CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
NOT very long afterwards sickness took hold of Benedict himself and began to wear him down. To prove their great zeal for the faith by means of a further virtue, that of patience in suffering, the Divine Mercy allowed them both to be cast for a short time upon the bed of sickness, so that, when their illness had been overcome by death, He might refresh them with the eternal rest of peace and light in Heaven. Sigfrith, after a long and painful internal disease, came to his last day on earth and Benedict himself, after three years of creeping paralysis, was so weakened that his lower limbs were already as good as dead and only the vital upper part of his body, on which the continuance of life depends, still functioned, being kept alive in order to give scope to his powers of patience. Both of them, in the midst of their pain, strove continually to thank their Maker and to occupy themselves in praising God and encouraging their brethren. Benedict sought to strengthen the monks who so often came to see him, in their observance of the Rule which he had given them. ’You must not think,’ he said,‘that the ordinances I laid down for you were the result of my own untutored invention. No, all I found best in the life of the seventeen monasteries I visited during my long and frequent pilgrimages, I stored up in my mind and have handed on to you, to be steadfastly adhered to, for your own good.’ He gave orders that the fine and extensive library of books which he had brought back from Rome and which were so necessary for improving the standard of education in this church should be carefully preserved as a single collection and not allowed to decay through neglect or be split up piecemeal. Over and over again he insisted that in electing an abbot upright life and soundness of doctrine were to be the prime considerations, not rank or family influence. ’I tell you in all sincerity,’ he said, ‘that as a choice of evils I would far rather have this whole place where I have built the monastery revert forever, should God so decide, to the wilderness it once was, rather than have my brother in the flesh, who has not entered upon the way of truth, succeed me as abbot. Take the greatest care, brothers, never to appoint a man as father over you because of his birth; and always appoint from among yourselves, never from outside the monastery. According to the rule of the great St Benedict, our founder, and according to the decretals of privileges of this house, you are to meet as a body and take common counsel to discover who has proved himself fittest and most worthy by the probity of his life and the wisdom of his teaching to carry out the duties of this office. You must choose as abbot him whom after kindly scrutiny you all acknowledge to be the best.1 Then you are to summon the bishop and ask him to confirm your candidate in office with the customary blessing. For just as those who beget children by carnal generation must be governed by earthly and carnal considerations in their choice of an heir for an earthly and carnal inheritance, so must they who, in a spiritual sense, bring forth children for God by the spiritual seed of His word, be guided solely by spiritual criteria. Let them reckon as the eldest son among their spiritual children him who is endowed with more abundant spiritual grace, just as parents according to the flesh recognize that their firstborn has pride of place among their offspring and must be preferred to the rest when they share out their inheritance.’