If the monastic ideal is union with God through prayer, through humility, through obedience, through constant recognition of one’s sins, voluntary or involuntary, through a renunciation of the values of this world, through poverty, through chastity, through love for mankind and love for God, then is such an ideal Christian? For some the very raising of such a question may appear strange and foreign. But the history of Christianity, especially the new theological attitude that obtained as a result of the Reformation, forces such a question and demands a serious answer. If the monastic ideal is to attain a creative spiritual freedom, if the monastic ideal realizes that freedom is attainable only in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and if the monastic ideal asserts that to become a slave to God is ontologically and existentially the path to becoming free, the path in which humanity fully becomes human precisely because the created existence of humanity is contingent upon God, is by itself bordered on both sides by non-existence, then is such an ideal Christian? Is such an ideal Biblical—New Testamental? Or is this monastic ideal, as its opponents have claimed, a distortion of authentic Christianity, a slavery to mechanical "monkish" "works righteousness"?[ Return ]
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DESERT
When our Lord
was about to begin his ministry, he went into the desert. Our Lord had
options but he selected—or rather, "was lead by the Spirit," into the desert. It
is obviously not a meaningless action, not a selection of type of place without
significance. And there—in the desert—our Lord engages in spiritual combat, for
he "fasted forty days and forty nights." The Gospel of St. Mark adds that
our Lord "was with the wild beasts." Our Lord, the God-Man, was truly God
and truly man. Exclusive of our Lord’s redemptive work, unique to our Lord
alone, he calls us to follow him. "Following" our Lord is not
exclusionary; it is not selecting certain psychologically pleasing aspects of
our Lord’s life and teachings to follow. Rather it is all-embracing. We are to
follow our Lord in every way possible. "To go into the desert" is "to follow"
our Lord. It is interesting that our Lord returns to the desert after the death
of St. John the Baptist. There is an obvious reason for this. "And hearing [of
John the Baptist’s death] Jesus departed from there in a ship to a desert
place privately" When St. Antony goes to the desert, he is "following" the
example of our Lord—indeed, he is "following" our Lord. This in no way
diminishes the unique, salvific work of our Lord, this in no way makes of our
Lord God, the God-Man, a mere example. But in addition to his redemptive work,
which could be accomplished only by our Lord, our Lord taught and set examples.
And by "following" our Lord into the desert, St. Antony was entering a terrain
already targeted and stamped by our Lord as a specific place for spiritual
warfare. There is both specificity and "type" in the "desert." In those
geographical regions where there a no deserts, there are places which are
similar to or approach that type of place symbolized by the "desert." It is that
type of place which allows the human heart solace, isolation. It is the type of
place which puts the human heart in a state of aloneness, a state in which to
meditate, to pray, to fast, to reflect upon one’s inner existence and one’s
relationship to ultimate reality—God. And more. It is a place where spiritual
reality is intensified, a place where spiritual life can intensify and
simultaneously where the opposing forces to spiritual life can become more
dominant. It is the terrain of a battlefield but a spiritual one. And it is our
Lord, not St. Antony, who as set precedent. Our Lord says that "as for what is
sown among thorns, this is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and
the deceit of riches choke(s) the word, and it becomes unfruitful." The desert,
or a place similar, precisely cuts off the cares or anxieties of the world and
the deception, the deceit of earthly riches. It cuts one off precisely from
"this worldliness" and precisely as such it contains within itself a powerful
spiritual reason for existing within the spiritual paths of the Church. Not as
the only path, not as the path for everyone, but as one, fully authentic path of
Christian life.
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