The Rule of Saint Benedict: Chapter 25

We are still looking over excommunication in the monastery, though this time it is for serious faults.


SERIOUS FAULTS

1. A brother guilty of a serious fault is to be excluded from both the table and the oratory.
2. No other brother should associate or converse with him at all.
3. He will work alone at the tasks assigned to him, living continually in sorrow and penance, pondering that fearful judgment of the Apostle:
4. Such a man is handed over for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord (1 Cor 5:5).
5. Let him take his food alone in an amount and at a time the abbot considers appropriate for him.
6. He should not be blessed by anyone passing by, nor should the food that is given him be blessed.

We should notice for the more serious faults that there is a more severe punishment. In the last chapter we read that for lesser faults the excommunicated was to take his meal after the other monks, and here we see that the excommunicated is to eat alone at the abbot's discretion.