Qualities of the Abbot

They say that Benedict was the first to assign the word “abbot” to the superior of a monastery. It comes from the Aramaic abba, which is simply “father.” We’re familiar with it from the Lord’s Prayer when Jesus taught the disciples to call God “our Father” using the familia rabba. 

I’m struck by the fittingness of the word. As Benedict details it, a good abbot sounds much like a good father or a good mother. Like each member of a family, each monk is different and will need to be directed in their own way. To the receptive and obedient monk, Benedict says that the abbot is free to explain, clarify, and teach the Rule with strictness and force. To the “stubborn and dull” monk, though, the abbot should not badger or scold but, instead, “demonstrate God’s instructions…by a living example” (2.12). The good abbot is pragmatic and situational. 

In college, I briefly thought of becoming a priest, but I struggled with the idea of never having a family of my own. A vocations director told me that the same qualities that make for a good father also make for a good priest. Benedict has captured this same insight. Parents know to treat their toddler differently from their teenager, their defiant son differently from their anxious daughter. The good parent is pragmatic and situational. 

But there is something deeper here. Benedict’s prime piece of advice for the abbot is that “he must point out to [the monks] all that is good and holy more by example than by words” (2.12). Being an abbot means being among the monks, showing them how to live, even as he teaches them from above. It is incarnational. Indeed, the abbot and the monk are in the same world and in the same monastery. They pursue the same way of life. They struggle together. 

It is the same with parenting. Children are born into the same world as their parents, into the same family and community. The good parent knows to do more than just instruct their children. They demonstrate what a well-lived life looks like– how to handle conflict, forgive, persevere through difficulties. Being a parent means demonstrating what is good and holy, even as he or she teaches it from above. 

Of course, Benedict himself was an abbot. We might understand this chapter from the Rule as a note not just for his community but also for himself. Perhaps this is Benedict's reminder to himself that he must, at times, be strong and decisive even as, at other times, he is pitying and empathetic. He must be pragmatic and situational. Above all, though, as an abbot, leader, or even a parent of sorts, he must be with his monks. Being an abbot, like being a parent, is incarnational. It means being amidst those you are leading or raising. It means journeying with them as the entire community struggles toward eternity.