Benedict says: Let a separate room be disignated for the sick, and let them be served by an attendant who is God-fearing, attentive and concerned. The sick may take baths whenever it is advisable, but the healthy and especially the young should receive permission less readily. Moreover, to regain their stremght, the sick who are very weak may eat meat, but when their health improves, they should all abstain from eat as usual.
The abbot and prioress must take the greatest care that cellarers and those who serve the sick do not neglect them, for the shortcomings of disciples are their responsibility.
Joan Chittister writes: Care for the sick, in the mind of Benedict, is not a simple warehousing process, though that in itself could have been a great contribution to a society without hospitals. Care for the sick, In Benedictine spirituality, is to be done with faith, with attention, and with a care beyond the technical. The infirmarian is to be 'concerned.' Baths, a very important part of Roman therapy and hygiene in a hot and sticky climate, and red meat, a treat used only rarely in early monastic houses both because of its scarcity and because of its purported relationship to sexual agitation, are both given generously and recklessly. Care of the sick, you see, is done in the name of God and to the person of the suffering Christ. Nothing was too much. Nothing was to be spared. Nothing that coudl do good was to be called forbidden.
We have to ask ourselves, in a society of technological health care, how much of it we do with faith and lavish attention and depth of soul and a love that drives out repulsion. We have to ask ourselves how willing we are to take a little of our own energy on behalf of those who are no longer the life of the party, the help on the job. How much of our own precious time do we spend on those with little time left?