Monasticism

Just as the Church ceased to be persecuted and became public, another way of holiness opened, apart from the world. Men and women set out to leave all in order to seek God alone: this was monasticism. Born in the deserts of Egypt, it reached the East and then the West, and became for a thousand years one of the pillars of Christendom.

The Fathers of the Desert

As long as persecution lasted, the martyrdom of blood was the highest form of self-gift to Christ. When peace returned, some sought another way of giving all: to die no longer by the sword, but to the world and to themselves. In Egypt, a young man named Antony one day heard in church the word of Christ to the rich young man: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you own, give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Matthew 19:21 He took it for himself, gave away his goods and withdrew into the desert to live there by prayer and penance. From this comes the name monk, from the Greek for “alone,” and hermit, from the word that means the desert. Many came to imitate him, so many that it was said the desert became peopled like a city. These solitaries waged an inward battle against their passions, seeking purity of heart and unceasing prayer.

They had chosen the desert as the very place of trial, where Christ had fasted forty days and faced the tempter. There, far from every support, they waged hand-to-hand combat with the demons and with evil thoughts; Antony’s struggles became famous through the Life that Athanasius wrote of him, and this account carried monasticism as far as the West. From this experience of the desert came a whole science of the discernment of thoughts, later handed on to the Latin world, from which the Church drew the list of the capital sins.

From Hermit to Community

To live alone exposed one to many errors. Another Egyptian, Pachomius, gathered the hermits into organized communities, where they prayed, worked and ate together under a common rule and the authority of a father, the abbot. So was born the cenobitic life, from the Greek for “common life,” beside the eremitic life of the solitary. In the East, Basil of Caesarea, one of the great Fathers, gave monasticism rules of measure and charity that govern it still today in the Greek Churches. Two forms now coexisted: that of the solitary and that of the community.

Benedict and His Rule

Monasticism passed into the West, where one man gave it its lasting form: Benedict of Nursia, in the sixth century. Withdrawn at first into a cave, then surrounded by disciples, he founded the monastery of Monte Cassino and wrote a Rule of balanced wisdom, without excess of austerity. In it the monk promises stability, obedience and the conversion of his life; his day divides the time between prayer, the work of the hands and reading, according to the motto that tradition has summed up in a word: pray and work. This Rule spread throughout the West and became the frame of almost all Latin monastic life. Benedict is called the patriarch of the monks of the West.

Women led this life from the very beginnings. In the East, Macrina, elder sister of Basil, gathered around her a community of virgins and turned her brother toward the monastic life. In the West, Scholastica, sister of Benedict, settled near Monte Cassino, is regarded as the first nun of his order. Beside the monks, nuns have carried the same life of prayer everywhere.

This prayer has a precise form, which Benedict sets above all and calls the Work of God: the chanting of the psalter at fixed hours. Seven times in the day, and once in the night, the monks break off their work to gather and praise God, according to the word of the psalm the Rule cites: “Seven times a day I praise you for your just decisions.” Psalm 119:164 From this prayer of the hours was born the Liturgy of the Hours that the Church still prays each day.

The Pillar of Christendom

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, amid the disorder of the invasions, the monasteries were islands of prayer, order and work. The monks cleared land, drained marshes, taught, relieved the poor. In their workshops they copied by hand the manuscripts of Scripture and of antiquity, saving from oblivion a great part of ancient learning. From their walls also set out the missionaries who would win Europe to the faith. Through these troubled centuries, monasticism carried faith and civilization together.

The Meaning of the Monastic Life

The monk does not flee men out of contempt, but because he has judged that God alone suffices, and he wishes to seek him undivided. His withdrawn life is a way of anticipating heaven, where one will do nothing but see and love God; and his prayer does not close in on itself, but bears before God the whole Church and the whole world. In giving to every age men and women who live for God alone, monasticism reminds the whole Church of that toward which she walks, and keeps for her, amid the noise of the world, a heart that prays without ceasing.

This undivided gift takes the form of three renunciations that the Gospel calls counsels: poverty, chastity and obedience. Antony had sold everything; after him, the monk renounces goods to have God alone, marriage to love with an undivided heart, and his own will to give himself wholly to him. Christ himself had opened this way, speaking of those who renounce marriage for the sake of the Kingdom: “there are those who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this, let him accept it.” Matthew 19:12