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.)
Contemplative silence is a way of purification, of learning to be more present to myself, to others, in God.
Purify me, Abba, this one more day you give me in this monastery without walls called my life.i leave all my past to your mercy and my future to your providence and, with you, together embrace the challenges that necessarily will come in these next twenty-four hours.
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