Orthodox Monasticism

Although not considered as one of the Mysteria (Sacraments) of the Orthodox Church, because it is not essential to being an Orthodox Christian, monasticism plays an important role in Christian history and is highly valued by the Orthodox Church.

The monastic calling is considered to be a personal gift from God, which is for the salvation of the monk or nun and a service to the Church (or Body of Christ). The monastic vocation is the calling to personal repentance in a life dedicated solely to God. The ultimate Christian virtue of love is sought by the monk or nun primarily through prayer and fasting, and through the exercise of the Christian virtues of poverty, chastity, humility and obedience.

The monastic Christian does not normally exercise any particular ministry in the Church such as that of priest, pastor, teacher, nurse or social worker. The monk is normally a layman and not a cleric, with each monastery having only enough clergy to care for the liturgical and sacramental needs of the community itself.

In Orthodox Christian history many missionaries, teachers and bishops have come from men with monastic vocations. For centuries the bishops have been traditionally selected from among the monks. These additional callings, however, are considered to be acts of God’s will expressed in his people, and are not the purpose or intention of the monastic vocation as such. Indeed, one must enter a monastery only in order to repent of his sins, to serve God and to save his soul according to the ideals of monastic ascetism. The ceremony of monastic profession indicates this very clearly.

The monastic hierarchy

The Orthodox monastic tradition has four hierarchical levels that apply equally to men and to women. The first level is that of a novice. At this level the candidate for monastic profession simply lives in the monastery under the direction of and is obedient to a spiritual father or mother.

The second level is that of riasa-bearer, which means that the person is formally accepted into the community, and is given the right to wear the monastic robe, called the riasa. At this level the candidate is not yet fully committed to the monastic life.

The third level is that of the small schema which means that the person is a professed monastic. He or she now receives a new name and wears the monastic schema (a cloth with the sign of the cross), the veil and the mantle (mantia). At this stage the person pledges to remain in the monastic community in perpetual obedience to their Spiritual Father and to the head of the monastery, called the abbot or abbess (igoumenos or igoumenia). The service of profession, in addition to the hymns and prayers, includes a long series of formal questioning about the authenticity of the calling, the cutting of the hair (tonsuring), and the vesting in the full monastic clothing.

The final level of is the great schema. This level is reserved for very few, since it is the expression of the most strict observance of the monastic ideals, demanding normally a state of life in total seclusion in perpetual prayer and contemplation. With this final profession a new name is again received, and a new monastic insignia, the great schema, is worn.

In the Orthodox Church there is no prescribed length of time that a person must remain in one or another of the monastic levels. This is so because of the radically personal character of the vocation. Thus, some persons may progress rapidly to profession, while others may take years, and still others may never be formally professed while still remaining within the monastic community. The decision in these matters is made individually in each case by the spiritual director and the head of the community.

Types of monasticism

Although the Orthodox Church does not have religious orders as does the Church in Rome, there are in Orthodoxy different styles of monastic life, both individually and in community. Generally speaking some monasteries may be more liturgically oriented, while others may be more ascetic, while still others may have a certain mystical tradition, and others be more inclined to spiritual guidance and openness to the world for the purpose of care and counseling. These various styles of monasticism, which take both a personal as well as a corporate form, are not formally predetermined or officially legislated. They are the result of organic development under the living grace of God.

In addition to the various spiritual styles of monastic life, three formal types of organization may be mentioned. The first is that of coenobitic monasticism where all members of the community do all things in common. The second is called idiorhythmic in which the monks or nuns pray together liturgically, but work and eat individually or in small groups. In this type of monasticism the persons may even psalmodize and do the offices separately, coming together only for the eucharistic liturgy, and even then, perhaps, only on certain occasions. Finally, there is the eremitic type of monasticism where the individual monks or nuns are actually hermits, also called anchorites or recluses. They live in total individual seclusion and rarely join in the liturgical prayer of the community. In the rarest of cases it may even happen that the holy eucharist is brought to the monk or nun who remains perpetually alone.

 

Why “Neo-Monasticism”?

From Arlen…

There may be many answers, but here I just want to float the following for consideration:

perhaps because our society needs to see and alternative way of life….

perhaps because our churches need to see an alternative way of life….

perhaps because the pursuit of wealth, social status and pleasure which are the current social    values, need to be counter balanced…

From Dietrich Bonhoeffer…

 

…the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old, but a complete lack of compromise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Extract from a letter to his brother Karl-Friedrick
January 14, 1935

Monastic Vows…

 

Simplicity—a frugal and focused life. We strive to be a community that is unencumbered by excessive possessions and filled with passion and purpose to seek first God’s kingdom. We’ll seek to align all our resources whether time, personnel, money, or energy around one dominant theme: God. (Matthew 6:33)

Community—a shared and stable life. We strive to be a community that rejects “rugged individualism” and pursues instead radical interdependence. We’ll make and keep long term commitments to each other without constant uprooting to so-called greener pastures. (Philippians 2:2-4)

Worship—a God-centered life. We strive to be a community that vigorously pursues intimacy with God. We’ll lay our lives down as a daily, living sacrifice of praise, magnifying God’s purposes and promoting his fame. (John 4:23)

Study—a transformed life. We strive to be a community that is immersed in and renewed by the vigorous study and application of Scripture to the culture that bombards it. We’ll reflect and think deeply for ourselves and refusing to be spoon-fed the pablum of media and advertising. (1 Timothy 2:15)

Work—a productive and creative life. We strive to be a community that does its share. A community that co-creates with God. We see value and meaning in all forms of work, whether manual or mental. We view work as an end in itself, something to be enjoyed, as part of our spiritual formation, and not just a means to an end. (Acts 20:34)

Service—a generous life. “Freely you have received, now freely give.” In a world that idolizes power, individualism, and pride, we’ll show Christ’s way of serving through practical acts of love. (Mark 10:45)

Hospitality—a welcoming life. We strive to be a community that recognizes the face of Christ in friends and strangers. We want room in our heart, schedule, and residence for guests—both invited and uninvited. (Matthew 25:35)

Justice—a socially active life. We strive to be a community that breaks the chains of oppression and injustice. In world full of injustice, we’ll work at a local, grassroots level for visible social change and be a voice for justice among the world’s oppressed. (Luke 4:18, 19)

Sabbath—a renewed life. We strive to be a community that takes time to stop doing and just be. We’ll embrace solitude and personal renewal, valuing time away to re-charge and re-align as Christ did. (Mark 1:35)

Celebration—a joy-filled life. We strive to be a community that knows how to party. We’ll take time to rejoice together and celebrate occasions both big and small. Whether a special accomplishment was earned by a child in the community, a holiday is being recognized, or just sharing a simple meal—we’ll celebrate and enter into the joy of God’s kingdom. (Philippians 4:4)

 

The Divine Office, Breviary, Liturgy of hours

Have you tried praying the Liturgy of Hours…? It is quote an undertaking as I have found.

All three names refer to the same reality, the official prayer of the Church offered at various times of the day in order to sanctify it. Clergy and religious have a canonical obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours as official representatives of the Church. Increasingly, the laity are also praying it, though they do not do so in the name of the Church.

Liturgy of the Hours - From liturgia horarium (L) and the Greek litourgia, a service performed by an official.

Divine Office - From officium divina ( L.), a divine service or duty.

Breviary - From breviarium (L.), a compendium (of the canonical hours). 

The Divine Office is also called the Opus dei (Work of God).

History

The Divine Office owes its remote origin to the inspiration of the Old Covenant. God commanded the Aaronic priests (c.1280 BC) to offer a morning and evening sacrifice (Ex. 29:38-29). During the Babylonian Exile (587-521 BC), when the Temple did not exist, the synagogue services of Torah readings and psalms and hymns developed as a substitute for the bloody sacrifices of the Temple, a sacrifice of praise. The inspiration to do this may have been fulfillment of David’s words, “Seven times a day I praise you” (Ps. 119:164), as well as, “the just man mediates on the law day and night” (Ps. 1:2).

After the people returned to Judea, and the Temple was re-built, the prayer services developed in Babylon for the local assemblies (synagogues) of the people were brought into Temple use, as well. We know that in addition to Morning and Evening Prayer to accompany the sacrifices, there was prayer at the Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours of the day. The Acts of the Apostles notes that Christians continued to pray at these hours (Third: Acts 2:15; Sixth: Acts 10:9; 10: 3, 13). And, although the Apostles no longer shared in the Temple sacrifices—they had its fulfillment in the “breaking of the bread” (the Eucharist)—they continued to frequent the Temple at the customary hours of prayer (Acts 3:1).

Monastic and eremitical (hermit) practice as it developed in the early Church recognized in the Psalms the perfect form of prayer and did not try to improve upon it. The practices were quite individual from monastery to monastery. At first some tried to do the entire Psalter (150 Psalms) each day, but eventually that was abandoned for a weekly cycle built around certain hours of the day. Among the earliest Psalter cycles of which we have a record is the division given by St. Benedict in his Rule ch. 8-19 (c.550), with canonical hours of Lauds (Morning Prayer) offered at sunrise, Prime (1st hour of the day), Terce (3rd hour, or Mid-morning), Sext (6th hour or Midday), None (9th hour or Mid-Afternoon), Vespers (Evening Prayer) offered at sunset,  and Compline (Night Prayer) before going to bed. In addition, the monks arose to read and pray during the Night. This Office of Matins (Readings) likewise had its divisions, into nocturnes, corresponding to the beginning of each of the “watches of the night” (Ps. 63:6), that is, 9 pm, midnight and 3 am. With the reforms of the Second Vatican Council the traditional one-week Psalter cycle became a four-week cycle.

Although the Divine Office has gone through various forms, and reforms, including that of Vatican II, its basic structure, combining Psalms, prayers, canticles and readings, has been relatively constant since the 11th century. Originally the practice of monks, it was also used by the canons of cathedrals and other great churches. The Roman Breviary, perhaps as old or even older than the Benedictine, was originally the Office of the canons of St. Peters and the other Roman Basilicas. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) extended its use to the Roman Court (curia). When the Franciscan Order was  looking for a convenient one volume Office for its much-traveled friars to use, it adopted this Breviarium Curiae, but  substituting the Gallican (French) Psalter for the Roman. This modified Roman Breviary was then spread throughout Europe by the Franciscans. Pope Nicholas III (c.1270) would then adopt this popularized Franciscan version of the Breviary as the Breviary of Rome itself.

After the Council Trent, and its reforms, the Roman Breviary became the Office of the entire Latin Church. It should be noted that religious orders have a right to their own version, though many simply use the Roman Office.

 

A very modern pilgrimage?

I have organised as ‘Pilgrimage’ to Worth Abbey for a small group from my church…

but what is a pilgrimage today in a world where nothing is sacred anymore?

For us it is simply so time to make a trip to a specific place, to come together and be as one with God and the Body of Christ.

 

Worth Abbey is a Catholic Benedictine monastery and we are a protestant evangelical church with a difference…we follow the church calendar and celebrate not only Christmas and Easter, but Lent, Epiphany, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday, Christmas Eve…our year revolves around the liturgical calendar.

So our day at Worth is set out as follows:

9.00am Meet at our Church Centre where we will have a simple breakfast followed by prayers for the day ahead.

11.00am Refreshments when we arrive and a look around.

12.00 midday A talk by Father Broderick

1.00pm Principal prayers

2.00pm Lunch

2.30 - 4.00 Contemplation time.

It should be a great day…

 

A brief history of monasticsim

From The Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Early History of Monasticism
The term “monasticism” (monachos, a solitary person) describes a way of life chosen by religious men or women who retreat from society for the pursuit of spiritual salvation. The earliest form of monasticism appeared in the late third to early fourth century in regions around the eastern Mediterranean. Men and women like Antony (died 356)—whose biography provided a model for future monks—withdrew into the Egyptian desert, depriving themselves of food and water as part of their effort to withstand the devil’s temptations. Along the Nile River, in the shadow of the great pyramids, Pachomius (died 312/13) and others established communal structures for ascetics that offered a daily regimen of work and prayer (29.9.2a-v; 10.176.37). Though the earliest monasteries were built to promote isolation, Christian intellectuals sought very early on to bring desert monasticism to the city.

 

Byzantine Monasticism
Monasticism was integral to Byzantine life. From the fourth century, after the founding of the first monastic institution in Constantinople, Dalmatou, monasteries proliferated throughout town and country. By the early sixth century, there were over seventy monasteries in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. Monks and nuns came to play critical roles in the doctrinal debates at the center of imperial politics.

One of the most important early monasteries was built on the site of the Burning Bush at the foot of Mount Sinai. Recognizing the religious and military significance of this locus sanctus, Justinian I, between 548 and 565, constructed a heavily fortified monastery around the shrine to protect the monks. In the tenth or eleventh century, the monastery took the name of Saint Catherine after acquiring the martyr’s relics, which the saint’s vita described as having been carried to the mountain by angels. This scene is depicted in The Belles Heures (54.1.1).

Though monasteries were landowners from their inception, in the tenth century they began to acquire substantial gifts of cash, precious liturgical objects, land, and livestock. Monasteries, in turn, provided a haven from the world for pious men and women, as well as for social outcasts in need of assistance. One of the major contributions of the monastic members was their achievement in scholarship, providing instrumental books about hymnography, hagiography, and theology. Monastic centers encouraged a fiercely intellectual environment, requiring literacy of brothers and sisters and creating major libraries. Today, the library at the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine still contains more than 3,000 manuscripts in a variety of languages. Monastic complexes were also patrons and sources of tremendous art and architecture, such as frescoes and wall paintings. The mosaic of the Transfiguration at Saint Catherine’s is a splendid example of the artistry encouraged in monastic centers.

Benedictine Monasticism
Monasticism spread quickly to western Europe. The Rule of Saint Benedict, compiled in the first half of the sixth century, laid the foundation for the form of monastic life most commonly practiced there. The rule—with its stress on moderation, obedience to the monastery’s leader (the abbot), and a prescribed program of prayer, work, and study—synthesized many of the teachings of the desert hermits and early Christian writers. By the ninth century, Benedictine monasticism had engendered a typical monastic plan that included a church with an adjacent cloister in the shape of a square courtyard (25.120.398,.399,.452). Around the cloister could generally be found the library, chapter house (35.50), dormitory, refectory, kitchen, cellar, infirmary, and other spaces essential to the daily monastic regimen. The Benedictine order enjoyed long periods of wealth and power. One of its most influential houses, at Cluny in Burgundy, built the great Abbey Church of Saints Peter and Paul, which was reputed to be the largest church in all of Christendom (1980.263.1).

Monastic Reforms in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
The founding of the Cistercian order in 1098 marked one of the most important monastic reforms in history. One of its champions, Bernard of Clairvaux, famously denounced the excesses of contemporary monasticism in a twelfth-century letter, criticizing the Church because it “clothes its stones in gold” but “leaves its children naked.” Though the Cistercian movement advocated a return to strict asceticism by reducing all forms of material life to the bare minimum, the manuscripts its monks produced did not necessarily scorn rich decoration (1999.364.2). The mendicant orders, such as the Franciscans (1994.516) and Dominicans (1982.175), brought about more reforms in the thirteenth century. Drawn to universities and large cities, Franciscan and Dominican friars lived and preached among the people, supporting themselves by working and begging for food (mendicare, to beg).

Women and Monasticism
From its earliest days, the monastic life drew scores of women. Monasteries not only offered women protection for themselves and their property, but also often nourished their intellectual growth and political power. The Benedictine nun Hildegard of Bingen, author, composer, physician, and consultant to popes and kings, is one among many female monastics who participated in the important cultural and political events of her day. Like their male counterparts, abbesses and nuns were patrons and producers of art (29.87). Their monasteries also housed great libraries and contributed to the production of illuminated manuscripts.

 

25 years of New Monasticism By Anthony Grimley

New Monasticism is becoming the new word on the lips of many Christians during the beginnings of the 21st century.

The term in itself can have a variety of expressions within the monastic tradition; the great monastic reforms of the eleventh and twelve centuries, in particularly the formation of the Carthusians and Cistercians, have often been referred to as the age of a new monasticism, Dom John Main, the founder of an experimental monastic community of lay people and monks in Montreal, Quebec, referred to his foundation as a kind of new monasticism.

In a sense the term opens its self up to usage in relation to any new development within the monastic tradition. For the Christian of the 21stcentury the term New Monasticism primarily finds is source within a letter written in 1935 by the late great German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his brother Karl-Friedrich. The letter was calling for a counter-cultural movement against the Third Reich which was becoming increasingly more influential within the German Church, and is included here in part: The restoration of the Church will surely come from a kind of new monasticism, which has in common with the old kind only the uncompromising nature of life according to the Sermon on the Mount, following Christ.

I think that it is about time go gather the people for this…. Bonhoeffer wrote this letter during the compilation of his book, ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ On reflection of this book, Eberhard Bethge stated, Bonhoeffer was calling for a church that needed to take a stand, no longer being fought with words, but with ‘Renewal and a transformed lifestyle were necessary.’

What emerges from Bonheoffer’s statement is something of a contradiction, Augustine summed up the monastic life in the early medieval period as, regarding the monk as the embodiment of the ‘sermon on the mount’ and that their service and prayer was the greatest service to the church. I am not assuming here that Bonhoeffer read Augustine’s, De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholica, but that in equating Bonheoffer’s new monasticism with the ‘sermon on the mount’ what is left to leave behind of the old? The discussion here though is not so much concerned with Bonhoeffer, but with our modern day use of his term. Bonhoeffer’s writings have had a profound effect on many peoples life’s and in particular the development of community living. The late Very Rev. George Macleod, (founder of the Iona community) was influenced by Bonhoeffer’s ethos and writings during the foundational period of the Iona community. In 1980 the then to be Rev. John Skinner, who was training to become an Anglican priest at Lincoln, came across Bonhoeffer’s passage, and, described his response to it as, ‘receiving an epiphany for living’. Rev. John Skinner, was one of the first to associate Bonhoeffer’s term ‘new monasticism’ firstly, in the application of monastic themes within the life of the non- monastic, and

Secondly in the development of community life, amongst the laity or secular, after many years reading monastic history and spirituality, cultural studies and through participation within traditional monastic institutes, What Rev. Skinner began to express through his journals and writings was that if the Church was to survive its journey into the new emerging cultural shift, from modernity to post-modernity, people needed to find a new way of living as a Christian within their Church life, in order to cope amidst the new cultural and social-political world-views that were taking shape. For Rev. Skinner this new way was through a new monasticism, but his new monasticism was entwined within old monasticism, in the sense that it needed to respect for and consultation with traditional monasticism, in order for it to have any longstanding effect. Rev. Skinner writes, ‘ the effect of new paradigms on human psychology and community, and the importance of monastic themes of prayer, meditation, work, study and the common life in negotiating periods of change and upheaval within the human psyche and society, is paramount for the survival of the church as she moves forward. Twenty five years on, the Christian community at large are waking up to the fact that we are now living in a cultural new age, sociologists call post modernity.

This is illustrated in a large amount of books now being published concerning post modernity with the word Christian nestled in the title. An affect of a slow awakening is the fact that the effects of post modernity have already began to take shape in the environment around and in the lives of the individual. The consequence is not so much of this occurrence, but in the fact that people may be unaware of these changes within society and their life’s, a result being, that as individuals and church seek to change amidst the new developments, the change is in danger of becoming a symptom of, rather that a reaction to, post-modernity.

What seems evident through recent publications from new monastic communities and groups is that we are being presented with series of alternatives, self awareness courses, spiritual pursuits, community based belonging and the most alarming, an alternative to Church. Whist you could argue that some of these new alternatives can only be a good, especially in our ever stressful and busy environment, there is a danger that new monasticism is being developed into a leisure activity and a facility for people to use in their despondency with Church, quest for spirituality and need for belonging and security, amidst the chaotic and insecure lifestyles that are being lived. These feelings are in a sense expected within a society that is driven by secularism and materialism, amongst other ‘ism’s’, but the coping mechanism are being produced in order to keep the society working. An effect that a pick and mix society is having on new monasticism is a manipulation of traditional monastic values and spirituality in order to clean, refresh and re-package monasticism to make it easier to live with and more socially acceptable. This is not a call for monastic preservation or an obstacle for change, but is a sad case that the symptoms of post-modernity are impacting the development of new monasticism, shaping monastic spirituality to suit our life’s rather than allowing monastic values to change our own life.

The early monks who fled the cities and towns in the Near-East to inhabit the nearby deserts, did so not to set up new churches, but to explore a new way of living a Christian life amidst the social and economic changes that were apparent in Roman society during the third and fourth centuries AD. Contrary to some popular belief, the monasticism that emerged from the deserts of the near-East was fully committed to the Church from which it came, and what emerged was a mutual relationship between the two, both respecting and supporting each other.

In the same way, we as Christians are faced with similar changes in the 21stCentury, with the growth of secularisation and other social trends that are emerging out of a post-modern world view. It is to this backdrop that inspiration given from monasticism can help reorganise and reconstruct how to live a Christian life and in consequence help equip the church as a whole as She moves into a new phase of life. But this cannot be fully achieved unless we stand in the middle of this cultural storm together as an individual and church supporting each other. It is within this context that the genius of Rev. Skinner’s new monasticism can be realised.

 

New Monasticism - what has it to say to todays church?

New Monasticism
What It Has to Say to Today’s Church

“It’s hard to be a Christian in America,” writes Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a leader in the New Monasticism movement in America, a growing group of committed Christians who are living lives of radical discipleship. However, the movement doesn’t mirror traditional monasteries — many members are married with children and have careers, yet they live differently, often in community in once-abandoned sections of society.
Wilson-Hartgrove founded a New Monastic community and works with an alternative theological collaborative. In this book, he takes readers inside New Monasticism, tracing its roots throughout Scripture and history and illuminating its impact on the contemporary church. He identifies the key tenets of New Monasticism, including:

How monasticism is the oldest form of counter-culture in the West

God’s alternative economy and financial practices for church

Hospitality and active peacemaking

A model for grassroots ecumenism

What the church offers New Monasticism: stability, diversity, and structure

“Monasticism isn’t about achieving some sort of individual or communal piety. It’s about helping the church be the church,” Wilson-Hartgrove writes. A must-read for New Monastics or those considering joining the movement, this book will also appeal to 20- and 30-somethings, pastors, leaders, and those interested in the emerging church. Paperback, 160 pages

 

A rough guide to monastic orders

The Augstinian Order

The Augustinian order (also known as Austin Canons, or Black Canons) came to England and established themselves at St. Botolph’s Priory at Colchester, c. 1106. They spread rapidly, reaching Scotland by 1120. At their height, the Augustinians had over 200 houses in England and Wales.

Each of the houses was governed by a prelate, usually a prior, but sometimes, an abbot. The monastic “rule” followed by the Augustinians was that of St. Augustine of Hippo and was not particularly austere. Each of the Austin Canons was a priest and as such was not bound to his house, but was free to have outside responsibilities, such as to a parish. The Black Canons also ran schools, hospitals and almshouses.

Some well known Augustinian houses are Holyrood, St. Andrews, Jedburgh, Lacock, St. Botolph’s, Leeds (Kent), Llanthony, Walsingham and Barnwell. Their habit consisted of a hooded black cloak over top of a black cassock. The Augustinian Friars are another, separate order.

 

In the years since the Second Vatican Council, the various traditions of Christian faith have participated in an ecumenical gift exchange for their mutual enrichment. Catholics have embraced Protestant strong points like singing the faith and closer familiarity with the Word of God. Protestants have increased their celebrations of the Eucharist and rediscovered helpful practices like spiritual direction.

An article entitled “The Unexpected Monks” in the Feb. 3 issue of the Boston Globe is only the latest indication of the ecumenical gift exchange. The article reflects on the rise of the New Monastics — “some 100 groups that describe themselves as both evangelical and monastic have sprung up in North America” — who come from a variety of Protestant traditions. They share a common dissatisfaction with what they see as the over-commercialized and socially apathetic culture of mainstream evangelicalism, especially in its “prosperity gospel” expression.

Both Luther and Calvin removed monasticism from the range of legitimate forms of Christian living. True Christians, said the 16th century reformers, were to be engaged with the world, not spending their time chanting in Latin. But today increasing numbers of evangelical congregations have created relationships with Catholic monasteries and join the monks for spiritual retreats.

They are discovering prayer and study as ways of engaging with and for the world, but they are not stopping there. The new monasticism that is evolving does not aim to separate itself from society, is environmentally conscious and cares about social justice. Nearly all the New Monastics have regular jobs and social lives, and many of them are married.

They see their simple living, grounded in prayer and service, as a way to better integrate core Christian values into their lives as contemporary citizens. They seek, in the words of Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “a life of uncompromising adherence to the Sermon on the Mount in imitation of Christ.”

Last November I had the opportunity to visit the Monastery of Bose in northwestern Italy, founded in 1965 by Enzo Bianchi. Bose presents itself as “a monastic community of men and women belonging to different churches.”

In his book Monastic Life and the Ecumenical Dialogue, Bianchi shares three reasons why monastic life provides a particularly ecumenical terrain.

First, monasticism precedes the divisions in the church. It is a human phenomenon with its own anthropology (celibacy, community life or solitude, asceticism, the search for the absolute) even before it became a Christian phenomenon. It is for this reason that interreligious dialogue (such as the North American Monastic Buddhist-Catholic Dialogue) takes place in monasteries more than elsewhere. 

Further, within Christianity, as long as the churches remained united, monasticism remained single and undivided, with its Western expression recognizing the Eastern monasticism of the desert fathers as its source. Citing Psalm 87:7, every monk, Bianchi says, ought to see that “Within you (the undivided church) is my true home.”

Secondly, monasticism came into being as a radical commitment to follow Christ, and therefore as a pathway to holiness. When holiness is pursued in religious life, even in different churches, it is a unifying force. Holiness allows us to realize that confessional walls do not rise as high as heaven.

It was the French priest Abbé Paul Couturier — the same one who shaped what we now call the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity — who said that at a certain degree of holiness, confessional differences lose their force because holiness looks beyond the division of the churches.

If monastics truly respond to their vocation of inner unification, communion lived visibly and continually renewed reconciliation and mercy, says Bianchi, they will be servants of unity and ministers of ecclesial communion.

A third reason that makes monasticism a natural site for ecumenical dialogue is that it has always sought to be a life of conversion. As the dictum goes, “the church is always reforming itself,” but in the history of the church concrete expressions of reform have been few, and what reform there is tends to be put into effect slowly. In monastic life, on the other hand, every century has seen a reform in which there has been an effort to return to the sources and begin again, in a more profound obedience and faithfulness to the Gospel.

Because of the centrality of the word of God in monastic life — the office, lectio divina, Eucharist — and the resulting emphasis on reform, monasticism is capable of speaking the same language as the Reformed churches and of being their authentic dialogue partner. 

“We must confess, though,” says Bianchi, “that many monastic and religious communities simply do not investigate the ecumenical pathway toward reconciliation: they consider ecumenical activity optional, or they think of it as a specific charism granted ecumenical communities. As a result, they plan and organize their way of life, their diakonia and their mission in society among the churches without taking into consideration the other Christian traditions.”

(Fr. Ryan, CSP, directs the Paulist North American Office for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations in Washington, DC.)

 

Re-Monking the Church

A New monasticism

From Christian History & Biography:

Re-Monking the Church
Many Catholics and Protestants are looking back to Benedict for the community and spiritual intensity they can’t find in modern culture.
Chris Armstrong

January 1, 2007

Christians struggling for sanctity in a too-comfortable world should pay attention to this observation by Mark Noll: “For over a millennium, in the centuries between the reign of Constantine and the Protestant Reformation, almost everything in the church that approached the highest, noblest, and truest ideals of the gospel was done either by those who had chosen the monastic way or by those who had been inspired in their Christian life by the monks.” Can Western monasticism’s “father,” Benedict, still give us an antidote to cultural compromise?

At first blush, this might seem unlikely, at least in the Western church. Between 1978 and 2004—nearly the entire span of John Paul II’s pontificate—the number of men in monastic and religious orders (not including priests) decreased by 46% in Europe and 30% in the Americas, while the number of women decreased by 39% and 27%, respectively. Compare this to the trend in the global South: During the same period, men in monastic and religious orders increased by 48% in Africa and 39% in Asia, with women increasing on those two continents by 62% and 64%.

A number of the Catholic writers in the 2006 volume A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century frankly wonder if “monasticism as we know it” is, in God’s providential plan, destined for obsolescence in the West. Yet most suggest that new and powerful forms of the monastic impulse may even now be arising.

This is certainly the impression given by the 21st annual Monastic Institute, held in July 2006 at St. John’s Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota. There, Catholic Benedictines and members of established communities such as L’Arche and the Catholic Worker Movement joined with leaders of new Protestant communities with names like the Simple Way (Pennsylvania), Rutba House (North Carolina), and the Church of the Servant King (Oregon) to mine the riches of Benedict’s Rule. This strikingly diverse group—50% Catholic, 50% Protestant—discussed the topic of “new communities” with high hopes that, indeed, God is still in the monastic impulse.

The Lure of Tradition

Many signs buoy this hope. Even in the midst of declining numbers, Benedictine monasticism is still thriving on a wide spectrum from the modernized (seen at places like St. John’s) to the traditional. In 2000, American monks reestablished a Benedictine monastic community in Benedict’s Italian hometown of Nursia, now called Norcia. American Catholic monasticism has seen new life from an unexpected quarter: young men committing themselves to a very traditional form of Benedictine monasticism at the recently founded Clear Creek Monastery near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Clear Creek’s monks celebrate the Latin Mass, cultivate Gregorian chant, and practice not only the gospel demands of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but also the distinctly Benedictine gift of hospitality. Many Americans, struck anew with the yearning for holy community rooted deep in the church’s history, have come to visit—and a few to stay.

But what if someone does not desire—or does not sense God’s call—to make the lifelong vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience required of monastics? Do the spiritual resources of the monastic tradition have anything to offer to the person who has made commitments to spouse and family, or is pursuing a secular vocation? History gives a resounding “yes.” After all, monasticism was never intended to encompass a different set of spiritual values than those followed by all Christians. It offered a means of living the Christian life with more single-minded intensity.

For nearly a millennium, there have been people (one might call them “monastic groupies”) who have connected themselves to a monastery in a less formal way, committing to certain spiritual disciplines while remaining in the world. The option of becoming a monastic associate or oblate has enjoyed a recent surge of popularity as both Catholics and Protestants have sought in monastic spirituality something they feel is missing in their own lives.

The Longing for Connectedness

Also more numerous within the Catholic fold—and arguably no less in the spirit of Benedict himself—are members of a cornucopia of mission-driven ecclesial communities, such as the Christian Life Movement, Chemin Neuf (A New Way), and the Emmanuel Community. In June 2006, the same month that the Monastic Institute met in Minnesota, Pope Benedict XVI met with over 100 new ecclesial groups in St. Peter’s Square.

Each is committed to following a disciplined pattern of life—some communally and some in the regular spheres of family and work—and to serving the world in its own way. Many include married couples along with priests and individuals who have taken vows of celibacy and poverty. Though the ecclesial communities are not deliberately “monastic,” they are meeting needs that in previous centuries could only have been met by joining a monastery.

Many of us yearn to be deeply rooted in Christ in a way that reflects his holiness, and to share this rooted, holy life with a community, but we find this hard to do in the modern West. Our culture pushes us to strive for individual fulfillment, to consume more and more, and to spend much of our lives working to pay for that consumption. The result has been a world of constant mobility, alienation, and loneliness. Quasi-monastic movements like the Catholic ecclesial communities reveal a deep desire for connectedness—a sense that we need to live a regular, disciplined life of devotion to God, and that we can’t do it alone.

Protestant “Monks”?

In Protestant circles, this monastic impulse can be seen especially in the phenomenon of intentional communities. Among these, the self-described “new monastics” have taken their cue from philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. In his influential 1981 book After Virtue, MacIntyre compared the state of the West to the decadence of the late Roman Empire, and called for “another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” In 1998 Jonathan R. Wilson picked up MacIntyre’s ideas and put them into more explicitly Christian form in Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World. He fleshed out a call for a “new monasticism” that would allow the church to truly be the church in this troubling, fragmented age.

In a time when, it seems to Wilson and the new monastics, “many parts of the church are sinking with the culture and doing so without any resistance,” Benedict’s wisdom has again become a fount of inspiration and guidance. In School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism (which emerged from a 2004 meeting of “new monastic” communities) leaders concluded that at least some Christians must engage in some form of separation—not only from the “culture at large,” but also from the increasingly compromised church—to model a life of true devotion and obedience to Christ.

But historically, of course, monastics have not stopped at separation—nor do these “new monastics.” Benedict founded a monastic way in which hospitality to the stranger and the needy is a prophetic witness to the world. Thus these new quasi-monastic communities have dedicated themselves not only to contemplative disciplines and submission to a communal rule, but also to solidarity with the poor, racial reconciliation, and peacemaking.

One Protestant who attended the St. John meeting, Bethel Seminary graduate Jan Bros, was driven by the difficulty she experienced pursuing true spiritual formation in her old megachurch to start a new monastic community in Minneapolis called Abbey Way, founded on Benedictine principles. When Bros asked a Benedictine sister what she thought of Protestants seeking to start such communities, to her delight the nun replied, “Benedict would approve.”

Passing Fad or Promising Future?

Even in the midst of such celebration, members of new communities, both Catholic and Protestant, are aware that the current love affair with monastic forms of worship and life can amount to another unhelpful “fad” as people run after books and retreats. A few candles and a few chanted prayers do not a prophetic community make.

Church of the Servant King’s Jon Stock says, “It’s awful hard for us Westerners not to approach Benedict as another technique, another consumable, another path to self-actualization.” Stock also admits that the new monasticism, focused as it often is on social activism, can lose its connection to the larger church and to worship practices anchored in the church—a concern shared by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Asbury Seminary’s Christine Pohl admits that Benedict’s four pillars—”life under a rule, life lived in commitment to a particular people and place, obedience, and ongoing conversion”—present a challenge to modern Western Christians, with our “wariness of vows and commitments, and our individualistic and mobile lifestyles.”

Time will tell whether the “new monastic” communities will survive, whether the traditional Benedictine monasteries will continue to thrive, and what new forms of counter-cultural, prayerful, prophetic community will arise to inspire Christians and shake the culture. But for now, the future of Benedict seems as bright as his past.

Chris Armstrong is associate professor of church history at Bethel Seminary and a senior editor of Christian History & Biography. The author thanks Dennis Martin for his guidance on the current state of Roman Catholic monasticism.