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Shorter Rules
St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925
Rule 154: If It Should Happen that the Brethren, Being Few in Number and Serving a Larger…
If their service is approved by the commandment of the Lord and is rendered in a godly manner, then each worker succeeds in pleasing God by doing his own work. But their unity with each 4674 other consists in the fact that they are all of one soul and one mind fulfilling the apostle’s words: “Though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in the spirit.”2
Notes
- Miss Bateson, Transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc. vol. iii. (1899), says of this passage: “The contingency is contemplated in which the number of brethren may be so small that they must serve the nuns singly” (i.e. when they visit them to conduct services). I do not think this a possible explanation. The Greek is πλείοσιν ἀδελφαῖς ἐξυπηρετουμένους . . . διαμεριζομένους πρὸς τὰ ἔργα. “Serving” must be the same as in F. 33 (377A) ὑπηρετείτωσαν δὲ καὶ ταῖς τοῦ σώματος χρείαις ἄλλοι τινές, and ἔργα cannot = celebrations of the Eucharist. The contingency is rather that found in a double monastery which has begun as a women’s convent with a priest or two attached and a few lay-brothers to do hard manual work for the nuns. The men are organised in a coenobium but remain subordinate to the women. The common life with its round of prayer is impaired by the necessary duties of the few men. One might be digging in the fields, another carting, another mending the roof, and corporate observance of the Hours would become impossible. See Intr. p. 38.
- Col. ii. 5.