MONASTIC TOPICS IN GENERAL
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THE ROLE OF MONASTICISM OF TODAY IN
THE RE‑EVANGELIZATION OF A SECULARIZED WORLD (Kolympari, Crete, Greece, May 14th
1989)
Introduction
Tomorrow, according
to both the Eastern and the Western calendars, we will celebrate
the Feast of Saint Pachomius, one of the monastic fathers for
whom I have a very special love. It seems to me extremely appropriate
to close our encounter on that Feast of one of the great lights
of monasticism. And that common celebration will remind us, in
some way, that we have a common monastic tradition, rooted in
the same early Christian asceticism that developed during the
first Christian generations in each one of the countries touched
by Apostolic evangelization.
Asceticism has
suddenly become a very popular object of studies in the academic
circles of the West these past few years. Listening to many of
the presentations given at scholarly meetings one has almost the
impression that asceticism (or monasticism) suddenly appeared
as a mushroom on the shore of the Nile, on a wet morning of the
fourth century, more or less on the weekend that followed the
Constantinian peace! It is presented as a completely new phenomenon
responding to the contemporary political, sociological and economic
situation.
In reality, as we know, monastic life developed
during the first centuries of the Church in every local Church,
and out of the vitality of each local Church. It took different
forms in Syria, Constantinople, Caesarea, Egypt, Greece and Rome,
according to special circumstances of time and place. Obviously,
like all other human phenomena, it was conditioned in its development
by all kinds of human factors; but the fact is that monasticism
did not originate with these factors.
Monasticism has
played an extremely important role in every Church, from the very
beginning of Christianity. Two days ago we heard about the role
it played in the evangelization of Europe. Today we are asking
ourselves what role it has to play in the re‑evangelization
of a secularized world. But when we are asking ourselves that
question, we are aware that monasticism, today as in the first
centuries, is a response to a call from God and not a response
to a cultural or even ecclesial situation. Nevertheless, we are
also aware that, according to the economy of Incarnation, such
a response to God's call expresses itself in a concrete historical
environment.
Beginning with the first Christian generation,
we see virgins and ascetics present in the life of the local
Churches. Acts 21, 8‑9, for example, tells us about the
four daughters of "Philip the Evangelist", virgins with
the gift of prophecy who lived in their father's house. The story
of how Christianity spread with astonishing rapidity is well known.
Profiting from the Pax romana and the means of communication furnished
by the Empire, it was soon established in every part of the Roman
world and even overflowed its borders into eastern Syria, the
kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene, and Persia. And in all these places
we come upon parthenoi of both sexes, who lived in the
midst of the ecclesial community and devoted themselves not only
to celibacy but also to a rigorous asceticism. They manifested
an equal zeal for liturgical worship and for visiting the poor,
the sick, and the orphans. In the numerous writings of the second
and third century which mention them, it becomes clear that these
"virgins" came from every social class and occupation.
Their resolve to live in continence was recognized by the Church,
and even before there was any question of an explicit promise
this resolve was ordinarily treated as irrevocable.
During these first
centuries the Judaeo‑Christian Churches were characterized
by something of an ascetical and rigoristic tendency. This is
manifest in a number of documents, such as the Liber
Graduum and the apocryphal Gospels. We get the impression
that these ecclesial communities in their entirety were living
what we today would designate as a "monastic" life.
In any event, it was in the midst of these communities and from
this Judaeo‑ Christian soil that there sprang up the first
groups of virgins and ascetics; these were the Sons and Daughters
of the Covenant, about whom we are informed a little later by
St. Ephrem at Nisibis and Edessa, and by St. Aphraat in Persia.
Along this same line and by a process of homogeneous development
in these groups of ascetics, there appears at the end of the third
century that vast movement, so multiform, so diverse and so confusing
in the variety of its manifestations, which has been designated
by a name that has always been ambiguous: monasticism.
The rise of monasticism
had been prepared by the rapid growth of the Church during the
third century. While the Roman Empire, having developed into
a form of military dictatorship, was losing its vitality and showing
signs of considerable decadence in the realms of art, morality,
and literature as well as in the arena of politics, the Church
was in a state of unceasing growth in spite of the trial of the
persecutions. She had soon spread and become established in the
most scattered countries of the Empire: Egypt, Spain, Italy, Gaul,
and the regions of the Danube. By the time the Edict of Milan
confirmed her victory, monasticism was already present and alive
nearly everywhere.
Pachomius was baptized in the year of the Constantinian
peace; he began to receive his first disciples in the year in
which Athanasius became the archbishop of Alexandria. Anthony
had already gathered disciples at that time. Athanasius understood
what force the monks could represent for the Church, and, in writing
the Life of Anthony, he assumed a pastoral role toward them while making
himself their advocate in relationship to the rest of the Church.
So did Basil in Caesarea and also John Chrisostomus in Constantinople.
So will do, Pope Gregory in the West.
In the West, where
Eastern influences are soon apparent, the monastic phenomenon
manifest the same spontaneity and vitality. From the second quarter
of the fourth century the monastic life was propagated in Gaul
among all the social classes, but especially in the rural areas.
After a slight let up in the fifth century, during the invasions
of the Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths, it flourished anew in the
sixth century. The Merovingian saints often showed considerable
versatility in their careers; they were by turns hermits, cenobites,
preachers, bishops... Among the important centers which developed
we should call attention to Marmoutiers, Lérins and Marseilles.
Marmoutiers was surely one of the most original of these foundations,
for there all the forms of monasticism were housed under a single
roof, from the monk‑cleric engaged in pastoral work with
his bishop to the lay monk occupied in copying manuscripts.
All that rich
past tradition has to be kept in mind when we ask ourselves the
question that constitutes the title of this talk: "What is
the role of monasticism in the re‑evangelization of a de‑christianized
world. Before beginning to answer that question it seems to me
important to define the terms we are using; and, first of all,
what we understand by monasticism.
Monasticism
Monasticism has
been a multifaceted reality from its very beginning. Its evolution,
though, has been different in the East and in the West. The East
has not multiplied the monastic institutions, that is, has not
developed a variety of monastic Orders, and therefore, in the
Eastern Churches the word *monk+ continue to designate still nowadays
every form of ascetic life, whether it is lived in the solitude
of the desert or involved in some pastoral activities. In the
West, there has been a gradual diversification of the charisms.
Not only did various monastic Orders developed through the centuries,
but a clearer distinction than in the East has appeared between
the monastic life and the life of the secular clergy. Regular
Canons were also founded in the twelfth century, along with the
Mendicant Orders, as well as various other active communities
after the XVIth century.
In fact, even
in the West, when our brothers of the protestant Churches speak
of monastic life, they often refer to what the Catholics would
call "religious life" in general. In this paper, due
to our oecumenical context I will use the expression "monastic
life" in its broader sense. Were this paper addressed to
an exclusively Roman Catholic audience, I would probably give
it the title "The role of religious
life in the re‑evangelization of a secularized world.
I think that this
use of the terminology is all the more justified since I will
not attempt to describe all the various forms of active involvement
of the Religious men and women in the pastoral activity of the
Church, but will restrict myself to the role that they have to
play by their very way of life, that is, by their special consecration to God. And, at
that level, there is a great unity between the vocation of the
monk in the strict sense and that of what we call in the West
the various other forms of religious life. The monk as such does not have any particular
ministry in the Church. He may be asked to play various functions
in the Church and society, or not; but nothing of what he does
‑‑ or does not do ‑‑ characterizes him
as a monk. He may live always within the enclosure of his monastery,
without any pastoral activity; he may be teaching in a monastic
school or be in charge of a parish; he may be a writer. Through
all of that he may participate in the evangelizing activity of
the whole Church. But nothing of that characterizes him as a monk.
Like any other
Christian, the monk has set for himself the goal of living in
a personal communion with God always deeper and as constant as
possible. This, he knows, can be accomplished only by the Spirit
of God, and therefore he has chosen a specific way of life that
implies some radical detachments, which have no other goal than
to prepare him to the contemplative prayer in the context of
which the transforming action of the Spirit would be realized.
One aspect of
the monk's detachment
is the fact of not being identified by any type of activity. At
it has been said often, the only relevancy of the monk is to be
*irrelevant+, which is not without some importance in the modern
society so concerned about relevancy. To be "irrelevant",
in that sense, does not mean however to be *meaningless+. The
monk belongs to the Church; he shares, therefore, in the common
responsibility of all the Christians, to evangelize, to be witnesses
to the faith in Christ. If he did not do that he would not be
a Christian. No more than anybody else, the monk chooses his vocation
in order to be a witness. But the fact is that he cannot, any more
than anybody else, avoid being either a witness or a counter‑
witness. And if he wants to live an authentic Christian monastic
life, he must be aware of the meaning
of his life in the overall mission of the Church.
Evangelization
Now, before asking
ourselves specifically, what is the role of the monk as such in
the mission of the Church, we must clarify also what we understand
by evangelization. The Council Vatican II has done it in Gaudium et Spes, that is, its Pastoral Constitution on The Church in the Modern World. And Paul
VI has developed the theme still further in his beautiful Apostolic
Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi.
Breaking with
the defensive and pessimistic tradition of the last centuries,
the Council starts with the consideration of the dignity of the
human person and of the needs, aspirations and difficulties of
today's society; and it describes how the Church is called to
be in the world and for the world, as the leaven in the dough.
Paul VI stresses the fact that Christ is the first Evangelizer,
and that the Church itself must be evangelized first, since it
is by the witness of their life more than by any type of preaching
that Christians are called to evangelize.
A secularized world
Now, what do we mean when we speak of the evangelization
of a secularized world?
The world secularization has been used in several different meanings,
some negative, some positive, corresponding to the two meanings
of world in the Gospel of John. In the negative
sense, secularization expresses the gradual de‑christianization
of Western society, along with the expansion of atheism. In the
positive sense, it expresses the clearer acknowledgement in our
time of the basic value of the world as it came out of the hands
and the love of the Creator, and the profound dignity of the human
person and of the City of Man. Both movements, in Europe first
of all, but also, consequently, in the Western society in general,
imply the disappearance of a type of social order that was know
as Christendom. And since monks had an extremely
important role to play in the development of that Christendom,
it will be important for me to recall, at least schematically,
how it came about, how it flourished and how it crumbled. All
of this is not without importance for the monks of today, because
they may be more liable than anybody else to give in to the temptation
of continuing to live as if the structures and the spirit of Christendom
wee still around.
To describe it
in a perhaps simplistic manner, Christendom was a form of civilization
where all the structures of society were subordinated to the basic
truths of the Christian faith, and where all civil and political
authority was subordinated to the religious and ecclesiastical
one. That type of civilization lasted for centuries, and produced
treasuries of literature, architecture and other forms of art,
as well as social structures. Starting with the conversion of
Constantine and finding its culmination in the Christian Roman
Empire of the Middle Ages, it implied not only a fusion but often
a confusion of State and Church. When entire barbarian peoples
received baptism out of forced obedience to their kings, one may
wonder how much Christendom generated an authentic Christianity.
But, in any case, the whole understanding of society, of life,
of all the human questions was religious and Christian.
Recent historians believe that the profound
transformation, the consequence of which we now call secularization,
begin with a natural phenomenon of dramatic proportion: the Great
Plague, also called the Black Death, which was one of the most
traumatic moment in the known history of humankind. It is estimated
that this plague, which began in Constantinople in 1334, within
twenty years killed off between one third and two thirds of the
population of Europe. Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries there
was a decline in the whole of Europe. In London the last of the
great plagues was in 1665. There were two basic responses to this
terrifying experience of the Plague. From these two responses
were formed the two communities of the present, which Thomas Berry
call the believing religious community and the secular scientific
community.
The believing
community had recourse to supernatural forces, to the spirit‑world,
to the renewal of esoteric traditions, sometimes to pre‑Christian
beliefs and rituals that had been neglected in their deeper dynamics
since the coming of Christianity. In that situation of incessant
disaster, a Redemption mystique became the dominant form of Christian
experience and the creation doctrines were neglected. This response,
with its emphasis on Redemptive Spirituality, continued through
the religious upheavals of the 16th century, on through the Puritanism
and Jansenism of the 17th century. This attitude was further strengthened
by the shock of the Enlightenment and Revolution periods of the
18th and 19th centuries.
The other response
to the Black Death was the reaction that led eventually to the
scientific secular community of our times. This reaction sought
to remedy earthly terror not by supernatural or religious powers
but by an understanding of the earth process. It led not only
to all the discovery of modern medicine, but also to all the present
scientific development that built on the discoveries of the 17th,
18th and 19th centuries.
The sad thing is that the dialogue between the
two communities was almost non‑existent. The religious community
often closed its eyes on the discoveries of the scientific one,
while it did not fought it; and the scientific community became
more and more atheistic. The relationship between the world and
the Church has deteriorated and we have now, all over the Western
world, but especially in Europe a situation where the great majority
still consider themselves believers, and even Christians, but
do not consider that their Christian faith is supposed to affect
their social, matrimonial or economic life. In a recent statistical
study, 10% of those who declared to be Christians also declared
themselves atheist!
The world became
suspicious of the Church, and vice versa. The Second Vatican
Council made a real effort to stop sulking at the world, and the
conciliar period was full of talk of "the open Church",
the "Church present to the world", and so on. We are
now far from a Church opposed to the world. But with the best
of intentions, the Vatican II position is still a face‑to‑face
one ‑‑ gazing into each other's eyes, maybe, but still
dualist. In the lands that knew "Christendom", the current
problem is how to work a cleavage that will finally allow the
Church to be "in the world" without being "of the
world" ‑‑avoiding the Constantinian confusion
of "the world with Church" and without setting the
two on parallel courses. In other words, the question is how to
be the salt of the earth and the leaven in the dough.
There is no doubt
that our modern society needs to be evangelized again; whether
we speak of evangelization or re‑evangelization, or "second
evangelization". But one thing is certain, such an evangelization
cannot be an attempt at reconstructing the Christendom of the
past. It cannot be either the simple dissemination of a Christian
ideology. It has to be first of all a witness. According to a
phrase used in several occasions by Paul VI, "Modern man
listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he
does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."
The monk
in the present situation
Now, all of that
was a pretty long detour. But if we accept, with Vatican II that
the Church is by essence missionary, that is, that the Church
exists for the world, as a living witness of Christ's message
to a society within which it is in a situation of diaspora, it
becomes obvious that the only manner in which we can describe
the role of monastic life in the society of today, is by describing
the needs and expectations of that society. What monastic life
is in its essence never changes, no more than what Christian life
is in its essence. What changes is the specific form in which
monastic life is meaningful not only to Christians but to every
man and woman of a given society at a particular time.
If monastic life
is to be significant for the Church's identity and mission today
it must be so because of what it is and not just because of what
some monks, in fact, do (however valuable that may be) because
monastic life is not merely a collection of individuals who engage
in a variety of good works but a distinctive state of life in
the Church.
By state of life
I mean a permanent, stable, and public form of consecrated life
in the Church which raises to visibility in a special way some
aspect or dimension of the Christian mystery which all the baptized
are called to live but to which all do not witness in the same
way. To what aspect or dimension of the Christian mystery does
the monastic state of life witness in a special way and what is
the significance of that witness in our time?
As I have mentioned before, our society has
become deeply atheist, whether we think of the theoretical atheism
of most of the socialist countries or the practical one of the
capitalist countries. Even those who believe in God often serve
other gods, beginning with Mammon, the god of money and efficiency.
In that context, two aspects of monastic life are particularly
important: the immediacy
in the relationship with God, and the marginality
in relationship with the world.
Immediacy as a Mode of Christian Experience
The characteristically
human way of seeking God and working for the transformation of
the world in Christ is through material mediation. Incarnate
spirits, born in the flesh and immersed in history, we work out
our salvation in and through the material universe in which we
live and move and have our being. This is our natural element.
Nevertheless, natural and good as this approach is, some people
are called to bypass, as much as possible, the earthly mediations
of the divine and to seek God with an immediacy that would be
foolhardy unless it were a response to God's own invitation.
Of course nobody
can do completely without human mediation in his relationship
with God. But the monk who is true to his vocation starts with
God, not primarily as the ultimate horizon in terms of whom everything
is done, but as the first point of reference in which being and
action originate. One comes to every historical experience out
of one's immediate involvement with God rather than seeking God
primarily through one's historical relationships and activities.
And this happens first of all in contemplative prayer.
The fundamental precept of the New Testament
about prayer is that one must pray without ceasing. And one of
the most constant preoccupations of the monks throughout generations
has been to develop ways of maintaining as constant as possible
a contemplative awareness of God's love and God's presence. An
unceasing prayer that is always rooted in an unceasing lectio
and meditation of the Word of God. Monks have also discovered,
through centuries of experience and practice, that continuous
prayer is not possible without continuous conversion. They have
developed ascetical practices that predispose the heart to the
action of the Spirit of God who, in the end, is the only One who
can teach prayer.
In our time when
there is a deep thirst for prayer in the people of God and at
the same time an exaggerated confidence in methods and techniques,
the monks seem to have the mission of witnessing, on the one hand,
to the possibility and the absolute importance of a contemplative,
loving relationship with God, and, on the other hand on the very
relative character of human means and tools. They have to show,
through their own lives, that what is really important is not
so much to learn how to pray as to learn how to live in such a
way that the whole life can gradually become an ongoing prayer,
under the action of the Spirit of God.
Immediacy with God goes hand in hand with immediacy
with oneself and with the struggle that goes on in each one of
our hearts between the Kingdom of Light and the forces of evil.
Another dimension of the monastic quest for God is the desert,
which has not been understood by the great monastic tradition
primarily as a place of sweet encounter with God but as a place
where one goes with Christ to fight the powers of darkness in
their own terrain. This also can be an antidote to a modern preoccupation
with the cult of the self and its aggrandizement. The desert is
an attitude of human powerlessness in the presence of salvation.
It is a disposition to receive this salvation gratuitously in
the painful experience of one's own limitations and with the obscure
conviction that God seeks us out and that Christianity, rather
than man's love of God, is the love of Jesus seeking out man first.
The essence of
true Christian prayer has always consisted in going out of oneself
to encounter the Other who is God. Far from being a kind of egoistic
approach, an escape from realities and responsibilities, true
prayer is the supreme act of abnegation and forgetfulness of self
in order to encounter Christ and his demands in others. The monk
tries to witness through his life that the preoccupation for the
needs of his brothers and sisters is something that most naturally
grow from a life of intimacy with God rather than being simply
accompanied by occasional prayer.
There is another
form of immediacy in his love relationship with God to which the
monk gives witness in his own flesh. It is the life of celibacy.
Celibacy, chosen as a public and permanent state of life, establishes
the monk in an existential solitude which no bonds, however deep,
on friendship, community, or solidarity with the world can mitigate.
Aloneness is, in a certain sense, the inner structure of the
life of the consecrated celibate as faithful and fruitful mutuality
is the inner structure of matrimony. This aloneness, if cherished,
attended to, and dwelt in as the heart of one's vocation, finds
its positive meaning in the contemplative prayer just mentioned,
which it fosters and nourishes. The solitude which Religious choose
through their public and lifelong commitment to celibacy raises
to visibility in the Church the fundamental aloneness of every
human being before God.
Marginality
The attempt to live such an immediacy to God
on a day to day basis places the monk on the margins of the social
order. It is a marginality that derives from the choices the monk
makes, both as means to and an expression of his immediacy to
God. The monk chooses not to forge a common destiny with any other
individual human being through marriage and not to integrate himself
into the world's historical process by procreating and raising
the next generation of human beings. He chooses not to participate
personally in the profit economy either by working for personal
gain or by making independent use of what he earns. He seeks to
guard an inner freedom that is incompatible with ordinary involvements
in the political order. He chooses a form of community life that
transcends personal taste or advantage and intends to witness
to the transcendent inclusiveness of Christ's universal reign.
These foundational choices are the coordinates of a lifestyle
which places him on the margins of the secular order. According
to a well knows expression of Evagrius Ponticus, while being united
to everyone he is separated from everyone. As the monk realizes,
the more complex life in contemporary society becomes the more
difficult it is for one to live it freely and simply as a disciple
of Christ, and the more important it becomes for some people to
attempt it and to create a lifestyle in the Church which witnesses
publicly to the desirability and possibility of living that way.
By describing this attempt in terms of intimacy and marginality,
rather than in terms of flight from the world or a dichotomy between
the sacred and the secular, I am attempting to avoid fruitless
arguments over words while continuing to affirm that monastic
life involves an inner stance and a public lifestyle which witnesses
to the primacy and all‑sufficiency of God and grounds a
vocation to prophecy.
Prophecy Nobody who attempts to be a prophet is an authentic
one! But prophecy is an essential dimension of Christian life.
And therefore the monk will be a prophet in the very degree in
which he will be faithful to his call, which is always a call
addressed by God to him personally, but never for him alone.
Prophecy is not
primarily about foretelling the future. It is about telling what
time it is, what it is time for, in the present. As Rabbi Abraham
Heschel put it, the prophet's "essential task is to declare
the word of God to the here and now." Jesus is the prophet
par excellence, the one who announced that the time is now and
what it is time for in the Reign of God. Prophecy requires three
things: a clarity of vision and acuity of hearing that is a participation
in God's view of history; the ability to effectively announce
that vision both to the powers which oppose God's Reign and to
the people who are oppressed by those powers; and the willingness
to pay, even with one's life, for the ultimate triumph of God's
covenantal order, the Reign of God.
In his contemplative
prayer the monk tries constantly to listen to what the Spirit
of God is telling the Church of today. He listens also to the
events of the world from God's point of view. As Heschel says,
"the fundamental experience of the prophet is a fellowship
with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the divine pathos."
The immediacy to God and the marginality to the social order that
the monk attempts to live is directly ordered to sharing God's
perception of humanity in history, to the cultivation of sympathy
with the divine pathos.
Contemplative prayer is the place, the locus,
of the coincidence of the contemplative's view with the divine
view. It is the entrance of the human person into the sphere of
God. In Contemplative prayer we pass through the center of our
own being into the very being of God where we see ourselves and
our world with a clarity, a simplicity, a truthfulness that is
not available in any other way. Ant it is this view of reality
which the contemplative must bring to bear upon the social order.
For the monk, solitude has as its primary purpose the fostering
of such contemplation within which he participates in the divine
perspective.
Marginality, if
it is lived authentically in all its agonizing ambiguity and without
any attempt at self‑justification or any claims to superiority,
gives the monk a hermeneutical vantage point which is somewhat
analogous to that of the poor and oppressed, those who are marginalized
not by choice but by violence. To be outside the system, especially
when one does not have an alternate source for the goods and services
the system should make available, allows one to discern the contradictions
and the violence of the system that those who participate fully
in it are less equipped to see.
Religious are
marginal by choice, but that marginality is in the service of
prophecy not of escapism. From the edges of the system there is
a view of what the system does to those who are excluded. If contemplation
fosters immediacy to God, marginality fosters immediacy to the
oppressed. The monk wants to be where the cry of the poor meets
the ear of God. To feel the pathos of God is not a warm and comfortable
religious experience; it is an experience of the howling wilderness.
In that experience the monk will discover that
two forms of encounter with God are equally important and complementary:
the contemplative, prayerful encounter in the silence of the cell
(Mt. 5), and the encounter of Christ is the suffering and needy
brother (Mt. 25). In a Church where two temptations are as prevalent
one as the other, that is, the temptation to seek a sweet presence
of God without sharing his pathos and his preoccupation for the
poor, and the temptation of losing oneself in a type of social
activism deprived of any contemplative dimension, an aspect of
the mission of the monk is to witness to the equal importance
of the two.
In many occasions
the monks will feel called to be involved either in works of mercy
or even in social actions, as individuals or as communities. In
some cases it will be only a temptation; in other cases it may
be an authentic call from God. But Whatever the involvement is,
the essential vocation of the monk will remain be a consistent
locus of that prophetic insight born of immediacy to God and social
marginality.
Pilgrimage
Such a constant
seeking of God and such a social marginality makes of the monk
a pilgrim. The "journey" is one of the great spiritual
archetypes found in every major religion and culture. It is not
surprising, therefore, that monks have very often adopted the
lifestyle of pilgrims. Such were the munis of pre‑aryan India, the rishis and the sannyasin of Hinduism, as early as the period of the first Upanishads,
the bikkus of Buddhism
and the most ancient ascetics of Christianity whose life is described
in the Acts of Thomas and the Liber Graduum. In the Western tradition
of Christianity, the same spirituality of pilgrimage was at the
heart of Celtic monasticism and inspired the missionary ventures
of Augustine in England and Boniface in Germany. This was not a universal practice however. In
the Christian East, the early Egyptian monks, while receiving
a large and constant flow of visitors, were reluctant to adopt
a wandering lifestyle themselves, and, in the West, Benedict clearly
expressed his lack of esteem for those whom he called "gyrovagues".
But although both Egyptian and Western monks after Benedict were
characterized by a search for geographic stability, monastic life
continued to be viewed by them as a journey, although essentially
an interior one.
While the gyrovague
is rootless, and therefore cannot really grow, the authentic pilgrim
is someone solidly rooted. Either he has a "home" from
which he comes and to which he will return at the end of his pilgrimage;
or ‑‑ if he has adopted the existence of a permanent
pilgrim ‑‑ he has found enough inner rootedness to
go beyond the supportive environment of a geographical and cultural
rootedness.
The pilgrim is
at home everywhere without trying to build a home anywhere. He
has a sense of freedom that can easily become a threat to anyone
who still finds his security in the fact of belonging to a specific
place and group or to a solid system. He is not a good client
for the merchants of foreign spiritual goods. The gyrovague, on
the contrary, builds temporary homes everywhere he goes, buys
all the last products on the market and becomes the naive disciple
of the last self‑made master.
In a society more
and more marked by a massive encounter of cultures and religions,
and by a more and more frequent geographical instability, the
capacity to be a "rooted pilgrim" in the spiritual search
is something that the monk is called to develop and teach to the
world.
In an article that had probably an autobiographical
flavor Thomas Merton described monastic life as a therapy and
the accomplished monk as someone who had reached final integration.
"The man
who has attained final integration is no longer limited by the
culture in which he has grown up. 'He has embraced all of life...
He has experienced qualities of every type of life': ordinary
human existence, intellectual life, artistic creation, human love,
religious life. He passes beyond all these limiting forms, while
retaining all that is best and most universal in them, 'finally
giving birth to a fully comprehensive self.' He accepts not only
his own community, his own society, his own friends, his own culture,
but all mankind. He does not remain bond to one limited set of
values in such a way that he opposes them aggressively or defensively
to others. He is fully "catholic" in the best sense
of the word. He has a unified vision and experience of the one
truth shining out in all its various manifestations, some clearer
than others, some more definite and more certain than others.
He does not set these partial views up in opposition to
each other, but unifies them in a dialectic or an insight of complementarity.
With this view of life he is able to bring perspective, liberty
and spontaneity into the lives of others. The finally integrated
man is a peacemaker, and that is why there is such a desperate
need for our leaders to become such men of insight."
Nobody can enter the paths of dialogue as an
authentic pilgrim without having reached at least a certain degree
of such integration. Merton was such a man. Deeply rooted
in his own tradition, he was able to understand almost by osmosis
the basic teachings of other traditions and to develop deep friendship
with authentic representatives of these traditions. It is also
extremely important to note that the period of his life when he
more and more entered into that dialogue was the period when he
became also more and more deeply concerned with the fate of the
oppressed and of the victims of war.
What I have tried
to described are a certain number of aspects of the monastic vocation
that seem to me to have a very special significance for the Church
of today in its mission of re‑evangelizing the world. If
this was meant as a description of what monks of today actually
are, it would obviously be pretentious. It is rather the expression
of a call and a challenge.
All of this does
not set the monk aside as a superior human being. He is simply
a Christian, having the same goal as any other Christian, but
having been called by God to seek that goal according to some
specific way. Monastic life is not the heroic quest of the spiritual
athlete but a wrestling in the dark of ordinary human beings who,
for some reason known only to God, have been attacked by a messenger
who holds the secret of their name and will not release it without
wounding them.
Abbot Armand Veilleux Holy Spirit Monastery 2625 Hwy. 212
S.W. Conyers, GA 30208‑4044 U.S.A.
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