MONASTIC TOPICS IN GENERAL
|
|||
Reshaping
Monastic Life
Some years ago, I used to give lectures at
Sant’Anselmo in Rome on monastic formation. At some point I tried to find out what early monks and the great
monastic figures of the Middle Ages said or wrote about that subject and I discovered
almost nothing written about monastic formation either in early monasticism or
in the Middle Ages. Then I realized that
the idea that we could form someone to live monastic life is a completely
modern idea that would never have come to the mind of early monks. They did not think that one could be formed to monastic life. On the contrary they considered that one
should be formed by monastic
life. The goal of a monk, as of every
human being, is to be gradually formed or trans-formed into the likeness of
Christ. And monastic life is a means –
or a set of means -- to arrive at that goal.
Likewise, when I
started to prepare this talk, I first wrote the title at the top of my computer
screen: “Reshaping Monastic Life” and I
stood for several minutes in front of a blank page. Then, I said to myself: How in the world can
we reshape monastic life, when it is the job of monastic life to reshape
us? But I understand what is meant by
this title, and I will try to offer you a few reflections on the subject.
Actually, after what I
said yesterday, I should not have anything to add, because if I was more or
less right in what I said, it should be enough to make every effort to live a
life of communion at all the levels I mentioned, and the rest would follow. But in practice, it is probably not as simple
as that.
I would like to take up
where I left yesterday, when I spoke about inculturation.
When we think of
“reshaping monastic life”, we think of what was called “aggiornamento” at the time of Vatican II, and what is also called
“inculturation” or “re-evangelization”. Pope
John Paul II used to speak a good deal about inculturation in the first years
of his pontificate; and then, towards the end he spoke more about
re-evangelization. In fact the two words
mean more or less the same thing. If we
need to re-evangelize our modern society it is not because the first
evangelization did not stick or because our culture has become de-christianized
(which is partly true, of course) but simply because any culture is always in a
process of evolution or transformation – a process that is more rapid at
certain times – and the culture that was evangelized does not exist any
more. The culture constantly needs to be
confronted with the Gospel message, over and over again in each one of its new
forms. This is what re-evangelization
means and this is what inculturation is all about.
Inculturation is a
process in which a culture or a cultural element comes into contact with the
Gospel. In that process both poles are affected: the culture in question – or
the cultural element in question – acquires a new meaning and a new dimension;
and the Gospel acquires a new mode of expression. There is some enrichment on both sides. Personally I am convinced that Christian monasticism
is the first and better-realized form of inculturation. It was not suddenly invented or born in the
third century (as we often read in our textbooks of history); it goes back to
Christ himself. There was, at the time
of Christ a large ascetical movement throughout the Middle East, both within
and outside Judaism. John the Baptist was part of that movement; whatever may
have been his links with Qumran. When Jesus went down into the waters of the
Jordan in order to be baptized by John, he assumed that ascetical movement and
gave it a new meaning. Then, when some
Christians of the first generation wanted to assume in their lives, as a
permanent way of living, some of the most radical calls of Jesus in the Gospel,
they had in that religious and cultural tradition of their time a way of
expressing those radical calls of Jesus, in an external way of life. There was therefore an encounter between the
Gospel message and that tradition. During a few centuries, that ascetical and mystical movement developed following
several different lines both within and outside Christianity, with mutual
influence. A process of purification and
clarification gradually happened within Christianity and when, at the end of
the third and beginning of the fourth century, you have a clearly recognized
and accepted form of ascetical life within Christianity, called “monastic life”,
you are at the end of a very successful process of inculturation.
It is not surprising
therefore that, all through the history of Christian monasticism, there has
been a constant interaction between monastic life and culture. Anytime there was a new form of monastic life
that appeared, or a significant reform that was made, it always happened at a
critical moment of history, when one person, or rather usually a small group of
persons, were particularly sensitive to the culture of their time with its
needs and aspirations, and found in their own life an answer to those aspirations
– an answer that proved valid not only for them, but for everybody else, or at
least for a large number, and many persons joined them.
Of course, I am here to
speak about the present and perhaps the future, and not to give a lecture on
the history of monastic life. But we
cannot build a future without learning something from the past. Before choosing where we want to go, we must
remember where we came from and how we got where we are.
Let me mention just a few of
the great moments of the past history of monasticism, in connection with what
was happening in the society at that time. The huge numerical development of Egyptian monasticism both in Lower
Egypt with Anthony and in Upper Egypt with Pachomian coenobitism, at the end of
the third and at the beginning of the fourth century was made possible by very
important socio-cultural changes realized by the reforms of Septimus Severus
and Diocletian, and was a Christian response to those reforms. The monastic renewal that began in Italy with
the Rule of the Master and the Rule of Benedict, in the 6th century
was part of the Gelasian reform made possible by the intelligent leadership of
a barbarian king, Theodoricus. We all
know how the Cluniac Reform of the 10th century and the Cistercian
Reform of the 12th century were part of a profound transformation of
the relationship between the Church and Society at that time. Closer to us, the monastic restoration in
France and Germany at the end of the 19th century was very much
dependent on a political and social context.
Now, it seems obvious
that we find ourselves again, at the beginning of the third millennium, at a
very critical moment in history – a time of transformation that affects mostly
the Western world, but affects also all the other parts of the planet, all the
cultures and all the religions because of the effects – both positive and
negative – of globalisation. If we limit
ourselves to our Western world, we can certainly say that there is a crisis of
monasticism (and I don’t give a necessarily negative meaning to the word
“crisis”); but that crisis of monasticism is only one aspect of the crisis of
the Church; and the crisis of the Church is one aspect of the crisis of our
society. All this means that it would be
vain and useless to try to find a solution to our own crisis without taking
into account the larger picture. There
is a need for a collective, global listening to the signs of the times, the
need for a collective analysis of the situation and for a collective searching
for answers, although many different answers are possible and legitimate.
Reshaping monasticism can only be one aspect of reshaping the Church; and
reshaping the Church can only be one aspect of reshaping Society.
I would like to suggest
that one of the main goals of monasticism at the beginning of the third
millennium was to recover its capacity of unifying all the aspects of Christian
and human life in one harmonious movement, thus reacting to a movement of
differentiation and diversification that has often made of our lives a
scattered series of occupations and preoccupations.
The original meaning of
the word monachos and of the Syriac
equivalent ihidaya is not so much the
person who is alone as the person who has only one goal, one love, one
preoccupation in his/her life. Maybe the challenge of any “reshaping” of our monastic
life, or of any reform or renewal is to return to that simplicity.
In the life of a monk
there are always many things to do. In a
community someone has to do the kitchen and we need a porter and a guest
master. Someone has to do the
bookkeeping and another one has to prepare the music for the liturgy. If you have a school, some monks will be
involved perhaps with teaching or with the management of the school or simply
with the chaplaincy; if we have an industry with which we earn our living,
someone will have to manage that business, etc. And someone has to be the abbot… and therefore attend meetings like this
one! The fact of having some of those
jobs to do, or even several of them at the same time, does not prevent someone
from being an authentic monk. But what
is required of every individual monk, whatever may be the number of the things
he has to do, is to have a unified and well-integrated life.
Once I heard a monk who
was running an important business for his community explain to a journalist
that his life was divided into three parts: he had eight hours for rest and
personal care, eight hours of monastic
life, and eight hours of business life. Of course I cannot judge the quality of the monastic life of that monk –
and I know that he was also a good scholar and a good retreat director -- but I
found his explanation absolutely wrong. You
cannot be a monk only eight hours a day. You are a monk twenty-four hours a day
or you are not a monk. I have no
objection with a monk doing pastoral work, but he must do it as a monk. I have no objection with a monk doing some
business work for the maintenance of his community or the sustenance of the
poor; but he must do it as a monk. If a
monk is a student, doing some specialized training, he must do it as a monk,
etc.
Perhaps one of the
aspects in which our monastic life has become more influenced by the manners of
the world is that quite often our life has become compartmentalized.
The only thing that can
maintain the unity of our life through all the activities of our days is
constant, unceasing prayer -- unceasing contemplative prayer. Contemplative
union with God is the goal of our life. Now “contemplation”, in its biblical
and patristic meaning, is not something that happens once in a while, in the
form of peak experiences. It is an attitude of the heart, a way of being. You are a contemplative twenty-four hours a
day or you are not a contemplative. If I
am not a contemplative at work and when I meet people, or when I attend a
meeting, I will not be more of a contemplative when I sing the office in choir or
when I sit in the lotus position in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
For that reason, I have
some problem with the way people speak at times of the monastic “observances”
as being characteristics of monastic life. The danger is gradually to begin to think that if you do all those
observances that are considered “essential”, you are a monk. As a matter of fact, you can do all those
observances and have a pretty scattered life, which is just the opposite of the
unity, or unification, or simplicity that should be the characteristic of the
life of a monk.
This modern tendency to
slice our daily life into a long series of unrelated occupations is so
pervasive that, with the best of intentions we have come to consider as
“observances” to be practiced at some specific moments of the day, some of the
most fundamental attitudes of monastic life. Lectio divina is a good
example.
Early monks knew the
practice of reciting some prayers at various times of the day, either alone if
they were hermits or as a community if they were coenobites. The main scope and
meaning of that practice was to foster and nourish something much more
important, that is the unceasing prayer, which is a constant communion with
God. Since God has spoken to us, they felt that constant prayer was first of
all a constant listening to God. They listened to what God was constantly
telling them in the silence of their heart and through the many texts of the
Scripture they had learned by heart and were constantly ruminating, through the
texts they heard during the liturgical celebrations, through the words of a
spiritual father and the writing of the elders, and also through all the events
of their daily life. Lectio divina was not a practice. It was an attitude of the heart.
That attitude was
largely lost in the late Middle Ages and still more in the post-Reform period
in the Catholic Church. Then, in the
last fifty years or so, in the wake of the biblical movement, we have rediscovered
the importance of Scripture in our monastic life and of lectio divina. Unfortunately, we have begun to consider lectio divina as a “practice”, or an “observance”, rather than as a
fundamental attitude of the heart. The
faithful monk makes a half-hour or an hour and even more of lectio each
day, and moves on to his spiritual reading, his studies and his other
activities. He adopts a gratuitous
attitude of listening to God during this half-hour, and often gives himself up
to other activities during the rest of the day with the same frenzy, the same
spirit of competition, the same distraction, as if he had not chosen a life of
continual prayer and constant seeking of the presence of God.
Not only is all this totally foreign to the spirit of the
monks of the desert, but this attitude contradicts of the very nature of lectio divina. What is the essence
of lectio is the interior attitude. Now, this attitude is not something that can be put on for half an hour
or one hour of the day. One has it all
the time or not at all. It impregnates
our whole day, or the exercise of it is a pointless game.
To allow oneself to be questioned by God, to allow
oneself to be challenged, formed, throughout all the elements of the day,
throughout work as throughout fraternal encounters, throughout the harsh
ascesis of a serious intellectual work as throughout the celebration of the
liturgy and the normal tensions of community life - all this is terribly
demanding. To relegate this attitude of total openness to one privileged exercise
that is supposed to impregnate by itself the rest of our day is perhaps an easy
way of running away from this demand.
For the Fathers of the Desert, reading, meditating,
praying, analysing, interpreting, examining, translating Scripture - all that
formed one inseparable whole. It would
have been unthinkable for Saint Jerome for example to consider that his
elaborate analysis of the Hebrew text of Scripture to discover all its nuances
was an activity not meriting the name of lectio divina.
This shift in the understanding of Scripture and of lectio, is not unrelated to another
transformation that happened in monastic life around the 11th and
the 12th century and that had negative effects on monasticism up till
then. I am speaking of what Dom Jean
Leclercq called “monastic theology”. That transformation has had, to my mind,
very negative effects both on monasticism and on theology in general. In fact, what has been called "monastic
theology" had nothing specifically monastic about it up to the twelfth
century. It was the way theology
developed among the people of God, with, certainly, as much pluralism in the
monasteries as outside them. This
discerning and contemplative way of expressing theology, up to then, knew how
to take up and transform (inculturate, we would say nowadays), the
contributions of diverse methods and diverse currents of thought. When the
scholastic method appeared, monks rejected it. One could legitimately wonder
how the theology of the following centuries would have evolved if the monks had
not rejected that new method that was coming to birth and had known how to
assimilate it as they had assimilated so many others before. In any case, for better or for worse, a way
of doing theology called “monastic” was upheld in the monasteries, while
scholastic theology developed in schools outside the monasteries.
Now, what is to be done
in the present situation? -- In any culture there are elements of death and
seeds of new life. Part of the culture
is dying out and a new one is coming to birth. Some people like to look at the elements of death and to present our
monastic vows as a remedy against that culture of death. I think it is much more in conformity with
the great monastic tradition to look at our culture as contemplatives, with the
eyes of God, and to discern all the germs of new life and to help them grow by
integrating them into our spiritual search. This is quite different from conforming to today’s trends and today’s
ways of life.
Such an attitude is
required in relation to the Church as much as in relation to society in
general. If you allow me, I will add here a personal note. I belong (like a number among you) to the
generation of people who were waiting for Vatican II with much hope, who
followed its unfolding with great intensity and who put all their energy in
putting it into practice. I was a young
monk when John XXIII announced the Council. I was in Rome, on St. Peter’s Square on the morning of the opening of
the Council, and I spent all the years of the Council (and the after-Council)
in Rome. After the Council I was very
soon involved in the Central administration of my Order, and I used all my
energy to work at the renewal asked for by the Council. I must say that for the last few years I have
seen, with some sadness, many of the dreams generated by the Council die out or
be pushed aside by some high-up powers and various influential so-called
“ecclesial movements”. Nevertheless my faith in a new Church renovated in the
line of Vatican II remains intact.
This is not the time or
the place to analyse what our communities, congregations and Orders have lived through
in the Church since the Council. It
would be wrong to attribute to the Council and to the reforms provoked by it
the great diminution of the number of vocations in many parts of the Church and
the closing of so many communities and so many church-related
institutions. What the Council asked for
was a spiritual renewal; and I think that, as a whole, we put all our efforts
into that spiritual renewal. But such a spiritual renewal required some structural
transformations, which, for most of them, arrived too late. The krisis (in the etymological and positive meaning of the word) that such transformations
provoked had a great purification as a consequence.
We have gone through
the same experience as Job in the Bible… We realized that even without many of
the things that gave us our social identity and of which we were proud, we
exist. Most of our communities are no longer
strong, powerful and influential as in the past centuries; but in their
precariousness and their weakness, they continue to be witnesses to the sequela Christi. This is our vocation: To prefer nothing to
the love of Christ, to follow Christ in a society that is itself in profound
transformation and always seeking its own identity. Our communities can give that evangelical
witness, whether they are small or big. Our identity does not reside in the services that we have fulfilled or
are still fulfilling in the Church, but in what we are, spiritually.
One of the poverties that
we experience is that we do not even have a renewed theology of religious
life. In the whole contemporary
theological reflection, there has not been any profound renewal of the theology
of religious life. But, has there been,
really, a real renewal of the theology of marriage, of priesthood, of the
ministry of the bishop? Has there been, in Europe, since the Council a real
renewal of theology? We are still
waiting for a liberation of theology (please, pay attention to the order of my
words).
Consequently, it is
difficult to find a name to describe our form of Christian life that does not
create a problem. What has been called
up to now “religious life” – including monastic life – is only a particular
manner to live the Christian life. How
to describe it using a theological common denominator? Perfectae
Caritatis placed the accent on the essential element, the sequela Christi. That’s beautiful… but every Christian is
called to follow Christ. We spoke of
“Institutes of perfection”; but everyone is called to perfection. We spoke of “religious life”, but everyone is
called to be “religious”. Nowadays, we
prefer to speak about the “consecrated life”. But that expression is no more satisfactory than the others. Every Christian is consecrated to God by
his/her baptism. Every human being is consecrated to God by the fact that
he/she is created in the image of God, and called to be transformed into the
likeness of Christ. The post-synodal Instruction
on religious life has kept the title Vita
consecrata. In a first draft of the
text, the three main writers had intended to structure the whole theology of
religious life around the theme of beauty.
The first proposed title was “Divinae
pulchritudinis amatores. Fortunately
a number of readers remarked that such a theological vision (reminding us of
Urs von Balthazar’s theology), did not have any foundation in the documents of
Vatican II or even in the interventions made during the Synod. That theological “vision” was not retained,
but beauty is still mentioned more than twenty times in the text. There are, therefore,
many “beautiful” things in that Instruction, but it did not bring any progress
in the theology of religious life. But
was it necessary?
Maybe in this regard,
we should be attentive to a number of lines of evolution of today’s
culture. I mentioned yesterday the shift
that has happened in the place of the “religious” dimension in human life. And I would like to stress again that such an
evolution is a fruit of the Christian message. Jesus put an end to the sacrificial economy of the Old Testament and of all
the ancient religions; likewise he replaced the religious rituals by his own
life and his own death, inviting us to glorify his Father not through rituals
but through the quality of our love. He taught
us to recognize and to give a symbolic value to all the elements of our life
and not to find a magic symbolic value in esoteric gestures.
Another important shift
has been happening. Our forms of
monastic and religious life developed in a period of history when, in Roman
culture as in that of all the new nations, there was an enormous importance
given to the ranks and classes of society. Ranks and classes had the same importance in the Church. Clear
distinctions and separations existed between clergy and people, between monks,
canons, mendicants and other religious. Those distinctions are gradually loosing much of their importance.
That levelling has,
perhaps, an evangelical origin and value. The only “new” theology developed by Vatican II is that of the “People
of God”. If we all form the People of
God, living in various ways different charismas, all the distinctions of the
past may have lost much of their importance.
The century-old
practice according to which communities are composed entirely of women or men,
are entirely active or contemplative, etc. will probably not be the only form
of consecrated life in the Church of tomorrow. The fact is that the largest number of new religious groups in the
Church are not “religious” communities in the traditional meaning, but
“spiritual families” composed of celibates and married people, of lay people
and priests, some of them living a rather contemplative life and others being very
active in Society and in the Church, all united around a same spirit and a same
spirituality. When they ask for recognition from Rome, usually the Congregation
for the Institutes of Perfection and the Secular Institutes, recognizes the
part of the group that make religious vows and considers the rest as
Associates, which, usually, goes against the original spirit of the group. Of course the Opus Dei has found another solution by making itself approved as a
“personal prelature”…
More and more groups of
lay people form lay communities attached to monasteries. They do not simply want a pious, religious
affiliation with the monastic community, but they sincerely seek how to
incarnate in their family life and in their professional life the same values
that the monks live in the monastery. They
give a new expression to the monastic charism.
Maybe it is in that
context that we should look at the “New communities” we have been talking about
yesterday. When we study the history of
monastic life (or of religious life in general) we see that at each important
moment of cultural and social transformation, numerous new groups appear. Most of them disappear after a generation or
two; but a few of them gather all the spirit of the movement and become very
flourishing new forms of monastic life. Generally, the more traditional forms, that have the characteristic of
surviving all the crisis, find themselves renewed and revitalized by those new
movements.
I think, therefore,
that we should have a positive attitude towards all those new offshoots,
welcoming the new vitality that they bring, but exercising toward them – if
they accept it – a role of witnesses to a long tradition. We should not conclude that they are THE new
form and that they will replace the present communities; but we should be ready
to let ourselves be challenged and even renovated by that new spiritual
dynamism
Another challenge of
the Church in the next years or decades will be the revitalization of the local
churches, after a very long period of increasing centralisation. This will also be a challenge for the
monastic institutes.
We know that monastic
life was not born in one local Church and then spread to the rest of the
world. It rather appeared more or less
at the same time in all the local Churches of the East as much as of the West,
and – most important of all – it was born out of the vitality of the local
Churches (and not in reaction to a lukewarm Church, as it is often erroneously
said).
In the Middle Ages, especially
at the time of Cluny, and in order to free themselves from the domination of
the feudal lords, monks invented what was called “exemption”, depending
directly from the bishop of Rome. But usually traditional monasteries were very
much linked all the same with the local Church, both diocesan and national.
It might sound
contradictory, but I think that the fact that we belong to a tradition that has
come through several centuries of communion with the universal Church, and the
fact that most of our Congregations and Orders are spread all over the world,
while being always implanted in a local Church, may give us a particular
capacity to help each diocesan community in which we live to become more and
more alive, with its own specific identity and its own specific religious
“culture”.
It is a secret for
nobody that the beloved pope John Paul II placed most of his confidence and
hopes in the ecclesial “movements, like Opus
Dei, the Legionaries of Christ, the Neo-Catechumenate, etc. which often
have an action and interventions parallel to or even above the authority of the
local bishop. We also know how someone
like Cardinal Martini, for purely and profoundly ecclesiological reasons, had
problems with such an evolution and never made a secret of it. We have to wait and see how Benedict XVI will
deal with that issue.
In any case, whatever
may be the attitude of the Pope and of the Roman Curia, in this regard, as
people totally dedicated to a life of communion, we have the mission to do
everything we can to foster communion with our local Church, and then between
the local Churches.
The present
geo-political evolution of the world has created an encounter on a massive
scale of cultures and religions in all the parts of the world, but especially
in our Western world. At the same time
there are forces (we are tempted to speak of diabolical forces) that try to
develop tensions, even wars between cultures and religions. Monks and nuns have certainly a very special
role to play in this area. Not only
because we are present in all the parts of the world and therefore have, as
Orders and Congregations, a worldwide experience; but also – and still more –
because what is at the core of our life, that is, spiritual experience, is also
what is at the core of most of the great religions of the world. When it is difficult and at times impossible
to dialogue at the level of philosophical and theological concepts, it is much
easier to meet at the level of spiritual experience.
There is much talk
nowadays about the European Constitution. Whether that Constitution is ratified or not is important but remains
secondary. With or without it, Europe is
painfully and gradually coming to birth. It is a movement that started some 1500 years ago and in which the
monastic movement has played a very large role throughout the centuries, so
much so, that Saint Benedict has been declared the Father of Europe, or the
Patron of Europe. Whether the Christian roots of Europe are mentioned in the
Constitution also remains secondary. (Hans Küng, in his usual provocative manner,
recently gave a talk on the Muslim roots of Europe… and he certainly had a
point). What is very important is that
the new Europe in the making be animated by Christian values and Christian
principles. Whether this happens or not
will depend on every Christian, but in a special way on the monks.
Monastic life will
reshape itself according to the way in which monks and nuns will answer all
these challenges and many others.
|
|
||