Christian and pagan learning

I have received a few emails regarding the connections of Stoic and monastic thought, and it might be worthwhile to clarify my views regarding the ways in which Christian teaching can borrow from pagan teaching. This is a very complicated topic, so I will merely introduce it here, and hopefully make further reflections as we go along. Greater minds than mine have struggled over this!

The basic ground rule is this: Catholic theology does not teach the total depravity of man after the Fall. The image of God is disfigured in the Fall but not erased. This means that even in the worst sinner, there is still a measure of God's goodness.

Pagan cultures, say of fourth-century Athens, can and do make strides toward coming to know things about God and about the life intended by God for men. What is different about Athens and Jerusalem is that God chose to reveal Himself directly 'as a friend speaks to a friend' to Moses and via the Torah, to the Israelites as a people. Thus, the Bible's knowledge of God is not merely derived from speculation on what God must be like. The Bible rather reports God's own Word in His relationship, His friendship with His people. This does not preclude speculation, however. All of us speculate about our friends; we might then ask them a question to check it out. The Psalms are full of speculative questions addressed to God.

The Bible is even influenced by Greek speculation, especially in the latter wisdom books, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach and perhaps Ecclesiastes. The gospels and Paul are both influenced in some degree by the cultural milieu of Hellenism, the dispersion of Greek thinking engineered by Alexander the Great (see the opening of the First Book of Maccabees).

Is this bad? Obviously not as it is part of canonical Scripture. The question is: what of pagan learning is consonant with revelation and adds to our understanding and what of pagan learning must be jettisoned as unworthy of it?

Isaian Theodicy

"I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe."
Isaiah 45: 7

Theodicy is the philosophical problem of understanding how evil can exist in a world created by an all-powerful God who is also all good. Like many problems of the philosophy of God, eighteenth and nineteenth century European thinkers seemed to believe that they were discovering them for the first time (http://chicagomonk.blogspot.com/2005/08/who-made-whom.html), but the ancients were not as naive as we think.

That said, this saying of God's in Isaiah is striking. Here, He uses the specific word bara', a word that is only used with God as subject. It means to create, strictly speaking, out of nothing. So God seems to be saying that He forms light (out of existing chaos in Genesis 1?), but He actually needs to create darkness. In our minds, this might seem backwards. Before there was light there was nothing, and that was dark, was is not?

I would suggest that before there was anything, there was God and God is light. In a sense, in saying "Let there be light," God was imprinting His order upon chaos. But there had been no real darkness because God was all in all.

The problem of theodicy and of evil in general always comes down to a question of freedom. If angels and men are truly free, then they must be able to choose anything whatsoever, even evil. Were we not free to choose hate, then our love, which is the final purpose for our being, would be false. In a sense, in order to open up a space in the universe in which human beings could be free, God decided to create darkness, a place that was not Himself, a space into which He would only manifest Himself if invited by free creatures.

Cyrus, my messiah

Isaiah 45 begins with a rather surprising figure, one that catches me off guard almost every time I read it:
"Thus says the Lord to Cyrus his anointed."
Cyrus was the king of Persia who defeated Babylon and then sent the Jews home from their exile. He is lauded in Ezra and Nehemiah for operating under God's providence, as well as here in Isaiah. What is remarkable here is that the title 'anointed' is our English word for the Hebrew term 'messiah'. In ancient times, this term simply meant 'the king'. Saul and David were both anointed by Samuel to be king, and Solomon was anointed by Nathan the prophet. Yet they were all Israelites. How can a Persian (modern Iranian) be the messiah?

There is a variety of ways to approach this, but what I will suggest today is simply that when we speak of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, we should recall what it is we mean by this. He is anointed by God (at His baptism, a figure of His death and exaltation) to be the supreme ruler over creation. Creation includes ourselves. Though Christ no longer walks the earth with us in the same way that He did when many whispered about Him "perhaps He is the messiah," like Cyrus, He is a king in time and space, not merely of hearts. Another way to say this is that our politics matter, not merely because we want to be kind people, and helpful seekers of peace and justice, but because we will all answer at some point to a greater authority.

Happy St. Bartholemew Day!

Peace to you in Christ!
One of the interesting things that is different about life in the monastery from life in the world is the measuring of time by the important days of the Church, rather than by secular days. It is a bit of a shame that fewer Catholics know when Michaelmas or Candlemas are anymore (Sept 29 and Feb 2). In part, we have weakened this by devaluing the liturgical celebrations that go with them: for example, how many people have processions and light candles on February 2? How many people even think of going to Mass on feast days?

In a similar vein, this year the Solemnity of the Assumption was not a day of obligation. The rules and exceptions surrounding days of obligation have taken on a legalistic cast that for many obscures the fact that we should just be partying in some way or other to celebrate Our Lady's victory over the devil and death.

Apatheia: Monasticism and Stoicism continued

Perhaps the clearest confluence of thought between the ancient Stoics and the monastic fathers is in the advancement of the goal of apatheia. Literally, this word means 'no pathos', i.e. no passion. The word is handled with caution bordering on apology by some contemporary writers on monastic spirituality (among those who mention it at all). Indeed, one of the primary caricature of Stoics is based on this goal: they are thought of as Vulcan-like party poopers who never smile and never weep and never scowl.

Were the goal an absolute void in one's emotional life, this criticism would hold. However, what is meant by apatheia is rather sovereignty over one's passions. In an older terminology, 'passions' were to be shunned as uncivilized, and perhaps this is where we went wrong. To give way to the passions in not merely uncouth, but is in fact acquiescing in sin. Anger, for example, is one of the Deadly sins; in our modern culture, sadly, you can have your anger recognized as a virtue as long as you can claim to be a victim of something, and the perceived grievances are legion.

The monk who has achieved apatheia is not immune from feelings of anger, sexual attraction, hunger and other signs that we are human beings inhabiting bodies. However, he is able to discern and channel his emotion into virtuous behavior: patience, love and kindness, self-sacrifice and joy.

More on apatheia to come!

"In front of love, apatheia marches,
in front of knowledge, love."
--Evagrius of Pontus

Who made whom?

That was the logo on a popular T-shirt where I went to college. To the best of my knowledge, the nineteenth-century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach was the first European thinker to make the suggestion that human beings fashioned God in their own image. It probably seemed liked a radically new thought at the time, especially inasmuch as much of the Christianity of Europe was already deracinated in the sense that Scripture was no longer the touchstone of theology.

In fact, Isaiah spends a good deal of time on this topic. Throughout chapters 40-46, he denounces the making of gods out of metal and wood, often doing so in amusing burlesques. The idea was known to roughly contemporary Greek philosphers such as Heraclitus who ridiculed the idea that the gods looked and acted like men. In any case, the difference between Isaiah and Feuerbach is that Isaiah, good Israelite theologian that he is, knows that anything that we fashion with our hands or even our imaginations is not God but an idol, and the fashioning of such images is a violation of the First Commandment.

Sr. Margaret Mary Funk, in her book Thoughts Matter, refers to the third monastic renunciation that of renouncing my image of God. While various Biblical depictions and most especially the Incarnation tell us about God and allow us to know Him, final and true knowledge will always surpass our ability to imagine, describe, and certainly to depict.

Market Economics and Vocations

I don't like to dwell much on the fact, but I once belonged to an avant-garde musical ensemble, a project cooked up by my best friend and me after we won our high school talent show with a piece that we wrote that featured two saxophones, a trombone, four voices, and so on--the works! Well, it's one thing to wow 'em in a small Catholic high school in Wisconsin. It's another thing to make a living doing tricky music.

From the beginning of the project which we began in earnest after each of us studied music either in college and/or for a couple of years after college, we looked at the venture as a business. We knew that we would need to market ourselves cleverly if we were going to survive. The idea that the creme automatically rises to the top is a myth, one on which I will comment at a later date.

In any case, we read up on ideas having to do with market systems and competition and stumbled upon a novel discovery: most bands that we knew looked at each other a bit warily because the feeling was that there were only so many gigs and so many fans' dollars to go around and that put us all in competition with each other. What my friend and I discovered, from our own analysis as well as the recent 'Seattle grunge' phenomenon at that time (the early 90's) is that the competition is not between bands but between rival ideas of what music should be played. The more bands there were doing similar things, the more they created demand for their product, especially if it was a good product. We used to refer to this with a shorthand phrase: "Our competition is not other bands but bad bands." This is because bands doing new music that turned people off made the fans suspect of all new music, and we of everyone needed fans to come to our performances with an open mind.

This thought came to me this weekend, as we hosted a young man who is about to enter the monastery of New Norcia in Italy in the fall. I have been in contact with him for about two years and he is a fine candidate. I'm sure any community would be happy to have him join. Indeed, we might be tempted to try and steal him away from New Norcia. There are so few vocations to go around today! We need to snap them up quick!

Unfortunately, I know of communities that think and act this way. It creates bad feelings between communities, as you would expect. But the truth of the matter is that if all of us religious were just doing our jobs, then the holiness of our life, apart even from the grace that would obviously work through those lives, would create a demand for our life. If we were full of the joy and life of the gospel, young men and women would get caught up in the excitement of it all. Today, I fear, when a candidate meets a dour community, the fear that religious life is deadening stays with him, and he views even joyful and solid communities with suspicion. And let's face it, most young people learn about religious life from either the examples of anti-Catholic movies or from aging and angry old-guard revolutionaries. I hope that doesn't sound too dismissive: I know a few persons for whom the label isn't entirely unfair and they often have many good insights on religious life if you take the time to get to know them. If you don't, you might get the idea that religious life lost its fun somewhere in the 1980's. As far as popular culture goes, how many people get to see movies like "Going My Way" or "The Bells of St. Mary's" these days? I mean, who wouldn't want to be Bing Crosby or Ingrid Bergman?

"The competition is not other religious communities but the perception that religious life is for losers."

The Communion Antiphon

At our Monastery, we sing all of the traditional Gregorian chant Ordinaries and Propers at the Mass. This includes singing the Communion song or antiphon. Bear in mind that this is not a 'Communion Hymn' which is allowed for by the documents of Vatican II, but as an exception. In any case, we begin singing the Communion antiphon when the priest receives the Sacred Body of Christ and conclude as the vessels are purified.

Many newcomers to the life voice an objection that singing at this time is a distraction from their personal thanksgiving prayers at Communion. Why should we have to sing a song that we might not even understand? Isn't it better to meditate on Christ's tremendous gift?

Before I answer this directly, I would like to mention an analogous situation that occurred recently with our Oblates. Some of the wished to institute a Holy Hour devotion on Sundays at the Monastery, forgetting or being unaware that we already have Adoration and Benediction every Sunday. When I brought the suggestion to the Prior's Council (composed of the senior members of the Monastery), it was pointed out that the Church's liturgy, particularly the Eucharist and Divine Office, take precedence over devotions, including Adoration.

The solution was to invite the Oblates to imitate the monastic observance which is to sing Vespers on Sunday in the presence of the exposed Blessed Sacrament, then to participate in the 20-30 minutes of Adoration that we have in silence afterward.

We are apt to forget that Christ's redemption of us is not individual but is communal. As Peter says in his First Epistle, "Once you were no people, but now you are God's people." "The People of God" is a common name for the Church since Vatican II and indeed the name favored by Pope John Paul II. This does not mean that individuals within the People of God can neglect their personal relationships with Jesus Christ. Far from it. But far more important is our unity as the saved members of the Body of Christ. So Adoration is a great good, but singing God's praises together must be the goal toward which our personal meditation tends. Similarly, while thanking Christ personally must happen at the Eucharist (we encourage brothers to spend a good length of time after Mass in meditation), we image forth the contours of our redeemed life better by a show of unity which traditionally has best been done by singing in unison. We receive the Word of God under the form of bread, and we give back the Word of God in the form of the antiphon. By receiving the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ, and as such speak with one voice the praises, not with the thoughts of our own minds, but with the thoughts of God infused with the One Holy Spirit.

I will admit that this is counter-intuitive, but it is clearly the will of our Mother the Catholic Church, and we do well to put our own preferences aside when She has something to teach us.

The Order of Consecrated Virgins

I had the opportunity to attend part of a meeting of the US Association of Consecrated Virgins today. I was there because I am currently involved in the preparation of a candidate for this renewed charism. As it happens, I was the only such attendee, and this gave me the opportunity to have a private visit with Archbishop Burke of St. Louis.

The more I learn about the consecration and its significance for the Church, the more I am quite intrigued and eager to learn more. These are women who have never been married, who live in the world and who present themselves to be consecrated as icons of the Church as Bride of Christ. The charism was common in the early Church. Indeed, some of my favorite feast days celebrate the most glorious of these Virgins: Agatha, Agnes, Lucy, & Cecilia, all martyrs.

Unfortunately, one thing emphasized by Archbishop Burke in our meeting is the lack of good literature on the topic. Interestingly, the Benedictines have been instrumental in the revival of this Rite, and I may have the opportunity to do some reading up when I visit St. John's Abbey and St. Benedict's Abbey in Minnesota next month.

In the meantime, I invite any interested readers to pass along any questions you might have. The Holy Spirit is certainly at work here in a quiet way.

Stoicism and Monasticism: So What?

I had a terrific Psalms teacher who would go through all the scholarship having to do with the Sitz im leben of each Psalm, its language, form, etc, and having finished this, leaving the class silent, would ask, "Well, so what?"

The question has occurred to me in the past week or so as I've been pondering over the interesting confluence of ideas between Stoicism and Monasticism. Will it tell us anything about monasticism to know that it shares ideas with some other way of life?

I would suggest that it may: first of all, my contention is that most monastic writers today emphasize rather the Neo-Platonist background of monastic thought. The emphasis would then be on mysticism, and contemplation. I would venture an educated guess that the Neo-Platonism in scholastic writers such as Evagrius and Cassian would be attractive to modern readers because it would tend to focus more on the individual's relationship with God and the ascent of the soul to union with God.

Contrasted with this would be a greater emphasis in Stoic thought on morality, behavior and community. Most people, even those who don't know much about philosophty, know that Stoicism concerns itself with self-mastery. For obvious reasons, this aspect of monasticism has always been problematic, and indeed the reason that Blessed Cassian is not technically St. Cassian in the Western Church is because he was suspected of being semi-Pelagian (a charge not much belived any more) who thought that the monk could perfect himself.

In any case, highlighting the Stoic elements in monastic thought seems to me to be a way to challenge possible blind spots in our understanding of early monasticism and hence what the renewal called for by Vatican II should be about. Should it be about recovering the mysticism and contemplative aspect of monasticism? Beyond doubt. But perhaps there is more: perhaps the Stoic concepts are liable to be overlooked precisely because they are not congenial to present prejudice. In any case, I hope that the readers will find these observations invigorating.

The Book of Consolation: Isaiah 40

"Comfort ye! comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!"

If you are like I am, you are now singing the astoundingly beautiful tenor aria by Handel that begins his sublime "Messiah." Not to take anything away from the masterpiece of a musical titan, but a great deal of the magic in the music stems from the even greater genius of 'Deutero-Isaiah', the anonymous prophet writing at the end of the sixth-century BC to a broken and desparate people of Judah. If you want an idea of the hopelessness of the situation, take an hour and read Ezra and Nehemiah (if you don't have an hour, look at Ezra 3:8-13 and Nehemiah 1:1--2:20). I regard the restoration of the Jews to the land of Judah during the reign of King Cyrus to be one of the truly astounding historical facts of all time. Virtually all other captive peoples in the ancient world simply assimilated to their conquerors' cultures and gave up on their own gods.

No small amount of credit must be given to "Isaiah," as we tend to call the man who wrote the prophecies in Isaiah 40-55. His prophecies were added to the book of Isaiah at some unknown point for reasons unclear to modern scholars. But in any case, he boldly proclaimed what surely must have seemed like a pipe dream to the Jews of his time: that God's punishment of the people for their apostasy was at an end and that they remained the chosen people, in spite of all evidence.

Today, we face a different situation, but one that certainly has its share of bleakness and temptation to despair. The Church in the United States and Europe is not the fortress it once was. Yet it remains the Church, the Mystical Body of the invincible Jesus Christ. Do we share the irrepressible optimism of Isaiah (who lacked the benefit of knowing Christ)? Or do we fret and worry that maybe God has abandoned us for this or that reason (liturgical abuse, for example)?

Civility Strikes Back!

I don't want to leave my 'thugs' posts as they stand and give the impression that the war is lost, even if some battles are over...
Two notes regarding the warm homeliness that still exists in Bridgeport and would be wonderful to recapture:
1) About a week ago one of our postulants asked for money to get a haircut and I red-facedly had to admit that I had dispensed all of it and that the bank was closed on Wednesday: could ghe wait until tomorrow? He responded with disbelief at the idea that a bank would not be open for business on Wednesday. I replied that this is an old local bank with its own customs. A year ago they took a poll of customers to find out what they might do differently to serve us better and one option was to open on Wednesdays. I responded that they should in no way do this: there is something enjoyably humane about businesses that still take days off. We can go a day without the bank! Which leads me to...
2) During the heat wave of a couple weeks ago (as distinguished from our present one), Lina's Pizzaria was closed because the kitchen was too hot! Bravissimo! At other times, Lina's and some other local establishments (Grazziano's is the one I can recall) close because the family takes a vacation! Another congratulatory mention should go to Polo's Cafe, the flagship restaurant of our neighborhood, that only opens on certain days if you call ahead and ask!

Anyway, I love the hours of all these places. They indicate that they are staffed by real people with real lives that include leisure. The city is putting a lot of pressure on the old guard establishments right now. They would like to 'update' our neighborhood and make it Lincoln Park south (nothing wrong with Lincoln Park, another favorite neighborhood of mine, but do we need two?), and this means getting yuppie places instead of Healthy Food, Three Happiness, and Punchinello's. This would probably run the thugs out of the neighborhood, but we would lose the old charm, too. What do you think about this dilemma?

RB 51: Brothers who are travelling not far

"A brother who is sent to do any business whatever and hopes to return to the monastery that same day, shall not presume to have a meal while out even if entreated by anyone whatever to do so, unless perhaps his abbot tells him. Should he do otherwise, let him be excommunicated."

At first blush, this chapter seems unecessarily harsh. Those of us who treasure St. Benedict as a compassionate and gentle father might be uneasy with the fact that he does not borrow this chapter from the Master, to whose vision of monastic life it seems to relate more closely.

On the other hand, we have seen in other places in the Rule that St. Benedict is strictest when it comes to issues having to do with individualism versus community. Any striking out on one's own is to be viewed as potentially damaging to the whole community project. We also should realize that in Benedict's day (as was the case until only recently in our own culture), meals were especially important community-defining events. Looking over the gospels and the letters of St. Paul, we can see that who eats with whom is no trivial matter. To decide to eat not with my brothers in the Domus Dei, the House of God, is to prefer to be in other company, presumably not that ordained for us by God.

We, I suspect, are not picky enough about the symbolism in our own dining habits. One way in which the state and corporate interests have subjected many of us to their power is by encouraging us to eat at McDonald's willy-nilly with whomever happens to be around; or to snack individually throughout the day (another bad sign according to St. Benedict). The lack of discipline in eating leaves us prone before our appetites and easily manipulated by those who provide our food. Why would we not prefer to make a statement and choose our company wisely?

Happy August!

I managed to complete my Latin course on Friday. It was a terrific experience, though it left little time for the Prior's blog. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I hope to explore some links between the ethics of the ancient Stoics and the monastic ethos in the West, beginning with Evagrius and Cassian, immediate forerunners of St. Benedict. Interspersed with this, I will make some comments on the Rule, and also give over some insights that come of my present lectio on 'Second Isaiah', that is, Isaiah 40-55.

For today, let me simply note this correspondence:
"The demon of acedia--also called the noonday demon--is the one that causes the most serious trouble [to the monk] of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the monk until the eighth hour [i.e. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.]. First of all he makes it seem that the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. Then he constrains the monk to look constantly out the windows, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour [i.e. dinner time], to loko now this way and now that to see if perhaps...[someone might visit?]
--Evagrius Ponticus, "Praktikos" chapter 12, tr. by John Eudes Bamberger, OSCO

"There is no reason to suppose that this too is evidence of people living a long time, that the day seems long to them, or that until the time appointed for supper, they lament that the hours drag on slowly; for when occupations fail them, these, abandoned in leisure, itch for something to do, nor do they seek for a way to arrange this downtime or extend it."
--Seneca "On the Brevity of Life" chapter 16, my (loose but more or less accurate!) translation

Four or five years ago, the religion writer for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Kloehn (whose columns I truly miss) observed that one of the overwhelming vices of modern Americans is actually sloth, despite our appearance of being on the go. His reasoning was that our penchant for being busybodies leaves no leisure time for the things of God and the cultivation of virtue. With regard to the things that really count, I believe that Seneca and Evagrius would concur that we Americans truly are slothful.

I am pleased to be posting again, and I very much appreciate the comments I've been receving. Hopefully, I will be more regular in my posts and we can work through some thoughts together and encourage each other in our pursuit of holy lives. I wish you peace in Jesus Christ!