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 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.)

This harrowing injunction begins to make more sense to me in the experience of the tragic loss of relationship, the resulting experiences of loneliness groaning and growing into solitude, and the painful opportunities in all of this to transform my ego (what St Paul calls, I think, "flesh"). A new relationship forms for me in this standing alone before the Lord: the always new, ever deeper relationship with Christ. This relationship with Christ is my true self, so I can then return to truer relationship with others.