Today’s Chapter: ‘Reprove, Entreat, Rebuke’
Chapter 2: What kind of man the Abbot ought to be (vv. 23-29)
For the Abbot in his doctrine ought always to observe the bidding of the Apostle, wherein he says: “Reprove, entreat, rebuke”; mingling, as occasions may require, gentleness with severity; shewing now the rigour of a master, now the loving affection of a father, so as sternly to rebuke the undisciplined and restless, and to exhort the obedient, mild, and patient to advance in virtue. And such as are negligent and haughty we charge him to reprove and correct. Let him not shut his eyes to the faults of offenders; but as soon as they appear, let him strive with all his might to root them out, remembering the fate of Heli, the priest of Silo. Those of good disposition and understanding let him, for the first or second time, correct only with words; but such as are froward and hard of heart, and proud, or disobedient, let him chastise with bodily stripes at the very first offence, knowing that it is written: “The fool is not corrected with words.” And again “Strike thy son with the rod, and thou shalt deliver his soul from death.”
The love which the Abbot is to show, acting on Christ’s behalf, is expressed in a particular way in the duty of correction spoken about in today’s passage. In her reflections on the Holy Rule from a Marian perpsective, Madre Anna Maria Cànopi comments:
By means of the abbot’s service the monastic community lives a profound mystery of grace and gratuity, of compassion and goodness, of tenderness and peace: it lives the mystery of a creative and stimulating love which does not leave the other as he is, but transforms him, purifies him, leads him ever onwards.
To love all with a love at once strong and tender is the essential task of the abbot; in this he has as a model Jesus, Who died for love, and as an aid Mary, who stirs up good in the Church, urges to conversion, invites to holiness, because she wants to accompany us all together before the throne of divine Mercy. With her merciful eyes, from this very moment, while we toil on the journey, she draws down upon us the Father’s indulgence. And this is also the abbot’s intention: to guide the flock of the good Shepherd all together to the pastures of eternal life, without anyone being lost. (Anna Maria Cànopi, Nel ‘Si’ di Maria, Milan, 2017, pp. 21-22, translation by a Benedictine monk)
The abbot, then, as Christ’s representative, seeks what Christ seeks: not to be accepted or liked by the flock, but to help them truly to advance in virtue. This will necessarily entail loving them enough to point out their faults and call them to conversion. It is true that, as Saint Benedict will explain later in Chapter 64, the Abbot must study to be loved rather than feared. But the love that the Abbot should desire to receive from the monks should not be a merely natural affection for someone who is their friend, but a supernatural love shown towards one who acts to them as Christ. And while Our Lord Jesus Christ is the meekest and most lovable of men, the King and Centre of all hearts, He is also, as the Prophet Malachias says, ‘a refiner’s fire’. It was precisely His love for their souls that led Our Lord to rebuke Peter as ‘Satan’, to chide Philip for still not knowing Him, and to publicly denounce the Pharisees as white-washed sepulchres.
This love of the Good Shepherd that calls to conversion burns also in the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Mother. Many of the saints tell us that, as our Mother, mercy has been assigned to Mary as her particular portion, while Our Lord reserves justice to Himself. But, intimately united to her Son as she is, Our Lady quite naturally comes at times to warn her children of the consequences of their sins. We remember one such example this coming Saturday (19 Sept), with the Feast of Our Lady of La Salette, who appeared weeping to warn the children of the heavy hand of her Son’s justice which she could barely hold back. It is her maternal love for her children that makes her give such warnings, just as she made known the terrors of hell and the chastisements of the coming century to the children of Fatima. She strikes her children with the rod of her warnings so as to deliver them from death.
Thus, if we truly take Mary as our Abbess, we can expect her to carry out the apostolic injunction cited by Saint Benedict: ‘Reprove, entreat, rebuke.’ But she will do it, at the same time, with all the love and sweetness of a Mother. As we prepare to celebrate her Seven Sorrows, let us not be deaf to the tearful entreaties of our Mother Abbess, but heed her loving admonitions, and embrace the coming Embertide and Monastic Lent as an opportunity to begin anew to be converted from our old ways and put on the new man.