DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
Rose Chapel .Net 🌹 Home of Sacred Medical
HTML https://rosechapel.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Church Matters
*****************************************************
#Post#: 56--------------------------------------------------
Monastic Spirituality
By: Custodian Date: November 3, 2018, 9:12 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
A HISTORY OF MONASTIC SPIRITUALITY
INTRODUCTION
1. OUR PURPOSE
This is a course on the history of monastic spirituality. First
let us explain three terms.
1. History.
History is the knowledge or the recounting of the past, the
events of the past; it deals with facts relating to the
evolution of a social group. It looks at a succession of men and
women and the events through which they lived. It runs along a
horizontal line.
These events are past, the people are dead. In spite of their
archeological interest or the examples and lessons they give,
they are nevertheless dead and gone.
2.. Spirituality
This concerns the spiritual life, the life of the Holy Spirit
within us. The Spirit of the Living God comes to dwell within us
and to lead us to God. Here we have a vertical line constantly
coming down to arouse our response to return to him.
3. History of Spirituality
Here we have a convergence of the two lines, horizontal and
vertical. More exactly, the horizontal line of history is
brought to life at every moment by the movement of the living
God who comes to live among men and women ("to play with the
sons of men" as the book of Proverbs has it). To this movement
of God there corresponds a free movement of men and women who
can respond to him in two ways:
a) In setting oneself free from everything which could be an
obstacle to the work of God, renouncing the evil forces capable
of limiting or annihilating this divine action. It is a combat,
a struggle (= ascesis) leading to purification.
b) In letting oneself be caught up in this movement of return to
God, giving oneself to his action through availability,
surrender, prayer. This is contemplation.
Ascesis and contemplation are two movements linked together
which we will come across constantly.
HTML http://www.scourmont.be/studium/bresard/00-introduction.htm
Monasticism (from Greek
μοναχός, monachos, derived
from μόνος, monos, "alone") or monkhood
is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly
pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic
life plays an important role in many Christian churches,
especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Similar
forms of religious life also exist in other faiths, most notably
in Buddhism, but also in Hinduism and Jainism, although the
expressions differ considerably.[1] By contrast, in other
religions monasticism is criticized and not practiced, as in
Islam and Zoroastrianism, or plays a marginal role, as in
Judaism.
Women pursuing a monastic life are generally called nuns, while
monastic men are called monks.
Many monks and nuns live in monasteries to stay away from the
secular world. The way of addressing monastics differs between
the Christian traditions.
HTML https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasticism
Public Content
Chapter 1 Whom Do You Seek?
If we want to live as monks, we must try to understand what the
monastic life really is. We must try to reach the springs from
which that life flows. We must have some notion of our spiritual
roots, that we may be better able to sink them deep into the
soil.
But the monastic vocation is a mystery. Therefore it cannot be
completely expressed in a clear succinct formula. It is a gift
of God and we do not understand it as soon as we receive it, for
all God's gifts, especially his spiritual gifts, share in his
own hiddenness and in his own mystery. God will reveal himself
to us in the gift of our vocation, but he will do this only
gradually.
We can expect to spend our whole lives as monks entering deeper
and deeper into the mystery of our monastic vocation which is
our hidden life with Christ in God. If we are real monks, we are
constantly rediscovering what it means to be a monk, and yet we
never exhaust the full meaning of our vocation.
When we enter the monastery, we may or may not have some notion
why we have left the world. We can give some answer, more or
less clear, to the question: "Why have you come here?" This
question is one which we should ask ourselves again and again in
the course of our monastic life; "What are you doing here?" "Why
have you come here?" Not that it is a question whose answer we
have known and tend to forget. It is a question which confronts
us with a new meaning in a new urgency, as we go in life.
Sometimes we hesitate to ask ourselves this question, afraid
that by doing so we might shake the foundations of our location.
The question is one which ought never to be evaded. If we face
it seriously, we will strengthen our vocation. If we evade it,
even under a holy pretext, we may perhaps allow our vocation to
be undermined.
The monk who ceases to ask himself "Why have you come here has
perhaps ceased to be a monk.
What are some of the answers to give to the question "Why have
you come here?" we reply – – "to save my soul," "to lead a life
of prayer," "to do penance for my sins," "to give myself to
God," "to love God". These are good enough answers, they are
religious answers. They are meaningful not only for what they
say but for what they imply. For on the lips of a Christian,
such statements must eventually mean much more than they
actually say. As they stand, they give evidence of good
subjective dispositions, but they by no means lead to a full
understanding of the monastic life. For the monastic life is not
defined merely by the fact that it enables us to save our soul,
to pray, to do penance, to love God. All these things can be
done outside the monastery and are done by thousands.
But neither is Christian monasticism adequately defined as a
quest of perfection. The Zen Buddhist in Japan, for example, may
enter a monastery to seek a life for retirement and spiritual
discipline. He has perhaps seeking the highest reality. He is
seeking liberation. Now if we enter the monastery seeking the
highest reality, seeking perfection, we must nevertheless
realize that for us this means something more that can ever mean
for Zen Buddhist.
Our monastic life must therefore develop so that our concept of
the end for which we are striving becomes more clearly and more
specifically Christian.
It makes much more sense to say, as St. Benedict says, that we
come to the monastery to seek God, than to say that we come
seeking spiritual perfection.
The end which we seek is not merely something within ourselves,
some personal quality added to ourselves, some new gift. It is
God himself.
To say "Why have you come here?" is the same as saying "What
does it mean, to seek God? How do you know if you are seeking
him or not? How can you tell the difference between seeking him
and not seeking him, when he is in fact a hidden God?"
When Moses spoke to God saying: "Show me your face," the Lord
answered, "Man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:20).
Yet Jesus tells us that eternal life is to know the one true
God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3). This
knowledge of God which is eternal life is not arrived at by pure
speculation. We come to know God by being born of God and living
in God. We cannot really know him only by reading and study and
meditation.
We can come to know God only by becoming his sons and daughters
and living as his children. "As many as received him, he gave
the power to be made children of God, to them that believe in
his name, who are not born of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12 – 13.).
We can live as children of God, we can know God only if we live
in charity.
"Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity [love] is
of God. And everyone that loves is born of God and knows God."
(First John 4:7.)
But this charity/love is not just a natural love for one
another. We do not become children of God by the mere fact of
living together in a society dedicated to a common purpose,
sharing common interests with one another. Do not even the
Gentiles do so? The charity that unites us is the charity of
Christ – – in the strict sense of a love exercise by the Sacred
Heart, not just as the broad sense of a love patterned on his
love. We sing "the love of Christ's heart for us not just our
love for him has drawn us together." We could not love him
unless "He had first loved us."
We become children of God by being born again in Christ – – by
baptism – – and we live and grow and bring forth fruit only by
"remaining in Christ."
"Abide in me and I and you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of
itself unless it abides in the vine so neither can you unless
you abide in me." (John 15:4.) Thus we arrive at the real heart
of our monastic vocation.
Our monastic life is a life in Christ, a life by which we remain
in Christ, sharing his life, participating in his action, united
with him in his worship of the Father.
Christ is our life. He is the whole meaning of our life, the
whole substance of the monastic life. Nothing in the monastery
makes sense if we forget this great central truth.
But who is Jesus? He is the son of God, he is the word who was
made flesh and dwelt among us. The monastic life, like all
Christian life, the life of the church, prolongs the mystery of
the Incarnation on earth, and enables men and women to receive
into their souls, in great abundance, the life and the charity
of Christ. We come to the monastery to live more fully, more
perfectly and more completely in Christ.
Therefore we can conclude that we come to the monastery to seek
Christ – – desiring that we may find him and know him and thus
come to live in him and by him.
And as we begin to find him, we begin to realize at the same
time that we have already been living in and by Him – – for "He
has first loved us."
Merton, Thomas, "Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality",
pages 13-21.
HTML https://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/oblate-cistercians-de-guadalupe/basic-principles-monastic-spirituality-chapter-1
HTML https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theodysseyonline.com/4-monastic-practices-christians-should-use.amp<br
/>
*****************************************************