Today’s Chapter: ‘Meminere’ and ‘Multorum moribus servire’
Chapter 2: What kind of man the Abbot ought to be (vv. 30-32)
The Abbot ought always to remember what he is, and what he is called, and to know that to whom more is committed, from him more is required; and he must consider how difficult and arduous a task he hath undertaken, of ruling souls and adapting himself to many dispositions. Let him so accommodate and suit himself to the character and intelligence of each, winning some by kindness, others by reproof, others by persuasion, that he may not only suffer no loss in the flock committed to him, but may even rejoice in their virtuous increase.
Today’s passage returns to earlier admonitions to the Abbot, to think on what he is called and to adapt himself to each one of the monks so as to ensure the profit of the entire flock. Stress is laid on remembrance: twice, in the Latin, the word Meminere (remember) is used at the opening of the section. For the ancients and medievals, memory was not simply an intellectual faculty, but was an important part of moral formation. What we store and rehearse in our memory will form our character, and so the Abbot’s memory is often to return to what he is and what he is called, so that these truths may affect his actions.
We cannot help but think, in this context, of what Saint Luke tells us several times of Our Lady: how she stored up and pondered all the mysteries of Our Lord’s earthly life in her heart. She, too, would have been continually remembering who and what she was in God’s plan; the memory of what she had been told in the Annunciation continually formed her character. She teaches all of us not to forget the works of the Lord, but continually to meditate upon and digest the ways in which He has revealed Himself in Scripture, and the ways He has worked in our lives, so that the memory of His grace at work in these events—even amidst suffering—may shape our present and our future.
The Abbot is also reminded, even more forcefully than before, of the fact that he must adapt himself to many characters—nay, as a more literal translation would have it, he must ‘be at the service of the ways of life of many men’—multorum moribus servire. He does well, in this, to look to our heavenly Abbess, for no one is better able than a mother to adapt herself to each of her children and to put herself at the service of the particular character of each of them.
Finally, the Abbot needs the help of Our Lady not only so that he may learn to serve the different characters of the monks, but so that they can receive what he is trying to give. So Madre Cànopi comments:
Naturally, in order for the abbot’s service to be fruitful in grace, it is indispensable that it should be welcomed with faith, otherwise it has no effect. In this, Mary is a fundamental aid, because she is the Mother who sustains us in faith and helps us to live even the difficult moments with meekness, with patience, with humility, with docility, with confidence, never letting our hearts be hardened.
The abbot, by his humble service, makes of the monk a son of God; but the monk, too, by his faith, renders the abbot truly a father and mother in the spirit, exactly as, as the foot of the Cross, Jesus and Mary generate the Church in the mystery of the disciple who has faith in his dying Lord, and who welcomes with love the Mother who is given to him [by the Lord] in a gesture of complete stripping of Himself. (Cànopi, Nel ‘Si’ di Maria, p. 22, translation by a Benedictine monk)
As we celebrate Our Lord’s triumph on the Cross, and His Mother’s share in His redemptive suffering, may she obtain for us an abundant fruitfulness in grace in the season that we are entering upon.
