CHAPTER 27
The Rule, Chapter 27 51 we are so much better than the people with whom we are expected to associate? Members of our family, our parish, our religious communities?
CHAPTER 27
The Abbot's Concern for the Excommunicated Sometimes parents have to tell a child to leave the table and go to his or her room until told to come out. Our parents, if they didn't use that form of excommunication, used some other. We all grew up having our rights and privileges suppressed as the result of our having behaved improperly.
Someone is usually around to correct us when we've been bad.
We can lose our merits in the Scouts, be campused in college, or be demoted at work. It is not easy for a parent, a scoutmaster, a college dean, or an employer to restrict us, but this has to be done for our own good. And usually we'll admit afterward, "I really needed that."
Often enough we find ourselves in the position of being the one who imposes the punishment, the excommunication.
St. Benedict provides helpful hints for the abbot who must deal with erring monks. All of us who are obligated to correct family members, business associates, or friends can find some guidelines for going about it in chapter 27 of the Rule.
"The abbot must exercise the utmost care and concern for wayward brothers, because it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick (Matt 9:12)." Saying, "I'm concerned about what you did" is a kinder approach than asking, "Why the hell did you do that?" Even when we have been angered by what the person to be corrected has done, we must cool down before making the correction.
52 The Rule, Chapter 27 St. Benedict recommends that " mature and wise brothers" go to the excommunicated monk and "urge him to be humble as a way of making satisfaction, and console him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow (2 Cor 2:7)." This is not a copout on the part of St. Benedict. He knows that a monk who is being punished may be more inclined to listen to someone besides the abbot. In your own families, one parent may have to depend on the other or on someone else in the family to get to first base with a son or daughter. There is always the chance that someone else may be able to do a better job of turning people around than you can. Other avenues have to be approached. And, of course, St. Benedict resorts to prayers.
"Let love for him be reaffirmed (2 Cor 2:8), and let all pray for him."
In the previous chapters dealing with St. Benedict's penal code, he may have left us with the impression that the abbot should be a severe master who will go to any end in subjecting his disciples to him. He speaks in terms of warnings, public rebuke, excommunication, corporal punishment. Perhaps
St. Benedict sounds more like an enraged Puritan elder than the author of a rule noted for its discretion and simplicity. We have to remember that he was a legislator making rules in a period of time much different from ours. No doubt among his monks there were both arrogant Roman aristocrats and undisciplined barbarians who had to be taught not to despise the Rule and not to defy the orders of the seniors.
In chapter 27, St. Benedict expresses his feelings about the relationship between the abbot and the rebellious member of the monastery. "It is the abbot's responsibility to have great concern and to act with all speed, discernment and diligence in order not to lose any of the sheep entrusted to him. He should realize that he has undertaken care of the sick, not tyranny over the healthy." The abbot is to follow the example of the Good Shepherd, who left the ninety-nine sheep and