Here is a reflection titled, Discernment in the Blogdom of God on the use of blogs in one’s faith life. Very interesting and worth a look, from Deacon’s Blog, by Rev. Mr. Jim Konicki, of The Polish National Catholic Church.
A quote from Aelred of Rievaulx, 12th Century Cistercian monk and abbot, that illuminates what we all encounter sooner or later, and by which, through grace and our free response, we are led to freedom:
See, dear Lord, how I have wandered the world and (have seen) those things which are in the world….In these I sought rest for my unhappy soul, but everywhere (I found) labor and lament, sorrow and affliction of spirit. You cried out, Lord; you cried out and called. You terrified me and shattered my deafness. You struck, you flogged, you conquered my hardheartedness. You sweetened, you flavored, you banished my bitterness. I heard you calling, but, alas, how late….Cistercian Fathers Series #17, pp. 133-34.
Those who seek will find, even if late, and some find their way to a monastery, the place where God best speaks to them, and where they best respond to his invitation.
I highly recommend John R. Sommerfeldt’s book, Aelred of Riveaux: pursuing perfect happiness (Newman Press, 2005), a wonderful reflection and application of Aelred’s vision of love.
Classes are over!!! and I’ve survived. My Independent Project thesis continues until May and I’ll be taking two more classes beginning in January, but for now there is a much welcomed break.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a virtue that has gone out of favor, if I can put it that way. Are virtues ever “in favor”, such that they are eagerly embraced? Be that as it may, my thoughts have been about the virtue of humility, and the place it holds in the monastic architecture of the “good life”.
Humility has never been much in favor, and is an idea very much misunderstood, I think. The image of the monk bent and submissive is a common one and one that is instinctively rejected today as the negation of personality and an unhealthy loss of individuality. This image of the monk reinforces the negative stereotype of the institutionalized, passive, indeed humiliated person subject to the whims of whatever authority commands his obedience. Such an understanding of humility, which, it must be admitted, had its adherents in some times and places, is rightfully rejected.
But such an understanding of humility is not humility at all, and it is hard to imagine how it ever gained any intellectual currency. Humility, as Michael Casey, a Cistercian monk of Tarawara Abbey in Australia has written, is etymologically of the same root as earth, humus, and connotes, among other things, a going down to the essential substance of reality, to the place out of which all things grow. It is being in consonance with the truth, beyond which no good thing can come, for to be removed from truth is to be in the dark, subject to the whims of one’s own desiring, unconnected from the source of reality.
To be in touch with the source requires a clarity of sight that comes only through an acceptance of my limitations. By being open to the truth that has its origin outside my own self, means, by definition, admitting that I am in need, that I don’t have all the answers, that I am vulnerable, and prone to self delusion at best and often self destruction. Sadly, many destroy their lives in a state of complete unreality, out of touch with any sense the paths they walk are leading them into a land of forgetfulness so complete that truth seems strange and the twisted seems self-evidently normal. All we have to do is turn on the television and see the parade of naked kings, endlessly, one after another.
Monks have been practicing the art of humility for centuries, and there are some very powerful documents from monastic literature that can help us all, monk and non-monk, to “remember” where we come from and of our ontological dependence. The first of these, of course, is The Rule of Saint Benedict, but there are many others, such as John Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes, which Benedict relied upon, as well as the traditions of the desert fathers and mothers, whom Cassian had studied and learned from, as well as St. Bernard’s writings and many others. In our own time Michael Casey himself has written an excellent book on the subject, A Guide to Living the Truth: Saint Benedict’s teaching on Humility, which I recommend enthusiastically.
How is this related to Christmas? Well, if Jesus is who the Church claims him to be, namely the only Son of God, Logos of all creation, the source from which all things come, then I can imagine there has been no humility more deserving of the name than his birth as a human being to a poor Semite couple in the backwaters of Galilee. We have a friend and a teacher in him.
Merry Christmas!
No one is born a saint. I think we often look at these folks we call saints and who have made such a profound impact upon society and somehow operate mentally as if they were born that way. But they were not, and when we use our critical mental capacities we know they were not.
That’s why its helpful to read good biographies of saints; they open our eyes to the real flesh and blood people who somehow became saints in spite of their status as sinners, just like the rest of us. I also like biographies because they tell me about the historical context the person lived within, for me one of the best ways to fill in the historical picture.
Some recent biographies of monastic figures of note would be: The life of St. Benedict–Gregory the Great, commentary by Adalbert de Vogue, Petersham, Mass : St. Bede’s Pub, c1993; Bernard of Clairvaux, an intellectual biography by G.R. Evans, New York : Oxford University Press, 2000, and A second look at Bernard of Clairvaux, another intellectual biography by Jean Leclercq ; translated by Marie-Bernard Said, Kalamazoo, Mich : Cistercian Publications, 1990; and finally, a broad overview of the most significant figures in monastic history is covered nicely in Seeking the absolute love : the founders of Christian monasticism, by Mayeul de Dreuille, New York : Crossroad Pub, 1999. Of course, the most significant writing of a monk in the twentieth century is Thomas Merton’s autobiography Seven Storey Mountain, a book that has had a profound impact on many people in our own time.
I knew a monk who, for me, was a saint, though no one will write a book about him. He lived in a small hut on a ridge out in the woods of the property of the Abbey of the Genesee, where he was a monk. He lived there many years without heat, but for some passive solar windows open to the south, which in winter took off the chill for a few hours on sunny days. Western New York gets its fair share of snow, and it’s cold in the winter. He was a hermit and a carpenter, of slight build, strong as flint (a former marine), with a full beard that could not conceal the brightest, biggest, most ever ready smile I have ever seen. His name was Br. Elias and he gave everything to the God he loved, until he died of bone cancer in the infirmary of the monastery, with his brothers praying by his side.
I visited his hut one rainy autumn day sometime after he died and just sat on the edge of his cot looking at the prie-dieu in front of a huge crucifix on the wall, the only other objects in the room, but for a burner that ran on bottled gas, to heat his tea and soup. He must have spent hours on his knees, alone, in front of that crucifix, which held fast the one he loved. Only God knows what took place there, but I’m certain Br. Elias, at times, felt no cold on the most bitter nights in deepest wintry January.
Br. Elias, pray for us.
Concupiscentia, a word we seem to have forgotten; and what does is it mean - concupiscence? Perhaps the best description I have come across is from the book The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, by James Alison (A Crossroad Book, 1998), where he says concupiscence is not a sin, but the effect of sin, Original Sin (another half-forgotten term). It’s the state we all find ourselves in, even after Baptism, the state of disordered desire, of wanting things that hurt oneself, and pull one further and further from the things we really want but have forgotten and no longer feel so intently.
Every dimension of the human being - intelligence, sexuality, will power, affectivity, memory, way of being involved in history, sense of time, consciousness, and conscience - is radically distorted in all of us. (Alison, p.222)
This is what St. Antony, and the long train of monks throughout history knew in their being as they followed and continue to follow their Master, Jesus, into the desert. They knew that Christ’s radical act of surrender needed to be repeated in their own life by joining him in a personal act of surrender. This distortion that is pulling away at all of us can be overcome, because Jesus showed usl the way to overcome it - surrender not to the Law but to Him, to love, and this is what the monk sets out to do.
Because this rift within us is so profound an equally profound act is necessary for the monk and this is accomplished again by his vows, his pledge to follow the monastic way of fasting, simplicity, silence, solitude, and prayer. And the great irony, which we seem to have forgotten, is that this difficult path is the path to real honest-to-goodness joy. You ever see an old monk smile? Joy is what you see, the effect of a deep, transformative process that has worked its way on him over the many years. It’s like looking into the face of the future.
Why don’t more us realize such a future is possible? That brings us back to where we started - concupiscentia…
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.”
Learning and the monastic life
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”.
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!
