Chapter 25: Punishment for more serious faults
None of the community should associate with or talk to the guilty person, who is to persevere alone and in sorrow and penance in whatever work has been allotted, remembering St. Paul's fearful judgement when he wrote to the Corinthians that: such a one should be handed over for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. (From Ch. 25 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Sorrow and penance, St. Benedict tells me, are appropriate consequences if I harm community. Solitude may be necessary for me to refocus on the preciousness and necessity of relationship. A vision of oneness in Christ is what allows me genuine re-communication.
One of John Main's daily readings from "Silence, and Stillness in Every Season" for Nov.1 is a good commentary for me on this particular chapter of the Rule. "...the path of meditation is a way of purification. "...we must be stripped of everything that would hinder our openness to the pure energy of God. Egoism must go; desire must go; possessiveness must go and that is painful." Facing my faults alone even though they may be brought to my attention by someone else is painful but I must "never lose hope in God's mercy"(kindness), Benedict tells me in Chapter 4, and continue to use the "tools for good works".
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