Wow! This chapter draws me back to the first grade. My teacher had the students read to the class and advanced us as we demonstrated the ability to read from ever advancing texts that challenged our young tongues. I remember my pride growing as I loved to read. However, the flip side of my teacher’s instruction was that one mistake, any mistake would send the reader back to the beginner books where Dick still ran and Jane still jumped. As fate had it, I came to a word that I didn’t know and ‘BAM!’ I was dropped back to the beginning. My interest in reading took a blow that I recovered years later in college. My elementary, middle, and high school years were marked with the fear of failure. Is this the lesson of St. Benedict’s 45th Chapter?
I have read this chapter often. Perhaps more than any other parts of The Rule. I needed to process our spiritual father’s meaning in these harsh instructions of “severe punishment” or mandating youth to be “whipped for such a fault.” None of the commentaries that help me to understand other Benedictine precepts were effective aids to enlighten my understanding here. I think my childhood trauma eclipsed my rational mind. Should I simply ignore this chapter? Should it be dismissed as irrelevant to our post-modern society? If I accept its obsolescence then where do I stop at dismissing things that disturb my sense of rightness? This is a slippery slope that can lead to division and autonomy. My arrogance lays at the base of such attitudes.
A friend shared his anxiety in preparing for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. His role in the liturgy was to read Exodus 20 from the Torah. He was not permitted to touch the sacred scroll. A rabbi on either side of my friend held the Scriptures as he read his portion in Hebrew. As they rehearsed, this nervous father would inadvertently mispronounce a word. A rabbi would scold him and make him start again, reading from the beginning. They venerated God’s Word with such respect that he had to speak it correctly. God speaks through Isaiah, “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”[1] I ask myself, “When is the last time that I trembled at the Word of God?”
When I read this chapter again, mulling its meaning to my spiritual formation, I discovered a phrase that I have overlooked for so long. A phrase that was overshadowed by the harsh tones of punishment. A phrase that warrants serious attention. Benedict called for harsh discipline that was the norm of his day “for failing to correct by humility the wrong committed through negligence.”[2] His call for discipline is not for making a mistake. He is not sending me back to the beginning because I missed a word. Benedict is concerned for my spirit as it is shaped in the image of Christ, but threatened by the seeds of arrogance. When I become arrogant that I read Holy Scripture with a flippant attitude. When I fail to revere the Words of God and read with an air of frivolity, then I am in need of strong correction. Is my heart ready to receive such correction, or does it bring out the true nature of my pride (which is the opposite of humility)?
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[1] Isaiah 66:2.
[2] Benedict and Timothy Fry, RB 1980: the Rule of St. Benedict in English(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), 67.
