Who would make a good Porter? Benedict's recommendation: "place a sensible old man who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply, and whose age keeps him from roaming about."
We don't want those Porters wandering off.
What I find charming about Chapter 66 is how the Porter is instructed to respond to a knock on the monastery door. You'd think the response to a knock would be something like "Who's there?" or "Who is it?"
But this is what Benedict instructs:
As soon as anyone knocks, or a poor man calls out, he replies, "Thanks be to God"...I like the implicit theology of hospitality in that reply. A stranger comes. The poor ask for help. And our response is gratitude.
"Thanks be to God."
