Chapter 27: The superior's care for the excommunicated
Therefore the superior should use every curative skill as a wise doctor does, for instance by sending in senpectae, that is, mature and wise senior members of the community who may discreetly bring counsel to one who is in a state of uncertainty and confusion; their task will be to show the sinner the way to humble reconciliation and also to bring consolation, as St Paul also urges, to one in danger of being overwhelmed by excessive sorrow and in need of the reaffirmation of love which everyone in the community must achieve through their prayer.
(From para. 1of Ch. 27 of St. Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)
After having made my way through the difficult chapters on excommunication, it's a blessing to read the outpouring of compassionate inclusion that Benedict bestows upon the "one in danger of being overwhelmed by excessive sorrow". I hear him saying that the wisdom that cures is not driven by anyone's ego, but by "the reaffirmation of love which everyone in the community must achieve through their prayer".
It is difficult to understand the "excommunication" and "exclusion" rules in the Rule. Then I remember that all of this takes place within a loving community where everything is done for the other in love. It is good for me to reflect on what Benedict XVI said in his encyclical Saved In Hope which was quoted in a meditation for All Souls day. "No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone. The lives of others continually spill over into mine:in what I think, say, do, and achieve. And conversely, my life spills over into that of others: for better and for worse. So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that person,something external, not even after death. In the interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other-my prayer for him-can play a small part in his purification." Is not this what my meditation is "teaching" me--Being connects me to all of humanity, the being of others.
ReplyDeleteAgain this is a reminder to me of the importance of community, so that in our darkest moments of failure, there are those there to both instruct and comfort.
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