Monk?

Novice at Prayer

In his Preface to The Rule St. Benedict speaks of the monastery as a “school for the Lord’s service” where “nothing harsh, nothing burdensome” is set down in order not to discourage the monk. The image of a school is an analogy which describes well the process of learning that takes place as the monk moves from Novice to Junior to Solemnly Professed member of the community.

And yet, this picture can be misleading too. St. Bernard hinted at the subtle obfuscation when he stated that “We search in a worthier manner, we discover with great facility through prayer than through disputation.” (Five Books on Consideration, Cistercian Publications, 1976) The monk then does not enter into a study of the life of the Spirit, but rather enters into a relationship with Christ, mediated through his obedience to the abbot and rule, through his participation in the life of community, through the various practices of monastic ascesis, through prayer in all its dimensions, personal and communal. It is not a speculative process, a theoria but instead a personal experience grounded in his daily round of monastic activity, humble and hidden as it mostly is.

And so, yes, the monk is a student of the cloister, but his study is not simply analytical, his learning is not simply theoretical; it is, if you will, physical, experiential, something felt initially in his innermost being communicated to him from the Spirit. His life then is a process repeated over and over of seeking to understand what the Spirit is teaching him, and living it out.

The result of this process in the “school for the Lord’s service” is not the production of a scholar of the life of the Spirit, though that can be a byproduct, but rather it is wisdom, the only “degree” that matters in a monastery.

“A man who gives way to his passions is like a man who is shot at by an enemy, catches the arrow in his hands, and then plunges it into his own heart. A man who is resisting his passions is like a man who is shot at by an enemy, and although the arrow hits him, it does not seriously wound him because he is wearing a breastplate. But the man who is uprooting his passions is like a man who is shot at by an enemy, but who strikes the arrow and shatters it or turns it back into his enemy’s heart.”
Dorotheos in Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

What is this ‘conversion of life’, in latin conversatio morum, mentioned in the monk’s formula of profession (see June 18, below), which Br. Isaac just committed himself to for the rest of his life? The meaning of the phrase can be intuited from the words themselves, this is obvious. On it’s face it means what it says, to turn from one way of living to another way of living. But what does that mean?

‘Conversion of life’ is a twofold act of turning from sin and towards Christ. But isn’t this what every Christian does through his Baptism and the working out of its implications in his life? Yes, absolutely! There is no difference fundamentally between what the Christian takes on as his goal in life and what the monk does in his life.

Monastic life is a particularly radical response, you could say countercultural; it aims at the root of life, at its heart, its core. Br. Isaac and all the monks at Genesee and throughout the world who, responding to a personal call, vow this ‘conversion of life’, promise to follow Christ in this particular place, with these brothers, under obedience to this abbot and his successors, using all the means the monastic life provides for his journey.

Isaac and all his monastic brothers and sisters freely choose to live at the margins of society, bypassing its legitimate joys and pleasures for the sake of the Kingdom. the monk’s profession is a public act, a seal and a testimony, that for him there is nothing he prefers to the love of God and to the Kingdom He promises. On this he stakes his whole life.

There is so much more to say about ‘conversion of life’, but I’m going to let St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian saint, have the last word.

Our way of life is rejection by men. It is humility, voluntary poverty, obedience, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. Our way of life is subjection to a teacher, to an abbot, to a rule, to discipline. Our way of life is to apply oneself to silence, to practice fasting, vigils, prayer, manual work, and above all to hold on to the more excellent way which is charity, advancing in all these observances from day to day persevering in them until the last day.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 142.

I, Brother_______layman, promise stability, conversion of life, and obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Abbot, before God and His Saints, whose relics are venerated in this place called_______in the presence of the Reverend Father________, …

With these words the man who has been living as a monk throughout his years in the noviciate and juniorate, a period of time lasting, in most cases five years, vows himself to live for the rest of his life as a seeker after God above all. The irony is his days of searching are over, signed in his own hand just so.

Still, a seeker he is par excellence. In relinquishing the freedoms most of us hold dear, and taking on the yoke of obedience to rule and abbot, he is liberated from endless searching for “‘happiness”, for he has discovered it is in yielding to the Source of happiness, and seeking Him alone does he know real joy beyond any passing pleasure. He has found the Source, but like the mouth of an endless river, he has only begun his seeking…

This past Monday a young man named Br. Isaac vowed himself to the monastic life at the Abbey of the Genesee. I recommend a visit to their site to read about Isaac and his reflections on what it is to be a monk. Prayers for Br. Isaac and peace to you all.

There is also a very enlightening interview with Br. Isaac printed in the Catholic Courier of Rochester, NY, which is worthwhile checking out.

Timothy George has written a fine article titled The Pattern of Christain Truth (First Things, June/July 2005) on the process of the development of Christian doctrine vis a vis the light, oddly enough, heretical movements have shed on the core truths of the faith, the result being a deeper understanding of the substance of the faith. He points out Augustine’s distinction between the two ways of knowing, scientia, the way we learn say a language, and sapientia, wisdom, gained often as pure gift …”an unexpected insight. In such monents cognition becomes recognition and you know this is not achievement but gift. This is the kingd of knowledge that generates humility before the mystery of the holy.”

It is this knowledge, sapientia, which the monk seeks, and for which he gladly accepts the lifelong practice of monastic ascesis. I can hear the question being asked: “But if this knowledge the monk seeks is pure gift then why does he have to go through all that monastic discipline? And after all, this gift isn’t reserved to monks alone, but to all Christians.” Well, now that’s a nice theological subject for discussion!

Christians reject the idea of a disembodied spiritualism, which would make the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Jesus absurd. It is the monastic respect for the body that informs its realistic approach to the search for the Triune God, and thus its ascetical practices of silence, withdrawal from the world, fasting, vigils, and the like. It is not because the monk is trying to induce this gift, but because the monk in his profound humility before the joys and limitations of his corporeal reality, he wants to respond fully to the personal call he hears from his God to love with all his being.

God gives where, when, and to whom He pleases. The monk does what he can and waits. As Timothy George ends with a quote from the Russian Bishop of the nineteent century, Theaphon the Recluse, so will I:

The principal thing is to stand before God with intellect in the heart, and to go on standing before Him unceasingly day and night, until the end of life.”

Monk Reading

I’m a librarian, my professional life is grounded in the importance of literature and learning. There is no denying how critical ‘book learning’, to use a time-worn phrase, is, and the negative impact its neglect has on a life, and a society; poverty, crime, and the loss of hope are its legacy.

And the importance of study to the life of prayer and contemplation has gone hand-in-hand with the establishment and development of the monastic life in the West, a truth reflected in the very structure of the monk’s day, with its scheduled time set aside for sacred reading, and the centrality of libraries throughout its history. As the European monastic adage has it, “A monastery without a library is like a fort without an armory”. This focus continues down to our own day. Without grounding in a knowledge base man swims in a sea of subjectivity and ignorance, as true for the monk as for the rest of us.

Still, knowledge for its own sake has never been the goal of the monastic life, rather the tradition understands the destructive power such an ethos can have personally and communally. The great Benedictine scholar, monk Jean Leclercq, catalogs this wonderfully in his landmark book The love of learning and the desire for God: a study of monastic culture, where he contrasts the literary work of the emerging university scholastics with that of monastic writers such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

And what distinguished the monastic intellectual from his scholastic counterpart? In a word: experience, for the goal of the monk is not the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake, but the Source of that knowledge, the contact with which humbles, and dissociates his self from the products of his experience, his meager attempt to express the ineffable. As Leclerq states it: “There is no spiritual literature without spiritual experience: it is the experience which gives rise to the literature, not the reverse.” (p. 264) And what underlies the monk’s experience of God is the whole edifice of monastic culture and the virtues it cultivates in him, especially the virtue of humility.

St. Bernard in self-deprecation expresses the monastic approach beautifully:

And now someone may perhaps ask me what it is like to enjoy the Word. And I shall answer him: “Seek out, rather, someone who has had the experience and ask him. For if it had been given to me, even to such as me, to have that experience, do you think that I could express the inexpressible?”… Oh you who are anxious to learn what it is to enjoy the Word, prepare not your ear but your soul; for it is grace that teaches it and not language. The secret remains hidden from the wise and the cautious, and is revealed to the little ones.
(St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Patrologia Latina, Super Cantica, 85.14)

And the monastic way has been and continues to be a place where one learns to “prepare your soul”.

St. Benedict

July 11 marks the day the Catholic Church remembers St. Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-c. 547), the author of The Rule, the most formative document in western monastic history. What we know of Benedict owes largely to his biography, written by Pope Gregory the Great in his Dialogues(c. 593), where, in keeping with traditional hagiographic literature, he is depicted as a great miracle worker.

Benedict’s signifigance endures in his Rule, a brief document of some 15,000 words, which was to become in time the normative text for Christian monastic life in the West. Much has been written about the humanity of Benedict’s Rule, and this is certainly true, as can be seen when comparing Benedict’s text to the Rule of the Master, an earlier text which Benedict adapted and which is by comparisson more harsh and less forgiving of human frailty. It has endured for 1500 years, and that is testimony enough!

So much has been written on the Rule that it is impossible to summarize here. If you can locate a copy in a local library, there is an excellent article in the recently published Encyclopedia of Monasticism, edited by William Johnson, which includes a brief but good bibliography. One of the problems for english speakers is that most of the scholarly commentary has been done in French and other languages. Still, this is beginning to change, especially with the recently published Benedict’s Rule: a translation and commentary, by Terrence Kardong, OSB, the foremost American scholar on the subject. I highly recommend the CD-ROM The Rule of St. Benedict Library: primary and secondary sources, Scott Raines, editor.

What could be sweeter, dearest brothers, than this voice of the Lord, who invites us? Look, the Lord in his devotion to us shows us the way to life. Therefore, let us belt our waist with faith that leads to the performance of good works. Let us set out on his path with the Gospel as our guide so that we may be worthy to see him who called us into his kingdom.
Kardong, Terrence G., Benedict’s Rule: A Translation, Prologue, vs. 19-21. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press) 1996.

St. Benedict, one man following his call to seek God in the monastic way, and living in a time of great stress and societal upheaval, became a catalyst for the transformation of Europe through his Rule for Monks, a small document that has changed history.

The best thing I have ever read about the monastic life is Centered on Christ: an introduction to monastic profession, by Augustine Roberts. St. Bede’s Publications, 1977, ISBN 0-932506-03-6. I havn’t checked, but I would guess it is no longer in publication. Roberts wrote this when he was superior of a Cistercian monastery in Argentina. He was eventually elected abott of St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer,Massachusetts. To understand the heart of the monastic life you need go no further than this book. The title states it clearly, the Christian monk’s life is centered on Christ, as Roberts writes, “…the monk is a lover of Christ, he finds his deepest existence in his relation to Christ…”

Jesus, the Christ, then is what makes the Christian monastic unique from his non-Christian counterparts, though there are many points of convergence. If you can get a hold of Robert’s book it will give you an understanding of the sum and substance of the monk’s existence, and come to think of it, would most likely eliminate any reason to visit this blog! You could also try interlibrary loan from your local public library, always a good idea.

I’ll be using Centered on Christ along with many other classic writings on monastic life as fuel for my reflections, and I’ll have more recommendations as we go along. A great place to visit is the Abbey of the Genesee’s list of recommended readings. Peace!

Some may consider it a bit presumptuous for a non-monk to be commenting on the monastic life, asking, “How can he say anything meaningful about such a specialized way of life when he’s not living it?” A fair enough question, and one I’ve thought seriously about before deciding to do this. My answer is twofold.

First, I did live for a short time in the novitiate of the Abbey of the Genesee, and have kept contact over the intervening years with the community, once, at the request of the abbot, returning for eight months and living on the grounds while assisting with a library project. This I believe gives me an insight that only experience can give, and which informs the substance of my reflections.

However, more importantly, I have felt a pulling on me to do this, which, I have come to believe, is a kind of “call” if you will. I certainly hope the Holy Spirit guides my reflections here, and it proves not to be presumptuous for a layman to share his thoughts on a way of life he considers a blessing for all people, Christian or not.

Please share your comments with me and let me know what you think. Peace.

This is the beginning of a blog that will take a look at monastic life as it has been lived in the Catholic Church over the last millenium and a half. Benedictine monasticism, and in particular the Cistercian expression of the tradition will be my area of examination.

Monasticism has had a profound, often overlooked impact on the development of the culture of the West. The image of the monk, hooded and either sinister or a bumbling innocent, has been the type promoted in contemporary culture, from film to fiction. It’s my hope to provide, in a small way, a counterbalance to this stereotype.

I hope ‘Monk?’ will be interesting, informative, and maybe even inspiring. Perhaps someone will read what’s here and ask himself, as so many have done before, “Could this way of life be what I was meant for?” The simple answer is hidden in the heart…