CHAPTER LXI: CONCERNING MONKS WHO ARE STRANGERS, HOW THEY SHOULD BE RECEIVED - Saint Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict [1931]
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The Rule of St. Benedict, translated into English. A Pax Book, preface by W.K. Lowther Clarke (London: S.P.C.K., 1931).
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CHAPTER LXI
CONCERNING MONKS WHO ARE STRANGERS, HOW THEY SHOULD BE RECEIVED
If any monk arrive a stranger from distant parts and if he wish to dwell, as a guest, in the monastery and be content with the customs of the place as he find them and does not by chance disturb the monastery with his superfluous wants, but is in simplicity content with what he finds, let him be received for as long as he likes. Indeed if in a reasonable manner and with the humility of charity he rebukes or points out anything amiss let the abbot prudently investigate the matter lest by chance God sent him for this very thing. And if afterwards he should wish to be strengthened by stability, let not such wish be refused and especially because the time he was a guest afforded opportunity of judging of his manner of life.
But if during his time as a guest he shall have been found burdensome or given to vice or unteachable, not only ought he not to be incorporated in the body monastic, but let it even be said to him frankly that he must go away, lest it should even happen that by his evil estate others be vitiated. But if he shall not have been found such as may deserve to be cast forth, let him not only if he himself so petition be received for association with the community, but even be persuaded to remain, that by his example others may be edified and because in all places obedience is rendered to one and the same Lord, loyalty to one and the same King; and when it is so that the abbot have found him to be such an one as this, let it be lawful to put him in a somewhat superior position. And the abbot has the right to set anyone, not only a monk, from the aforenamed ranks of priests and clerics in a position higher than that due by seniority, if he have perceived that his manner of life be such as this. But let the abbot beware lest he ever receive into residence a monk from any known monastery without letters commendatory or his abbot’s consent, because it is written: “What thou dost not wish to be done to thee, do not to another.”
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