“Ours is a cynical world, shaped by pessimism, skepticism, and disdain. It’s a world where if your mother says she loves you, you ought to verify that independently.”
McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism : an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis : Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 118.
“This movement joined the spirit of the early desert monastic tradition to the Benedictine way of life. ‘Based on greater solitude, silence and fasting, the Romualdian system of life imitated the ancient Egyptian anchoritism in the penitential ascetical sphere; for the rest, if faithfully referred to the observance of the Benedictine Rule. It was organized eremitism.’ ‘This reform movement within the Benedictine world was not antagonistic to Benedictinism, but it wanted to extend the influence of the Rule of Saint Benedict to those drawn to solitude’.”
Belisle, Peter-Damian. “Overview of Camaldolese History and Spirituality” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002, p. 9.
Comment: if ‘herding cats’ sounds hard, try organizing hermits! But that’s what the Camaldolese order does. Men with the vocation of solitude gather together, train for some years in spiritual disciplines and what it means to be a monk, and then can move into solitary living while still under the protective and organizing wing of the monastic order. Of course, the Carthusian order moves men into their hermitages more quickly, as I understand it.
“Paradoxical as it may seem, for Christians the flight of the alone to the Alone must also be understood as a flight of the community to the Trinity.”
McColman, Carl. The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism : an Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality. Minneapolis : Broadleaf Books, 2023, p. 139
Comment: I think what this means is that he considers the ancient description of the contemplative life (‘flight of the alone to the Alone’) still to be true. Plus, it is also true that the same contemplative life can be described as a flight of the community of believers to the community of the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
“But, it is important to note, close attention to creatures, as also to oneself, will bring with it an understanding of the damage to which they have all been subjected, and so it will provoke lament as well as delight. Lament is the knower’s response to damage just as admiring delight is the knower’s response to creatures being as they should be. Both are instances of knowing’s participation in the known.”
Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 137.
Comment: “Creatures” in this commonplace refers really to any other created being – animal, vegetable, or mineral – coming across your field of notice.
“The classical text of the threefold good, or threefold advantage (tripla commoda), is found where Bruno gives an account of Otto III’s project of choosing some of the more fervent disciples of Romuald as missionaries to Poland. There they were to build a monasterium in Christian territory near an area where pagans dwelt, secluded and surrounded by woods: ‘This would offer a threefold advantage: the cœnobium, which is what novices want; golden solitude, for those who are mature and who thirst for the living God; and the preaching of the gospel to the pagans, for those who long to be freed from this life in order to be with Christ’.”
Wong, Joseph. “The Threefold Good: Romualdian Charism and Monastic Tradition.” in Belisle, Peter-Damian, editor. The Privilege of Love: Camaldolese Benedictine Spirituality. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2002, p. 82.
“Thomas already makes that fatal statement ‘that to be subject to the Roman pope is necessary for salvation.’ In one sentence he is excluding the whole of the eastern Church from salvation.”
Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, p. 103.
Comment: …and many others as well!
“It is almost a commonplace today to find men and women who, quite naturally and unaffectedly, live in the explicit consciousness of being an atom or a citizen of the universe.”
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012, p. 1. [Teilhard had finished this manuscript back in 1927!]
“Though he now has the capacity to communicate anything, anywhere, instantly, man finds himself with nothing to say. Not that there are not many things he could communicate, or should attempt to communicate. He should, for instance, be able to meet his fellow man and discuss ways of building a peaceful world. He is incapable of this kind of confrontation.”
Merton, Thomas. “Symbolism: Communication or Communion?.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 247.
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Comment: And he wrote this way back in 1966, years before cell phones, blogs, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle! What would Merton have said about all these things and our continuing incapability of building a peaceful world?
“To be authentically human and Christian, the hermit’s life must aim at deepening communion with God and neighbor, even when the choice of the hermitage is initially motivated by the need to free oneself from an impossible situation in a monastic community.”
Matus, Thomas. The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers. Trabuco Canyon, Cal.: Source Books / Hermitage Books, 1994, p. 30.
"Once a man has set foot on this way, there is no excuse for abandoning it, for to be actually on the way is to recognize without doubt or hesitation that only the way is fully real and that everything else is deception, except insofar as it may in some secret and hidden manner be connected with ‘the way.’
“Thus, far from wishing to abandon this way, the contemplative seeks only to travel farther and farther along it. This journey without maps leads him into rugged mountainous country where there are often mists and storms and where he is more and more alone. Yet at the same time, ascending the slopes in darkness, feeling more and more keenly his own emptiness, and with the winter wind blowing cruelly through his now tattered garments, he meets at times other travelers on the way, poor pilgrims as he is, and as solitary as he, belonging perhaps to other lands and other traditions. There are of course great differences between them, and yet they have much in common. Indeed, the Western contemplative can say that he feels himself much closer to the Zen monks of ancient Japan than to the busy and impatient men of the West, of his own country, who think in terms of money, power, publicity, machines, business, political advantage, military strategy–who seek, in a word, the triumphant affirmation of their own will, their own power, considered as the end for which they exist. Is not this perhaps the most foolish of all dreams, the most tenacious and damaging of illusions?”
Merton, Thomas. “The Contemplative Life in the Modern World.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013, p. 228.
This is just SO good! And I think that the person who seeks only to travel farther and farther along the way of contemplation may just be the person tending toward the suite of attributes listed by a friend of mine when he wrote (and I’m mashing together bits from two different letters of his) that the fruit of the Spirit is love – which, itself is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, nor rude – joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Vaya con Dios!
Pathology: the Study of a Path 