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.”