The Rule of Benedict

by Joan Chittister

  CHAPTER 44

  SATISFACTION BY THE EXCOMMUNICATED

  March 24 – July 24 – Nov. 23

  Those excommunicated for serious faults from the oratory and from the table are to prostrate themselves in silence at the oratory entrance at the end of the celebration of the Opus Dei. They should lie face down at the feet of all as they leave the oratory, and let them do this until the prioress or abbot judges they have made satisfaction. Next, at the bidding of the prioress or abbot, they are to prostrate themselves at the feet of the prioress or abbot, then at the feet of all that they may pray for them. Only then, if the prioress or abbot orders, should they be admitted to the choir in the rank the prioress or abbot assigns. Even so, they should not presume to lead a psalm or a reading or anything else in the oratory without further instructions from the prioress or abbot. In addition, at all the hours, as the Opus Dei is being completed, they must prostrate themselves in the place they occupy. They will continue this form of satisfaction until the prioress or abbot again bids them cease.

  Those excommunicated for less serious faults from the table only are to make satisfaction in the oratory for as long as the prioress or abbot orders. They do so until they give them blessing and say, “Enough.”

  “A community is too heavy for any one to carry alone,” the rabbis say. Benedict argues that the community enterprise is such an important one that those who violate their responsibilities to it must serve as warning to others of the consequences of failing to carry the human community. The point, of course, is not that the group has the power to exclude us. The point is that we must come to realize that we too often exclude ourselves from the relationships we promised to honor and to build by becoming the center of our own lives and ignoring our responsibilities to theirs.

  The correction seems harsh and humiliating by modern standards, but the Rule is working with the willing if not with the ready who seek to grow rather than to accommodate. The ancients tell the story of the distressed person who came to the Holy One for help. “Do you really want a cure?” the Holy One asked. “If I did not, would I bother to come to you?” the disciple answered. “Oh, yes,” the master said. “Most people do.” And the disciple said, incredulously, “But what for then?” And the Holy One answered, “Well, not for a cure. That’s painful. They come for relief.”

  This chapter forces us to ask, in an age without penances and in a culture totally given to individualism, what relationships we may be betraying by selfishness and what it would take to cure ourselves of the self-centeredness that requires the rest of the world to exist for our own convenience.

  CHAPTER 45

  MISTAKES IN THE ORATORY

  March 25 – July 25 – Nov. 24

  Should monastics make a mistake in a psalm, responsory, refrain, or reading, they must make satisfaction there before all. If they do not use this occasion to humble themselves, they will be subjected to more severe punishment for failing to correct by humility the wrong committed through negligence. Youth, however, are to be whipped for such a fault.

  “To know all of the Talmud is a great thing,” the rabbis teach, “but to learn one virtue is greater.” In Benedictine spirituality, two constants emerge clearly: first, community prayer is central to the life, and, second, whatever is done must be done well. To fail to prepare the prayer, then, to pray poorly, and sloppily, to read the Scripture to people who do not have books and to read it without care, without sense, without accuracy is to strike at the very core of the community life. It is a fault serious enough to undermine the spiritual life of the community. It is not to be endured.

  “Those who pray without knowing what they pray,” Maimon Ben Joseph wrote, “do not pray.” If anything, this chapter requires us to ask even to this day how it is that we can hear the Scripture but never study it, pray prayers but never contemplate the universal implications of them, go through rituals but never immerse ourselves in their meaning. How is it that we too pray without thinking, pray carelessly, pray poorly, or pray without thought?

  CHAPTER 46

  FAULTS COMMITTED IN OTHER MATTERS

  March 26 – July 26 – Nov. 25

  If monastics commit a fault while at any work—while working in the kitchen, in the storeroom, in serving, in the bakery, in the garden, in any craft or anywhere else—either by breaking or losing something or failing in any other way in any other place, they must at once come before the prioress or abbot and community and of their own accord admit their fault and make satisfaction. If it is made known through another, they are to be subjected to a more severe correction.

  Accountability is the Benedictine value on which all community life is based. Benedict clearly never supposes perfection in a Benedictine community. People have bad days and recalcitrant spirits and limited education and difficult periods in life, all of which are acknowledged and even provided for in a rule that concerns itself with single-minded seeking of God. What Benedict does require, however, is a sense of responsibility. There is nothing in community life, he implies here, that is so unimportant that it can be ignored or overlooked. Nothing in life is so meaningless that we have the right to do it unthinkingly. What each of us does affects all the others and it is to everyone that we owe accounting and apology and reparation.

  The notion that everything we do affects others and stands to be judged by them constitutes a concept of human community that is long lost. In this world, corporations gut the center out of forests and say not one word of sorrow to the children of the world who will inherit the dry and eroded mountainsides on which the trees once grew. Bankers take profits that close businesses and say nothing to the people made homeless by the deal. Politicians make policies that rape the third world and say not a thing to whole nations held hostage to greed. Individuals overheat, overconsume, and overbuy until the resources of the globe are wasted away to nothing and we think nothing of it.

  Clearly, chapter 46 is not about punishment. Chapter 46 is about social consciousness.

  When the cause of the sin lies hidden in the conscience, the monastic is to reveal it only to the prioress or abbot or to one of the spiritual elders, who know how to heal their own wounds as well as those of others, without exposing them and making them public.

  Everybody needs somebody to whom they can reveal themselves without fear of punishment or pain. Everybody, at some time in life, wrestles with an angel that threatens to overpower them. Contemporary society, with its bent for anonymity and pathological individualism and transience, has institutionalized the process in psychological consulting services and spiritual direction centers. Benedict would have approved. He wanted people to work skillfully with the souls of others. He would probably also have found some of it unnecessary. What we need, he says, are people in our lives who care enough about us to lead us through life’s various stages gently. If we chose spiritual people for our friends and our leaders, if we respected our elders for their wisdom, if we wanted growth rather than comfort, if we ripped away the masks that hide us and were willing to have our bleeding selves cauterized by the light of spiritual leadership and the heat of holy friendship, we would, this chapter indicates, come to the humility that brings real peace.

  Another facet of this chapter looms equally important. The challenge of community lies in whether we ourselves care enough about anyone else to be willing to be their light, to treat their wounds well, to protect their reputations when they try to talk to us.

  The Tao Te Ching reads, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.” Benedictine spirituality asks for both.

  CHAPTER 47

  ANNOUNCING THE HOURS FOR THE OPUS DEI

  March 27 – July 27 – Nov. 26

  It is the responsibility of the abbot and prioress to announce, day and night, the hour for the Opus Dei. They may do so personally or delegate the responsibility to a conscientious member, so that everything may be done at the proper time.


  Only those so authorized are to lead psalms and refrains, after the prioress or abbot according to their rank. No monastics should presume to read or sing unless they are able to benefit the hearers; let this be done with humility, seriousness, and reverence, and at the bidding of the prioress or abbot.

  Prayer in a Benedictine community is to be both regular and artistic, and it is the role of leadership to see that this is so. In a culture without alarm clocks and in a community that prayed in the middle of the night, the responsibility was a major one. Even centuries later, however, when we all rouse ourselves to the sound of clock radios or a dozen other automatic devices and have no need for bellringers, the situation is just as serious. The message under the message is that unless the group becomes more and more immersed in prayer and the Scriptures, giving them priority no matter what the other pressures of the day, the group will cease to have any authenticity at all. It will cease to develop. It will dry up and cave in on itself and become more museum than monastery. This stress on our responsibility to call ourselves to prayer is an insight as fresh for the twenty-first century as it was for the sixth. For all of us, prayer must be regular, not haphazard, not erratic, not chance. At the same time, it cannot be routine or meaningless or without substance. Prayer has to bring beauty, substance, and structure to our otherwise chaotic and superficial lives or it is not long before life itself becomes chaotic and superficial. A life of spiritual substance is a life of quality. The Tao Te Ching puts it this way:

  She who is centered in the Tao

  can go where she wishes, without danger.

  She perceives the universal harmony,

  even amid great pain,

  because she has found peace in her heart.

  CHAPTER 48

  THE DAILY MANUAL LABOR

  March 28 – July 28 – Nov. 27

  Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore, the community members should have specified periods for manual labor as well as for prayerful reading.

  There is little room for excursion into the quixotic in the Rule of Benedict. If any chapter proves that point best, it may well be the chapter on work. Benedict doesn’t labor the point but he clearly makes it: Benedictine life is life immersed in the sanctity of the real and work is a fundamental part of it. The function of the spiritual life is not to escape into the next world; it is to live well in this one. The monastic engages in creative work as a way to be responsible for the upbuilding of the community. Work periods, in fact, are specified just as prayer periods are. Work and prayer are opposite sides of the great coin of a life that is both holy and useful, immersed in God and dedicated to the transcendent in the human. It is labor’s transfiguration of the commonplace, the transformation of the ordinary that makes cocreators of us all.

  We believe that the times for both may be arranged as follows: From Easter to the first of October, they will spend their mornings after Prime till about the fourth hour at whatever work needs to be done. From the fourth hour until the time of Sext, they will devote themselves to reading. But after Sext and their meal, they may rest on their beds in complete silence; should any members wish to read privately, let them do so, but without disturbing the others. They should say None a little early, about midway through the eighth hour, and then until Vespers they are to return to whatever work is necessary. They must not become distressed if local conditions or their poverty should force them to do the harvesting themselves. When they live by the labor of their hands, as our ancestors and the apostles did, then they are really monastics. Yet, all things are to be done with moderation on account of the fainthearted.

  Benedictine spirituality exacts something so much harder for our century than rigor. Benedictine spirituality demands balance. Immediately after Benedict talks about the human need to work, to fill our lives with something useful and creative and worthy of our concentration, he talks about lectio, about holy reading and study. Then, in a world that depended on the rising and the setting of the sun to mark the days rather than on the artificial numbers on the face of a clock, Benedict shifts prayer, work, and reading periods from season to season to allow for some of each and not too much of either as the days stretch or diminish from period to period. He wants prayer to be brief, work to be daily, and study to be constant. With allowances for periodic changes, then, the community prayed and studied from about 2:00 A.M. to dawn and then worked for a couple of hours until the hour of Terce at about 10:00 A.M. Then, after Terce they read for a couple of hours until Sext before the midday meal. After dinner they rested or read until about 2:30 and then went back to work for three or four hours until Vespers and supper in the late afternoon. After saying a very brief Compline or evening prayer they retired after sundown for the night. It was a gentle, full, enriching, regular, calm, and balanced life. It was a prescription for life that ironically has become very hard to achieve in a world of light bulbs and telephones and cars, but it may be more necessary than ever if the modern soul is to regain any of the real rhythm of life and so its sanity as well.

  March 29 – July 29 – Nov. 28

  From the first of October to the beginning of Lent, the members ought to devote themselves to reading until the end of the second hour. At this time Terce is said and they are to work at their assigned tasks until None. At the first signal for the hour of None, all put aside their work to be ready for the second signal. Then after their meal they will devote themselves to their reading or to the psalms.

  During the days of Lent, they should be free in the morning to read until the third hour, after which they will work at their assigned tasks until the end of the tenth hour. During this time of Lent each one is to receive a book from the library and is to read the whole of it straight through. These books are to be distributed at the beginning of Lent.

  During Lent, the monks are to go on working but to increase their reading time. In this period, they are to be assigned a book to read “straight through.” In Lent they are to put themselves on a regimen and study what they are told to study in a serious and ordered way. Nevertheless, the work continues. Benedictines were to “earn their bread by the labor of their hands,” and no devotion was to take the place of the demands of life. These were working monastics who depended on God to provide the means of getting food but who did not, as the ancients said, depend on God to put it in the nest.

  At the same time, work is not what defines the Benedictine. It is the single-minded search for God that defines Benedictine spirituality. That is what the monastic pursues behind every other pursuit. That is what gives the monastic life meaning. That is what frees the monastic heart. The monastic does not exist for work. Creative and productive work are simply meant to enhance the Garden and sustain us while we grow into God.

  In today’s culture in which people are identified more by what they do than what they are, this is a lesson of profound importance. Once the retirement dinner is over and the company watch is engraved, there has to be something left in life that makes us human and makes us happy or life may well have been in vain. That something, Benedictine spirituality indicates, is a mind and a heart full of a sense of meaning and an instinct for God.

  Above all, one or two elders must surely be deputed to make the rounds of the monastery while the members are reading. Their duty is to see that no one is so apathetic as to waste time or engage in idle talk to the neglect of their reading, and so not only harm themselves but also distract others. If such persons are found—God forbid—they should be reproved a first and a second time. If they do not amend, they must be subjected to the punishment of the rule as a warning to others. Further, members ought not to associate with one another at inappropriate times.

  Study is hard work. It is so much easier to find something else to do in its place than to stay at the grind of it. We have excuses aplenty for avoiding the dull, hard, daily attempt to learn. There is always something so much more important to do than reading. There is always someone we have to talk to about something that can’t wait until the r
eading time is over. There is always some overwhelming fatigue to be dealt with before we can really begin to concentrate. There is always some excuse for not stretching our souls with new ideas and insights now or yet or ever. But Benedictine spirituality says life is to be struggled through and worked at and concentrated on and cultivated. It is not a matter of simply going through it and hoping that enough of the rust of time is removed by accident to make us burnished spiritual adults.

  March 30 – July 30 – Nov. 29

  On Sunday all are to be engaged in reading except those who have been assigned various duties. If any are so remiss and indolent that they are unwilling or unable to study or to read, they are to be given some work in order that they may not be idle.

  Those who are sick or weak should be given a type of work or craft that will keep them busy without overwhelming them or driving them away. The prioress or abbot must take their infirmities into account.

  A midrash on Genesis reads, “Weeds spring up and thrive; but to get wheat how much toil we must endure.” The Rule of Benedict treats work and lectio interchangeably. One focuses the skills of the body on the task of cocreation. The other focuses the gifts of the mind on the lessons of the heart. One without the other is not Benedictine spirituality. To get the wheat of life we need to work at planting as well as reaping, at reaping as well as planting. And everyone in the community is expected to do both. For those for whom study is an impossible burden, then physical labor is allowed to suffice for both, but never is the Benedictine mind to be left simply awash in idle emptiness. Even the sick and the weak are to be given simple tasks that upbuild the house of God because, Benedict knows, no matter how frail, no matter how old, no one is useless; every one of us is given a gift to give and a task to fulfill. At every stage of our lives, every one of us has a sign of hope and faith and love and commitment to share with the people around us. Sometimes, perhaps, it is precisely when we feel that we have least to give that our gifts are needed most. The sight of a grandmother in a garden or an uncle on a lawn mower, an old monastic tatting lace or a crippled young man lurching stiffly to the office may be just what the rest of us need to begin again down our healthy but tiresome paths.