ASCETICISM:
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MARRIAGE AND MONASTICISM IN ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY
(published in Again Magazine, 1996)
by Vincent Rossi
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The traditional teaching of the Orthodox
Church that monasticism is a “higher” or
the ‘highest’ spiritual calling is received by many converts
as an oppression and a confusion. If monasticism is a higher calling, so
they tend to reason, and I am called to married life in the world, it seems
I am required to live according to a ‘lower’ calling, which
is a rather dispiriting and discouraging prospect. Furthermore, the ascetical
literature of the Orthodox Church is so heavily weighted toward living
the monastic life that ‘lay’ people, especially converts, find
it hard to see where they fit in and how all this ‘monastic’ teaching
applies to them. Many married and single converts feel that a definite
ceiling is placed on their spirituality: as ‘lay’ people living
according to a ‘lower’ calling in the world, less is required
of them spiritually, and, what is far worse, less is expected. Assuredly,
they are told, lay people can be 'saved' while living a life of attachments
in the world by following as best they can the precepts and practices of
the Church. Unfortunately, the married or non-monastic single convert is
made to feel by this approach (which basically errs by teaching a half-truth,
as I will discuss below) that he or she is condemned to ‘second-class
citizenship’ in the Kingdom.
Some observers, noting the increased numbers of formerly Evangelical Protestant
Christians entering the Orthodox Church, believe that the emergence of
this problem about monasticism among converts is based on the antipathy
toward and lack of familiarity with monasticism in the Protestant world.
But this is to ignore the fact that this confusion also exists even among
the equally large number of Anglican/Episcopalian and Roman Catholic converts,
who come from traditions that encourage and honor monasticism. Clearly
this perceived opposition between marriage and monasticism is not merely
the result of the former religious affiliation of converts to Orthodoxy.
There are a number of contributing factors at work helping to create the
climate for this confusion about the role of monasticism in the life of
married and non-monastic single people in the Church. It is crucial that
Church leaders, theologians, catechists and evangelists take account of
these as the Orthodox Church expands its missionary and evangelistic efforts
in the West.
1) First is the split between Church and culture in the
West, a factor seriously underestimated by many Church
leaders from the Old Country. Traditional Orthodox societies
were, whatever their historical faults, basically normal
and human. In traditional Christian societies, whether Semitic, Slavic,
Greek or Celtic, Church and culture supported one another: priest, politician
and parent all worked for the same things. Marriage and monasticism were
organically united in a community whose lifeblood was the Divine Liturgy,
whose lifestyle was traditional asceticism, whose ‘biorythmns’ were
ordered by the cycle of Church services and whose national holidays and
celebrations were the great annual Feasts of the Orthodox Church. But in
contemporary Western society, American or European, this organic link between
Church and culture has been severed at the root.
2) Secondly, account needs to be taken of the low level
of spiritual culture in contra-distinction with intellectual
and technical culture in the 'post-modern' world, both
in the West and in the East. A contemporary elder from
Sihastria Monastery in Romania (which is perhaps the
equivalent of Optina Monastery in 19th century Russia)
was asked why zeal for prayer and good works were so
weak today. He responded, “Because faith has diminished in the
whole world. Today every layman and monk confesses that he cannot pray
as they did in the past. Only with great labor and pains can some good
monks and laymen maintain pure prayer day and night. We others are always
surrounded by cares, people and weaknesses, and when we pray our minds
are scattered and full of thoughts” (Spiritual Conversations with
Romanian Elders, by Fr. Ioanichie Balan). This is a contemporary confirmation
of the ancient prophecy of Abba John the Dwarf: "Here is what one
of the old men in ecstasy said: 'Three monks were standing at the edge
of the sea, and a voice came to them from the other side saying, 'Take
wings of fire and come here to me.' The first two did so and reached the
other shore, but the third remained, crying and weeping exceedingly. But
later wings were given to him also, not of fire, but weak and without strength,
so that with great difficulty he reached the other shore, sometimes under
water, sometimes above it. So it is with the present generation; if they
are given wings they are not of fire, but wings that are weak and without
power"(The Desert Christian, Benedicta Ward). Many Orthodox leadersare
certainly well aware of this situation, which possibly contributes to their
reluctance to promote with much vigor or enthusiasm traditional Orthodox
ascetic and monastic spirituality in their adopted lands.
3. Thirdly, there is the confusing, somewhat insensitive
and basically ineffective way the “monastic ideal” is often presented to
Western converts. I am reminded of a warning given by Fr. Seraphim Rose
in one of his writings where he speaks of the “weight” of the
entire tradition of Orthodoxy in all its magnificence and transcendence
relentlessly bearing down on the hapless convert, sometimes pushing him
right out of the Church. Orthodox monastic asceticism with its lofty ideals
and uncompromising rigor is indeed a weighty concept, especially to us
children of the present age, accustomed as we are to understanding life
in terms of all the many forms of comfort provided without effort by our
culture in its incessant pursuit of ‘happiness’. I will devote
the remainder of this article to addressing primarily these latter two
factors.
There is an axiom in the Orthodox Church, borne out by
history, that says “as
goes monasticism, so goes the Church”. The health of monasticism
is a barameter of the health of the Church. It is an inexcapable fact,
however, that, by the standards of the past and even of the ‘Old
Country’ in the present, Orthodox monasticism is weak in the West.
In traditional Orthodox societies of the past, where monasticism and marriage
were organically united in the culture, there is good evidence that the
asceticism practiced by ordinary families and simple peasants surpassed
in rigor and intensity what is practiced in most monasteries in the West
today. All of the factors mentioned above have probably contributed to
this state of affairs, not to mention the enormous dislocation and cultural
shocks of the so-called Orthodox ‘diaspora’.
Be that as it may, what is certain is that today a bridge
is desperately needed between the monastic, ascetic ideals
in Orthodoxy and the intellectual and psychological formation
of contemporary Orthodox people. The attempt to "cure” the present situation by seeking to disseminate the ‘monastic
ideal’ as a kind of panacea fails to provide the needed bridge because
monastic asceticism is too often presented in a dogmatic, disembodied and
undiscerning manner. Two unfortunate results then occur: 1) an enormous
weight is placed on the soul of the Orthodox Christian, especially if he
or she is fervent and idealistic, as so many converts are, which may have
harmful effects; and 2) a tremendous opportunity for teaching the genuine
ascetic way in terms the modern soul can understand and utilize is lost.
The solution to the confusion of 'higher' and 'lower' callings is not to
insist doggedly and hence 'dogmatically', even if correctly, that the entire
tradition declares monasticism to be the higher calling. On the other hand,
neither is it particularly beneficial to rummage through the writings of
St. John Chrysostom and other patristic writers to find 'proof texts' in
support of the loftiness of the 'marriage ideal'. Neither of these approaches
will solve the problem. To discuss the monastic ideal in this way is ineffective
because disembodied, due to the fact that real monasticism is abstracted
from the life of the Church in the West, both as a conceptual ideal and
as a concrete reality. Therefore, in regard to marriage and monasticism,
we need to ask ourselves the same question that Paul put to the Corinthians
about the body and its members (1 Cor. 12: 12-31). In the unity of the
human physical body, it is meaningless to talk of different but essential
organs having more or less honor. Can the eye (monasticism) say to the
hand (marriage), I have no need of thee? Paul used the metaphor of the
body and its inherent symbolism to deal with precisely the same question
of 'higher' and 'lower' spiritual gifts to show us that in the reality
of the Body of Christ, there is an organic, eucharistic unity of all gifts
and callings.
We need to understand what the witness of tradition is really telling us
so that this wisdom might be 'unpacked' in a way that will be of benefit
to the present generation. Following a technique of St. Maximos the Confessor,
we must 'distinguish in order to unite'. Let us seek first to distinguish
those elements in this question which may have gotten conflated or confused
so that we might then see their inherent harmony and unity. There seem
to be three such areas: 1) the conflation of monasticism and asceticism;
2) the confusion of the 'monastic ideal' with the institution of monasticism;
3) the dual meaning of the word monasticism: 'outer' monasticism and 'inner'
monasticism. In doing this, St. Paul's rhetorical question about the relative
merits of the body's members answers itself.
1) We need to distinguish asceticism from monasticism. Many converts,
awash in the wonderful spiritual literature of the Orthodox tradition,
like thePhilokalia, the Ladder of Divine Ascent or Unseen Warfare, receive
the impression that only monastics are called to be ascetics. Nothing
could be further from the truth. All Christians are called to the ascetic
life. In Matthew 16, Jesus gives us the fundamental law of Christian
discipleship: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself,
and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find
it"(Mt.16:24-25). The essence of the ascetic life is precisely denying
oneself for Christ's sake and taking up one's cross to follow Him. There
is no other way to follow Christ; it is ascetic through and through and
all Christians, monastic, clergy and laity have the same path.
To show the universal nature of Orthodox ascesis and its intimate union
with noetic prayer, let us look at the ringing declaration of St. Simeon
of Thessalonica about praying with the Name of Jesus Christ (Little Russian
Philokalia, Vol.4, p.146):
Let every pious man continually repeat this Name as a Prayer in his mind
and with his tongue. Let him always constrain himself to do this while
standing, traveling, sitting, resting, speaking, and doing all things.
Then he shall find great peace and joy, as those who have occupied themselves
with it know from experience. This activity is both for those in worldly
life and for those monks who are in the midst of turmoil. Each one must
strive to occupy himself with this Prayer, even if to a limited extent
only. All, clergy, monks and laymen, must have this Prayer as a guide,
practicing it according to their ability.
The monks are dedicated, and have an indispensable obligation to do this...The
clergy must be diligent in this Prayer as though it were apostolic work
and Divine preaching ...Let those who are in the world work at this as
a sealing of themselves, a sign of their faith, a protector, sanctification,
and expeller of every temptation...let everyone devote time, according
to his ability, and have a certain amount of this Prayer as an obligation.(Italics
added).
Following this, it does not seem necessary to cite the multitude of possible
patristic sources which would confirm our point in order to conclude
that the Christian way of ascesis, the way of the cross, is not automatically
monasticism, which is but one of its forms, though the preeminent one.
Ascesis is required of all Orthodox Christians.
2) We need also to distinguish between the institution
of monasticism and the 'monastic ideal'. According
to St. Theophan the Recluse, the institution of monasticism
consists of the monastic ranks (novice, ryassaphore,
full tonsure, great Schema), the monastic rule (the major points of which
are fasting, obedience, prayer) and the monastic forms (cenobitic, eremetic,
sketic). This is the 'external image' of monasticism. But the 'internal
image' of monasticism, its essence, according to St. Theophan, is "a
perpetual labor of conquering passions and uprooting them in order that
one may preserve oneself before the face of God in a pure and immaculate
state". Clearly single and married non-monastics do not live according
to monasticism's external order, but who would dare to say that non-monastic
Christians do not also have the responsibility to labor perpetually to
conquer passions in order to preserve themselves before God in a pure
and immaculate state? As Theophan himself says, "There are lay women
in light-colored dresses who are nuns in spirit and there are monastics
in black mantles who are laywomen at heart" (Kindling the Divine
Spark). From this perspective, lay people, according to St. Theophan
the Recluse, need not feel themselves excluded from any spiritual possibility
simply on the basis of their life amid the cares of the world.
Finally, we need to distinguish between monastic spirituality
in its two meanings: outer monasticism and inner monasticism.
According to St. Maximos the Confessor, "A monk is a man who has freed his intellect
from attachment to material things and by means of self-control, love,
psalmody and prayer cleaves to God"(Char.2:54). Again, the Confessor
points out even more forcefully: "He who has renounced such things
as marriage, possessions and other worldly pursuits is outwardly a monk,
but may not yet be a monk inwardly. Only he who has renounced the impassioned
conceptual images of these things has made a monk of the inner self,
the nous. It is easy to be a monk in one's outer self if one wants to
be; but no small struggle is required to be a monk in one's inner self" (Char.4:50).
This seems identical to St. Theophan the Recluse's teaching on the 'internal
image' of monasticism, in which the possibility of participating, as
we have seen, is not excluded from lay people. That the phrase "no
small struggle" is a massive understatement by St. Maximos is revealed
in his next statement: "Who in this generation is completely freed
from impassioned conceptual images, and has been granted uninterrupted,
pure and spiritual prayer? Yet this is the mark of the inner monk" (Char.4:51).
The point of these quotes, and indeed of this essay, is not to deny the
preeminence of monasticism as the paradigm of spirituality in the Orthodox
tradition. It is, however, to call for a little more sobriety when invoking
the 'monastic ideal' by showing that from the perspective of the heights
of the hesychastic tradition, the monastics and lay people of today are
more or less in the same boat, or, according to the vision of Elder John
the Dwarf, equally at sea on shaky wings.
Besides the distinctions between asceticism and monasticism
and outer and inner monasticism, we need to introduce
one further concept in order better to clarify our
approach toward the principles of non-monastic asceticism:
spirituality. We are working with three basic concepts
which are often confused or substituted for one another:
monasticism, asceticism, spirituality. Spirituality,
a term notoriously difficult to define, has a broader,
more inclusive sense than the other two terms, and,
in the Orthodox meaning, includes a patristic mentality,
the experience of life in Christ and reflection on
that experience. In that sense, we can say, with Metro.
John Zizioulas (Being and Communion), that from the
time of the early Church, there have been two basic
types of spirituality in Holy Orthodoxy: one may be
called "eucharistic", because
it is based on the eucharistic community, its experiences and disciplines.
The other type is called 'monastic' by Zizioulas, but I prefer to call
it 'hesychastic', both because it more precisely describes the type of
spirituality that we are distinguishing from the 'eucharistic', and also
because I do not want to imply that the eucharistic dimension can ever
be separated from monasticism--or from hesychasm, for that matter. (We
are distinguishing here, let us recall, not to separate but only to unite.)
In both the eucharistic type of spirituality and the hesychastic, the
practice of asceticism is fundamental: the individual struggles against
the passions, strives toward the virtues, seeks grace in prayer and union
with God in Christ. Hesychastic spirituality is characterized not only
by renunciation of the world and austere asceticism but especially by
submission to the spiritual authority of a geron or staretz, which includes
such practices as strict obedience and daily revelation of thoughts,
activities not practicable for the average lay person. Eucharistic spirituality,
on the other hand, is characterized by an ascetical and noetic participation
in the eucharistic community as a way to overcome philautia: self-love
and its deadly children, gluttony, avarice, vain-glory, etc. Ultimately,
however, both types of spirituality are but modes of the one spirituality
of the Orthodox Church, which is the path of becoming a temple of the
Holy Spirit by participating in the uncreated grace and the deifying
energy of God. Orthodox spirituality, then, both eucharistic and hesychastic,
is the spirituality most perfectly embodied in the saint.
Normally, the type of spirituality most natural to married and non-monastic
single people is the eucharistic. In this form of spirituality, Jesus
Himself is our 'spiritual father' through the Eucharist and the priesthood,
and the Church is our spiritual mother. Our families are our 'cells'.
Just as the monk is told by his elder, 'stay (or sit) in your cell and
your cell will teach you everything', so too for us non-monastics, our
spiritual mother the Church teaches: stay in your families (which are
the Church in microcosm) and your families will teach you everything.
The three primary acts of the Church--prayer, fasting, almsgiving--provide
with the sacramental and liturgical cycle of life a complete ascetic
rule that is inexhaustible and perfectly adaptable to our strengths (or
weaknesses). There is nothing spiritually limiting or restricting in
the eucharistic spirituality of the Church, no grace absent, no spiritual
door closed.
Above all, there is no ceiling on sanctity or holiness in the biblical,
eucharistic spirituality of Holy Orthodoxy: Jesus' command in Mattthew
5 is addressed to all Christians: "Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Mt.5:48). Monasticism,
after all, is not an end in itself. The 'monastic ideal' is not monasticism
itself but something higher than itself: martyrdom. Let us remind ourselves
that monasticism began as a form of martyrdom, 'white' martyrdom; and
martyrdom is nothing more or less than the total denial of oneself for
the sake of Christ and the cross, a path of grace not limited to monks
but open to all Christians.
The instruction of the great elder and saint, Paisius
Velichkovsky, for the tonsure to the Monastic Order,
is equally applicable, with slight adaptation, to Orthodox
married and non-monastic single persons. We have, says
St. Paisius, three enemies against which we must fight
daily warfare: the first and fiercest is the devil,
the second is our bodies, the flesh; the third is the
world. The first degree of ascetic combat is with the
world. Unlike the monk, we cannot abandon marriage, family, possessions.
We do not renounce them. But we can and must renounce sinful attachment
to them; we can, following St. Maximos, strive to renounce the passions
that hold us attached to things and not to God. The second arena of unseen
warfare is the flesh. We non-monastics are obliged as much as monastics
to restrain ourselves from much pleasurable food and intemperate drinking.
By fasting we seek to slay the desire for sin and various sin-arousing
provocations; by wakefulness in times of prayer we seek to destroy slothfulness;
and other passions too, we seek to overcome by the remembrance of God,
which only comes with suffering endured in a spirit of devotion (St.
Mark the Monk). Yet our body is also our friend, for with its help, we
can fast, make prostrations, give alms, pour out tears. This is why St.
Gregory Palamas spoke of our relationship with the body as "being
harnessed together and being estranged, of a merciful enemy and a treacherous
friend" (Oration 14). Our third enemy is the devil himself, 9 against
whom we are engaged in a most difficult struggle, visible nature against
invisible. Here our weaponry is 'the full armor of God', truth, righteousness,
the Gospel of peace, faith, patience and prayer(Eph.6:11-18), which we
claim by striving to keep the commandments of Christ and of the Church,
seeking to acquire the true wealth of the virtues. Thus the key to non-monastic
asceticism is: strive without ceasing, according to one's ability, trusting
in God and his Bride, the Church, not in oneself. Amen.
