Becoming a Community of Disciples

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Becoming a Community of Disciples

distributed, or requested items to be requested; so that no one is perturbed or saddened in the house of God.

The Tools and Possessions of the Monastery (RBen §32) 1 The Abbot is to provide for the material goods of the monastery—that is tools, clothes, and any other thing— by means of brothers whose life and character he trusts; 2 and he is to consign to them the different items as he judges best, to be conserved and then collected after use. 3 Of these items the Abbot is to keep a list, so that as the brothers are successively assigned to different tasks, he will know what he gives out and what he receives back. 4 If anyone treats the goods of the monastery improperly or negligently he is to be corrected; 5 if he does not amend, he is to be subjected to the discipline of the Rule. The Craftsmen of the Monastery (RBen §57) 1 If there are craftsmen in the monastery, they are to practice their crafts in all humility if the Abbot permits it. 2 But if any one of them becomes conceited because of his knowledge of his craft, determining that he thus confers something on the monastery, 3 he is to be taken from that craft and not permitted to exercise it again, unless having humbled himself, the Abbot orders him back to it. 4 If any products of the craftsmen are to be sold, care should be taken that those by whose hands the transaction takes place do not presume to practice any fraud. 5 They are always to remember Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11), 6 lest the death which those two incurred in the body be suffered in their souls and those of all who practice any fraud in business of the monastery.