CHAPTER 70: Presuming to Strike a Brother

     We decree that no one be permitted to excommunicate or to strike any one of his brethren, unless the abbot has given him the authority. But if anyone should break this rule, let him be publicly reprimanded, that the others may learn from his mistake.  
      Let all, however, exercise diligent and watchful care over the discipline of children until they reach the age of fifteen.  Of course, even that should be done with discretion. And if anyone should presume to discipline those of more advanced years without the command of the abbot, or loses his temper when he punishes the children, let him be subject to the discipline of the Rule, because it is written: "If you do not want it to be done to you, do not do it to someone else." (Tb 4:16)[1]. 

      You don’t have to hang out with people who annoy you, but when you consistently refuse to speak or eat with someone, isn’t that a form of excommunication?  When you make a point of avoiding them, when you sneer at their jokes and roll your eyes as they turn away, aren’t these just subtle ways of punishing them?  Chapters 69 and 70 are two sides of the same coin.  It doesn’t matter whether you are defending or attacking someone in the community; either way, you are judging them.  And Saint Benedict knows that behavior of this sort can take any number of different forms—from outright beatings to silent contempt.  In many respects, the silent attacks can be the worst.  Personally, I’d rather get jumped in the hallway than realize after several weeks that someone has been talking behind my back.
     Still, Benedict doesn’t completely disapprove of corporal punishment, and in this respect, he can start to sound kind of medieval.  But you have to take his comments in context.  In his day, folks used to beat kids all the time.  In fact, everyone used to beat everyone—and a thousand years later, they were still doing it. Stephen Greenblatt, in his biography of William Shakespeare, pointed out that in the 1500s, “parents frequently whipped children, teachers whipped students, masters whipped servants, beadles whipped whores, sheriffs whipped vagrants and beggars…” (Will in the World, p. 178).  Up until the 19^th century it was legal to beat your wife with a stick, provided it was no wider than your thumb.[2] 
     My point is that in the old days, everyone believed in corporal punishment, and not just for kids either, so we can’t really hold it against Saint Benedict that he accepted it as the norm.  In fact, we can admire his restraint.  His aim here is to prevent his monks from acting out of anger, and anyone who does so receives a public reprimand.  What are we to learn from this?  That judging and condemning are practices best left to God.

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[1] This is the third time Saint Benedict quotes this exact passage from the Book of Tobit!  What’s up with that?

[2] A series of lawsuits, most notably North Carolina v. Oliver (in 1874) put an end to this so-called “rule of thumb.”

CHAPTER 69: Presuming to Defend a Brother

No monk should ever defend another in the monastery.  Nor should he take sides in an argument.  Such conduct should never occur in the monastery under any circumstances because it causes very grave scandal. If anyone should violate this rule, let him be severely punished.

Wow.  Severely punished.  And just for defending a fellow monk.  There’s got to be more here than meets the eye.

And of course, there is.

Saint Benedict is talking about cliques and the grumbling that inevitably accompanies them.  When you take a side in an argument (not a discussion, mind you, but an actual confrontation) you take a personal disagreement and make it into a public one.  Something that might well have been settled quietly must now be publicly and officially resolved.  This is especially inappropriate for a monk because, you remember, even when he is given an impossible task, he shouldn’t defend himself; so on what grounds could he possibly dare to defend someone else?

 But taking sides in a fight is always dangerous—and not just because you might end up with a black market nose-job.  Morally speaking, it’s also dangerous. How, for example, do you decide which brothers are worth defending?  Just the ones you agree with?  The ones you’re related to?  The ones you like the most?  And are you sure you know all the details?  You see where this is going: once you start taking sides, there’s no good reason to stop.

But what makes this behavior even more deplorable is that you are, on a personal level, playing God.  Jesus said, “Do not judge, or you will be judged” (Matt 7:1).  By this, of course, he did not mean that we should just accept everyone’s behavior as-is.  We are called to make judgments about particular acts.  We are permitted—in fact, we are obliged—to analyze certain moral acts and determine whether they conform to Christian moral standards. We can say, “…this or that act is sinful…” even “..this or that person committed a sinful act.”  What we are forbidden to say is, “This is a bad person” or “This person is going to Hell.”  The distinction is subtle, but necessary.  We judge acts, not people.[1]

Here’s the catch, though: you don’t judge people when they’re in the wrong, but you don’t judge them when they’re in the right either.  In the old days, everyone seemed pretty confident their neighbors were going to Hell.  These days, everyone seems pretty confident they’re going to Heaven.  Either way, it’s not our call.  That’s why we pray for the dead and not to them. 

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[1] Parents, religious superiors, and judges are sometimes called upon to judge people, but they do so with fear and trembling, knowing that they will be held accountable by God Himself.

CHAPTER 68: If a Brother is Given an Impossible Command

If a brother is given a difficult or impossible command, let him nevertheless receive the order with all meekness and obedience. If, however, he sees that the burden of the command is entirely beyond his strength, let him quietly (and at the appropriate time) submit the reasons for his inability to his Superior—without pride, protest, or dissent. If, however, after hearing the brother’s explanation, the Superior still insists on his command, the monk should trust that his superior knows what is best for him and obey out of love, relying on God’s help.

     Note that the default attitude for a monk is unhesitating obedience—even when he is told to do something impossible, he must obey.  This is a particularly hard concept for the modern mind to grasp.  It smacks of “radicalism” and “blind faith.”  We start thinking of cult leaders and Nazis and we begin to ask ourselves questions like: “If the pope said black was white, would I believe it?  What if my bishop told me to kill someone?  What if the Church taught something that I didn’t agree with?”  But here we must make a crucial distinction between unhesitating obedience and unquestioning obedience. 
      Benedict expects his monks to do what they’re told, but he expects them to question their superior.  So it must be with anyone who is put in authority over us, whether that’s a parent, a bishop, a teacher or a pope.  We are expected to question and analyze…even to challenge them when we think they’re wrong.  But defiance and rebellion are out of the question, and skepticism shouldn’t be the norm.  It may help to think of the Church as an army.  You want a soldier to challenge his superior if he is given a truly immoral or impossible command.  It may even be his moral duty to disobey if that command is truly heinous—like executing civilians or torturing prisoners.  However, you can’t have the troops questioning every order.  In fact, you may legitimately expect a soldier to obey an order even when he disagrees with it.  When the captain shouts “Charge!” he can’t then sit down with every grunt and explain his rationale.
     So for the Catholic, at any rate, it all boils down to this: you have to decide ahead of time whether you trust Her.  If you think she’s right about, say, transubstantiation and the Trinity, then, unless there is a deep violation of your conscience, you’ve got to trust Her on the other stuff too.  What’s more, it may be the case that this is not so much a violation of your conscience as a case of having two consciences—one that says, “I’m a Catholic” and one that says, “I think such-and-such.”  Distinguishing between these two consciences can be a grueling exercise, but my senior Theology students came up with a way to make that process easier.  Consider the following:
     No matter how much time you spend thinking about it, the sum total of your wisdom will not add up to more than the sum total of the Church’s wisdom.  You aren’t holier than Mother Theresa.  You aren’t smarter than Thomas Aquinas.  You aren’t wiser than Saint Francis.  And you aren’t older than the Church.  But now you say that you are right, and the entire Catholic Church—all its saints, theologians, and bishops are wrong?  Sure, a particular cleric or parent may be in error, but the whole Church?  If it’s a matter of doctrine, the odds are not in your favor.
     Here again, Saint Benedict is talking about humility.  Are you willing to admit that you are not the ultimate authority?

CHAPTER 67: Monks on a Journey

     If a monk is sent on a journey, he should ask the community and abbot to pray for him. And after the last prayer at the Work of God, the community should make a special prayer for the absent brethren. On the day that the monk returns from his journey, let him lie flat on the floor of the chapel during all the prayers, and ask everyone to pray for him on account of his failings, for fear that the sight of evil or the sound of shallow talk should have surprised him on the way. And no one should presume to talk about what he has seen or heard outside of the monastery because it is most hurtful. But if anyone should presume to do so, let him undergo the penalty of the Rule.  Likewise, anyone who leaves the monastery without the abbot’s permission should be punished.

The final six chapters appear to be tacked on at the end of the Rule as an afterthought.  By and large, they cover particular extraordinary situations that might arise in a community.  Did Saint Benedict add these chapters one-by-one as he confronted each new challenge?  If so, his first concern was for monks who needed to travel.

In the old days, there was a special prayer that the community would say for a monk when he returned from a trip: “Almighty and eternal God, have mercy on this servant; and if the sight or hearing or any idle word has taken him by surprise on the way, may it be completely forgiven.”  Benedict isn’t worried about what the monk does while he is away so much as what that monk might bring back with him when he returns.  There’s a whole lot of good in the world, but there’s a whole lot of nasty stuff too, and the nasty stuff just seems to get more press.[1]  I’ll bet you’ve heard of Dante’s Inferno, right?  It’s a story about Hell.  But did you know he also wrote a book called Purgatorio and another called Paradiso?  They’re actually much better books than The Inferno, but no one ever reads them because, frankly, sin is more interesting—or so it seems.

Before I became a priest, I imagined that hearing confessions would be fun.  I guess I thought that it would be entertaining to hear peoples’ deepest, darkest secrets—find out about all the stuff that’s going on behind the scenes that no one ever hears about.  I wasn’t much beyond my second or third confession, though, when I realized that confessions are boring.  Really, really boring.  Even the most “interesting” sins are tedious when you look at them through the lens of repentance because, as Saint Augustine loved to point out, sin is just a vacuum.  It’s a hole in something beautiful, or, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, a ‘misdirected good.’  Sin is only interesting so long as you focus on the pleasure it gives you, and it only gives you pleasure so long as you romanticize it.

a traveling monk

Benedict is afraid that the traveling monk might do something stupid while he’s away—then brag about it when he gets back.  And this fear is as much for the traveler as for his audience.  Jesus had great patience for sinners; His harshest words were for those who caused scandal: “It would be better for that man if a millstone were tied around his neck and he were tossed into the sea…” (Luke 17:2).

Nonetheless, when Monday morning rolls around, the halls are full of scandal—much of it made up out of thin air, no doubt:

 “I was soooo drunk Saturday night…”

“You-know-who was out of control…”

“You wouldn’t believe what so-and-so did…

 “You’ve got to swear not to tell anyone this, but…”

When you hear phrases like these, run for the door.  Your soul is in danger. 

The psalmist sings: “Why do you boast of your wickedness, you champion of evil?” (52:1)  It’s bad enough to act like a fool, but you elevate foolishness to a whole new level when you brag about it to your friends.  So it’s not enough just to watch what you do on the weekends.  You need to watch what you say about it on Monday morning too.

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[1] Not long ago, I complained to one of the old monks about the news.  “It’s always murders and earthquakes and wars and scandals.  How come they can’t tell us about the good things that are going on in the world?”

“Because the World is full of good things,” he answered.  “When good things become newsworthy, that’s when we need to start worrying.”

CHAPTER 66: The Gatekeeper

     Let a wise old monk be stationed at the door of the monastery—one who knows how to be courteous, and whose advanced age keeps him from wandering around.  He should have a room near the door so that visitors will always find someone there. As soon as he hears a knock at the door, or a poor person asking for help, the gatekeeper should answer, "Thanks be to God," or ask a blessing; and with the meekness of the fear of God let him reply with a quick, fervent, and charitable answer.  If the old monk needs hand, let him have a younger brother to help him.
 
    This is one of the most pleasant chapters in the rule.  One can’t help smiling at Benedict’s portrait of the gatekeeper—too old to wander about, but kind and solicitous to all who knock.  It is especially refreshing after the relentless skepticism of the previous chapter, and makes for a rather nice contrast.  Who knows what jobs this old guy had when he was younger?  It doesn’t matter to him.  His job now is to welcome strangers, and his attitude toward them should be an example to any Christian who knocks at the door.  The gatekeeper doesn’t resent having his prayers interrupted.  Instead, he thanks God for the opportunity to receive a blessing.  His response is fervent and charitable.
    Many scholars believe that this was originally the last chapter of the Rule.  (Otherwise, why tack on the bit about re-reading it to the community?)  If it is, then perhaps Benedict meant for the gatekeeper to be a sort of model for how to grow old.  Of course, right now, old age may seem a long way off, but if you’re lucky, you will in fact get old some day.  You’ll go bald and get wrinkly and have a sore back and ride around on one of those little scooters with a bell on the handle bars to warn people you’re coming.
    That’s right.  That’ll be you.  So you might as well get used to the idea.
    The kicker is that although old people may not look like much, they are the most important, most powerful folks in the Church.  Because they suffer so much, their prayers are uniquely bound up with Christ’s suffering, and that makes them intercessors and co-redeemers with Christ.  Remember that Saint Paul said we “make up in our sufferings what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Col 24).
The question for now is what sort of old person you will be when that day comes—when your body begins to break down and your mind starts to slip.  Will you be “envious” and “puffed-up” like Benedict’s prior, or “meek” and “charitable” like Benedict’s gatekeeper?  You need to start practicing from now.

CHAPTER 65: The Prior of the Monastery

     Sometimes serious scandals arise in monasteries because of the Prior; since there are some who, puffed up with the wicked spirit of pride and imagining that they are second abbots, set up a dictatorial rule, foster scandals, and excite quarrels in the community. For the preservation of peace and charity, therefore, it is best that the governance of the monastery should depend on the will of the abbot. If, however, the place requires it and the abbot thinks that it is a good idea, he should appoint a Prior. But let this Prior only do what his abbot tells him; for the higher he is placed above others, the more careful he should be to obey the precepts of the Rule.
     On the other hand, if the Prior is found to be disorderly or blinded by vainglory, or disregards the Holy Rule, let him be reprimanded as many as four times.  If he does not change his behavior, let him be removed from his office, and another who is worthy be appointed in his place. But if even afterward he is not quiet and submissive in the brotherhood, let him also be expelled from the monastery. Even so, the abbot should remember that he must give an account to God for all his judgments, lest perhaps envy or jealousy should trouble his conscience.

    Every monastery I’ve ever visited had a prior, and every prior I’ve met seemed to be a pretty nice guy; but Saint Benedict must have had a different experience.  Second to the opening chapter on “The Different Kinds of Monks” this is the harshest.  “Wicked,” “puffed-up,” and “prideful” are all squeezed into the very first sentence.  So what happened?  Did Benedict have a bad experience with his second-in-command?  Was there some envy, some jealousy between them?  We’ll never know.  But what comes through loud and clear in this chapter is Saint Benedict’s persistent fear that, by having two leaders, his community will be split into factions.
    As it turns out, this is a pretty legitimate concern, even from a secular perspective.  There’s a monk in my monastery who is an economist.  He explained the whole dilemma this way: if you want to build a company, you have to start with a vision.  This requires a person who can articulate that vision in terms of more immediate objectives.  But that one person can’t make every single decision, so he has to find middle-management types to do this on his behalf.  Problems arise when the middle-management people have their own objectives—objectives that conflict with one another or are different from those of their boss.  This problem is called “a misalignment of incentives.”  You never want to create an organizational structure where employee’s incentives are set at odds with one another because then they start to undermine each another’s work, make each other look bad, or worst of all, profit at the expense of the business itself.  For example, Sam wants a promotion, but he is competing with Arnold for the position; so he waits around after work and erases Arnold’s hard drive.  As a result, Sam gets the promotion, but the business just lost a thousand clients, and with them a million dollars in profit.
    So how does this apply to a monastic community?  Well, a spiritual community cultivates holiness the way a business community cultivates wealth, so you can’t have the Prior leading the community in one direction while the abbot is leading in another.  What you lose then isn’t profit but peace.  And in its place you get grumbling, back-stabbing, and scandal.  The abbot, therefore, must choose a Prior who is especially dutiful, reverent and obedient—not qualities that are easy to find in a leader.  Nonetheless, “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” said Jesus.
    So whatever team you’re on—your soccer team, your youth group, your class, your school, your family, your church—you have to keep on the lookout for these “misaligned incentives” and talk them through when you find them—all the while bearing in mind that the ultimate incentive is to know, love, and serve God.  And if talking them through doesn’t work, there is Benedict’s own advice at the end of this chapter: be quiet and be submissive.  I know that doesn’t sound very exciting, but sometimes, the incentive is more important than you are.  Wall street may run on greed, but the Church runs on love.

Ash Wednesday

    Starting on Ash Wednesday, we have forty days (not counting Sundays) to prepare for Easter—that is, to prepare for the most sacred day of the year—the day when we celebrate God’s greatest gift to us: eternal life.
Traditionally, the Church spends this time in fasting and prayer, in mortification and repentance for our sins, so that when Easter comes, we are aware in some small way of the magnitude of Christ’s gift to us, of our own unworthiness to receive that gift, and of the depth of gratitude and awe that we should feel on that day when we relive in the most literal sense the Resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.  So this is a great gift that we are preparing to receive; but on Ash Wednesday, we focus on what we have to offer Christ.  We ask ourselves “What gift can I bring to him?”  It’s an impossible question, really, because Jesus Christ is Lord of all Creation.  All that we have belongs to him already.  What do you get for the man who has everything?
     A story is told of St. Jerome that he had a vision in which Our Lord came to him and asked him

Saint Jerome Having His Vision

for a gift.  St. Jerome said, “Well, I’ve been a bishop for a long time now, and I’ve sacrificed a lot to do that job well.”
     “Yes,” said Jesus, “I am very pleased with that, but is there nothing else you have to offer me?” 
     “Well, I’ve built several Churches in my time.  Perhaps you’ll find those pleasing as well.” 
     “I do,” said Jesus, “ but don’t you have anything else to give me?” 
     “Ah,” said St. Jerome, “I’ve got something for you.  I translated the entire book of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.” 
     “And for that I am well pleased,” answered Jesus,  “But surely you have something else to offer me.” 
     And the discussion went on like that until finally, St. Jerome said, “You know what?  I can’t think of anything else.” 
     And Jesus replied, “Jerome, my friend, you have forgotten to offer me your sins.”
     Not long ago, one of our older monks celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his solemn profession of vows.  There was a big party, and all the people who love him showed up.  And they all brought presents.  Now after the party, I was talking to this monk, and I said, “Congratulations, Father, but I’m afraid I have nothing to give you for your anniversary.”  To which he responded, “Nothing?  You’re giving me nothing?  Why, that’s just what I’ve always wanted!”
     Indeed, there is nothing we have that wasn’t given to us in the first place.  So the only thing we have that really belongs to us is our sin—and irony of ironies, this is the one thing that Christ really wants from us.  So on Ash Wednesday, we remind ourselves of our mortality.  We remind ourselves that "we are dust and to dust we shall return".  And then we think about our sins, and with great joy, we bring them to Christ as a gift, wrapped up in repentance.