 55, he will specify what is suitable: "a mat, a woolen blanket and a light covering as well as a pillow/' The beds are to be ' 'inspected frequently by the abbot, lest private possessions be found there." Until very recent times, this instruction was followed when the abbot searched our rooms every Lent. He was looking for signs of extravagance. Once he discovered fiftyfive pairs of shoes under a bed.
In St. Benedict's day, a straw mattress was used. Paul Warnefrid, a monk of Monte Cassino in a later century, says that feather mattresses were allowed to the sick. I'm grateful that straw mattresses had passed out of usage by the time I entered the monastery. I suffer from hay fever.
I'm also grateful that monks no longer sleep in a dormitory. St. Benedict has other ideas, though. "If possible, all are to sleep in one place, but should the size of the community preclude this, they will sleep in groups of ten or twenty under the watchful care of seniors. A lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning."
In ancient days it was a monastic custom to sleep in a common dormitory. St. Benedict's legislation in this matter is nothing new. Monks worked, prayed, ate, and slept in common.
What changed the sleeping arrangements for monks in the West? The influence of monastic orders like the Carthusians and Camaldolese. They were hermits who had their own individual cottages or cells. When Benedictines became more scholarly, this also contributed to the need for private cells.
The advantage of having a room of one's own came to be
The Rule, Chapter 22 45 regarded as a necessity and not a luxury. A monk's room is not only a place for sleeping, it is an area where he can experience solitude and be recollected.
"A lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning/ '
St. Benedict says. The reason is obvious. Even monks have to get up in the night. There was another reason for keeping a light burning and for having the monks sleep "under the watchful care of seniors/' Precautions had to be taken so that some of these monks would not be tempted by homosexual acts, which were acceptable in the Roman society they had abandoned.
"They sleep clothed, and girded with belts or cords; but they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep." Sleeping in the habit is another thing that I'm grateful is no longer a practice in monasteries.
When I came to the monastery, I was given a night scapular.
This was worn to bed— a mini-scapular without a hood on it— as a reminder that I really should be wearing the full habit to bed. One of the monks always wore his night scapular tied to his ankle because he said it choked him when he wore it on his shoulders. Nowadays we don't even have a night scapular around the house to show our young people.
The habit identified the monk, and St. Benedict sees no reason for removing this identity at night. Awake or asleep, the monk is a monk. St. Benedict, practical man that he is, has another reason for sleeping in the habit. "Thus the monks will always be ready to arise without delay when the signal is given; each will hasten to arrive at the Work of God before the others, yet with all dignity and decorum." For St. Benedict, it does not matter if his monks arrive in choir looking as if they have slept in their habits. Just so they are there on time. That is what counts, and if they wear the habit to bed at night, they won't have to waste time putting it on when they get out of bed.
"The younger brothers should not have their beds next to
46 The Rule, Chapter 22 each other, but interspersed among those of the seniors/7 Why is this? Again the reason is obvious. The young monks might hatch some mischief if they are together in one area of the dormitory. They might break the grand silence by whispering when they should be sleeping. ' 'Monks should diligently cultivate silence at all times, but especially at night" (ch. 42).
'On arising for the Work of God, they will quietly encourage each other, for the sleepy like to make excuses/' Here is advice that pertains to all of us who follow the Rule— get out of bed and get going. When monks lived in a dormitory, it was easier for them to encourage one another to get out of bed.
The custom when I entered the monastery and for several years thereafter was to have wakers go round to the rooms and rap on the doors. We were expected to respond with "Deo gratias." The waker kept beating on the door until he heard the monk thank God for being wakened. Sometimes the response did not convey much gratitude to either God or the waker.
Wakers were eventually replaced by a buzzer, a battleship horn procured from Army-Navy surplus. Someone had to get up ahead of time to buzz the buzzer, and it was decided this would be a good responsibility for the novices. One year we had a novice who happened to be observing his twenty-first birthday in the week he was assigned to the buzzer. He announced his birthday to the community by waking us with twenty-one blasts of the battleship horn. Now we arise on our own initiative.
In another place in the Rule, St. Benedict encourages us to rise from sleep, and this is good advice for all of us. 'Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: It is high time for us to arise from sleep (Rom 13:11). Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge:
If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts (Ps 94[95]:8)"
(Prologue).
The Rule, Chapter 23-26 47 The sleeping arrangements for people who live in monasteries and those of Oblates are bound to differ, but for all of us it is not proper to oversleep or linger in bed if this means we will be late for the Work of God.
CHAPTERS 23-26
The Penal Code St. Benedict was a holy man, but he did not live with his head in the clouds. Although some people may want to describe a monastery as a heavenly place, St. Benedict lived with monks who were not at all like angels. He knew the monastery was rooted here on earth. It was a place from which to take off for heaven, but no monk, himself included, ever got there alive.
It takes us a lifetime to get ready for heaven.
In the last chapter of the Rule, St. Benedict says: "The reason we have written this rule is that, by observing it in monasteries, we can show that we have some degree of virtue and the beginnings of monastic life." He counts himself among those who are seeking virtue but who have not yet reached perfection. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous can understand this. Here is what they say about their program of recovery, their rule of life: "No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.
We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection."
It is often necessary to admit we are imperfect and to ask forgiveness. Although our sins are personal, some of them of-
48 The Rule, Chapter 23-26 fend the society in which we live. St. Benedict has ways of handling an obstinate monk who refuses to acknowledge his wrongdoing in community. There are chapters in the Rule known as St. Benedict's penal code.
Chapter 23, 'Excommunication for Faults/' sets the tone for correction. "If a brother is found to be stubborn or disobedient or proud, if he grumbles or in any way despises the holy rule and defies the orders of his seniors, he should be warned twice privately by the seniors in accord with our Lord's injunction (Matt 18:15-16).' Stubbornness, disobedience, pride, grumbling— St. Benedict dislikes all of these characteristics. His disapproval of them is expressed in other places in the Rule.
We all know certain kinds of people who make belonging to any organization difficult. When they ignore the rules that bind the group and refuse to listen to its leaders, something has to be done. Such situations are intolerable. St. Benedict, referring to Scripture, recommends two warnings in private by the seniors of the monastery. "If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves. If he listens to you, you have won back your brother.
If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you: the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any charge" (Matt 18:15-16).
When private confrontation fails, "he must be rebuked publicly in the presence of everyone." By "public" St. Benedict means in front of the whole community. If the monk cannot be humiliated into reforming himself, the next punitive stage is excommunication, "provided that he understands the nature of this punishment." A rebel usually knows he has gone too far when he is kicked out of the group. The unruly student knows he's had it when the scolding teacher points to the door of the classroom. But there are some troublemakers for whom not even excommunication makes an impression.
Then there is only one choice left for that kind of monk. Beat
The Rule, Chapter 23-36 49 some sense into him. St. Benedict says: "If however he lacks understanding, [of excommunication] let him undergo corporal punishment."
In our day, fortunately, abbots no longer submit their problem monks to corporal punishment. None of us has scars on his back. But for St. Benedict flogging was an acceptable method of discipline. He borrowed it from previous monastic leaders, and it lasted beyond his time. In fact, for a long time corporal punishment was employed by the Church at large.
Remember the Spanish Inquisition? It excelled in torture.
Cardinal Hugh of St. Cher, a thirteenth-century Dominican, explained the symbolism of a bishop's (and abbot's) staff in this fashion: "The prelate's discipline must be exercised with regard to his delinquent sons; otherwise in vain will he carry the pastoral staff [crosier], in which the three duties of the shepherd are symbolized: they are to be drawn by the upper portion, governed by the middle of the staff, and struck with its lower part."1
St. Benedict is not unreasonable in meting out punishment.
"There ought to be due proportion between the seriousness of a fault and the measure of excommunication or discipline.
The abbot determines the gravity of faults" (ch. 24, "Degrees of Excommunication").
For less-serious faults, the monk is not allowed to eat with his brothers but must take his meals by himself at another time.
St. Benedict does not put the monk on bread and water. He allows him to eat the same food the other monks eat, but he is not allowed to eat with them. The wayward monk is excommunicated from the communal meal. In the early Church the catechumen who was preparing for baptism had to leave after the Liturgy of the Word. He could not stay for the Eucharistic banquet because he could not yet partake of it. The errant monk of St. Benedict's monastery is told that he cannot eat with his brothers because he is no longer a part of that assembly. He
50 The Rule, Chapter 23-26 is excommunicated, excluded until the time when he can again partake of the meal.
St. Benedict permits this monk to attend the Divine Office, the work to which monks should prefer nothing else, but "he will not lead a psalm or a refrain nor will he recite a reading until he has made satisf action/ '
Excommunication for more serious faults is established in chapter 25. The monk's fault is so serious that he is kicked out of both the refectory and the oratory. He is even excommunicated from the communal Work of God. No one is to give him a blessing or pay any attention to him. He is cut off from the community. It is as if he doesn't exist. "He will work alone at the tasks assigned to him, living continually in sorrow and penance, pondering that fearful judgment of the Apostle: Such a man is handed over for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord (1 Cor 5:5)."
St. Benedict is so serious about the enforcement of excommunication that "if a brother, acting without an order from the abbot, presumes to associate in any way with an excommunicated brother, to converse with him or to send him a message, he should receive a like punishment of excommunication" (ch. 25, "Unauthorized Association with the Excommunicated"). The recalcitrant monk will be less inclined to repent and change his ways if his brothers pamper him while he is under the pain of excommunication.
Excommunication is a harsh thing, and St. Benedict uses it only after other efforts have failed to correct a stubborn, proud, grumbling, disobedient monk. Although he has indicated that there will be nothing harsh in his Rule, harshness is in store for the monk who disregards the limits of the law.
Do we ever use excommunication for the wrong reasons?
Do we ever excommunicate, exclude people because we think they have little or nothing in common with us? Do we ever impose excommunication upon ourselves because we believe