Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.[2]
How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God![3]
Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of
God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of God.[4]
Peter began to say to him, “Behold, we have left
everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, there is no one who has left
house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my
sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time …
and in the age to come eternal life.[5]
It is not just the modern day “prosperity gospel” preachers
that find ways around this important teaching. They like to go into their thirty,
sixty, one-hundred-fold increase line just before insisting that the best
way to get “your” increase is to support “their” ministry with a generous
donation. A lot of people skirt their way around it. Many dismiss it as … that
was for those early followers but it no longer applies to us now. Jesus surely
would not tell us to do that in this day and age with all that we have going
on.
A few have read or heard those words of Jesus, taken them to heart,
lived them to the fullest, and made significant enduring impacts on the Church
and the world outside its walls.
Others, a much larger body, have entered into monastic
lives, both in monasteries and as hermits in solitude, to live entirely for the
love of God with one eye on reparation for their sins and the other eye on the
eternal rewards of heaven. These too, though mostly unseen and forever
anonymous except to God, the angels, and the Saints, also made a significant enduring
contribution to the Church and to the world through the continual lifting up of
the praises and prayers of the Opus Dei.
Saint John Climacus tells us that no one will enter the
heavenly bridechamber wearing a crown unless he makes the first, second and
third renunciation. I mean the renunciation of all business, and people, and
parents; the cutting out of one’s will; and the third renunciation, of the
conceit that dogs obedience.[6]
We are not called to stop caring. We are not being told to
replace compassion with apathy so that the trials and injuries of others have
no effect on us. Nor are we called to accept, without feelings, the trials and
injuries that are part of our own life of experiences.
We do, however, discover a calling to a pathway that takes
us to a place of dispassion in our lives where we are no longer
controlled by our passions. Dispassion is the ability to harness our human
emotions so that our emotions no longer rule us. Dispassion allows us to hold
the things of the world at arm’s length and use them without becoming
inordinately affectioned toward them. We make our emotions subjective in order
to realize, enter into, and experience some degree of personal union with God,
if but for a moment. These moments, some refer to them as ecstasies, elude our
ability to describe them.
Westerners make reference to the state or condition of contemplation.
Thomas Merton, Thomas Keating, and Basil Pennington[7]
[Trappist Monks] were instrumental during the latter half of the past century
in awakening and reintroducing something that had been lost and covered over by
a millennium of the dust of time since the Great Schism of 1054. Catholicism
rejected hesychasm [as it is known in the Eastern Church], which
encouraged individual experiences of the divine. As a result, hesychasm disappeared
from Western culture but survived because the Orthodox church embraced and
preserved this tradition of quiet meditation that dates back to the beginnings
of the Christian Church.
Saint Benedict [A.D. 480-547], often referred to as the
Father of Monasticism in the West, would have necessarily been familiar with
the Eastern and Desert models of monasticism. Abbot Benedict, in drawing up his
little rule for beginners[8],
was well versed in the rules that preceded his.[9]
The Rule of Saint Basil was written for a monastery that he founded in 356
[over a hundred years before the birth of Benedict] in Cappadocia [Turkey]. The
Conferences and Institutes of Saint John Cassian [A.D 360-435]
were also included in Benedict’s recommended reading list for his students.
Benedict was also familiar with the Regula Magistri [or Rule
of the Master] made up of its 95 chapters and apparently used it as a guide in
writing his rule. Benedict’s rule appears to be a succinct rewrite of the
Regula Magistri. Benedict restricts his rule to 73 short chapters as a
base. Though there is an emphasis on moderation, a life of moderation for the students in his monastery would not have been a major departure
from the lives of those Eastern and Desert role models and monastic traditions that
Benedict looked to as examples.
Saint John Climacus compliments the teachings of Saint
Benedict and fills in a lot of the blanks that are left open in his rule. The 3rd
Step on his Ladder of Divine Ascent is about exile and living as a stranger.
Exile means that we leave forever everything in our own
country that prevents us from reaching the goal of the religious life. Exile
means modest manners, wisdom which remains unknown, prudence not recognized as
such by most, a hidden life, an invisible intention, unseen meditation, desire
for humiliation, longing for hardship, constant determination to love God,
abundance of charity, renunciation of vainglory, depth of silence.[10]
What we modernites see as strictness[11]
in this way of life should, of urgent necessity in our modern times, be seen as
love of good spiritual fathers and directors caring for and directing the souls
of their children to heaven. Are we not, after all, but strangers and
sojourners passing through this temporal place where we have no enduring city[12]
on our way to either heaven and total union with God or eternal damnation in
hell with its eternal punishment? Are we not, after all, directed to the difficult
work of working out our salvation with fear and trembling?[13]
Most people will largely reject this way of life saying that
it is just too hard of a way to go. Understandably so. It is an especially hard
way to go when we begin to see that everything about monasticism is contrary to
everything the world teaches. It is especially hard considering that the lust
of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life[14]
are powerful agents with their roots deep in the human ego.
[1]
Mark 10:17-31
[2]
Vs. 21
[3]
Vs. 23
[4]
Vs. 24-25
[5]
Vs. 28-30
[6]
Ladder, Step 2, paragraph 9
[7]
These writers had a significant influence on me during those early years of my
journey from Protestantism to Catholicism. [2001-2007]
[8]
Holy Rule 73:8
[9] Holy
Rule 73:5
[10]
Ladder, Step 3, paragraph 1
[11]
Holy Rule, Prologue 45-50
[12]
Hebrews 13:14
[13]
Philippians 2:12
[14] 1
John 2:16
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