St. Clement of Rome
Chapter 44
The Rule of Benedict November 23
The serious faults concerning which this chapter instructs are, as I wrote on chapter 25, an indication of a serious illness in the individual. It strikes me here that the oratory and the table are the two pillars of common life in the monastery, and that when serious faults are committed by one member of the community, they threaten the health of the whole. Without explaining away the harshness of Benedict's instructions, I hear in this chapter a call to consider how profoundly our spiritual health is connected to that of our community.
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