Recently, I had the privilege of making my first visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. It was a pilgrimage of sorts. Thomas Merton is my favorite Christian writer and to simply walk the grounds where he had lived for so many years was an amazing and humbling experience.
It was Easter Sunday; and I could think of no better way to spend Easter than to make that journey and attend Mass at the Abbey. We woke up early to make the drive there from Louisville, which takes just a little over an hour. It was a cold, rainy morning. You take the Interstate out of Louisville and then before you know it, you find yourself out in the middle of the country; where it's just miles and miles of wide open spaces; fields and farmland and forests. For someone who calls the city home, it is an almost alien landscape. Some of the areas seemed so remote I almost began to question whether my GPS was leading me to the right place.
Eventually we came to a very small town. It was there that I first realized why many have dubbed that area "Trappist Kentucky". Several of the houses had statues of Jesus, Mary and Saints on their lawns. We went underneath a bridge where there was a makeshift shrine to the Mother of God, complete with a beautiful, tall statue of the Virgin Mary and flowers all around it. At the center of this town was a fairly large Catholic church that was filled to capacity for Easter Sunday. Everyone who lived there was probably at that church.
Once you get through it, all you see is miles of forests. It was strikingly beautiful. And then, suddenly, you come upon the great Abbey of Gethsemani; looming like an enormous fortress, almost as though it were something out of the middle ages. It was overwhelming just to be there in this sacred space. As a light rain fell, I walked the grounds.
Finally the bells began to ring and I knew it was time for Mass to begin. As I made my way up to the church, I came across the gated entrance to the monk's private area where I saw a sign that read "God Alone." I lingered there, staring at those words that had been carved so long ago. Those two simple words, to me, reflected the monastic ideal. When one enters into the monastery; they leave the world behind, they leave the life that they knew behind; relying on "God Alone." Moreover, they leave that false sense of self behind, the self that says "I am this" or "I am that"; the self that says I am a collection of my striving, a collection of the things that we possess, or the worldly titles by which we identify ourselves. One is stripped of all that they thought they were as they enter here, leaving nothing but "God Alone." I sighed heavily. If only I could reach that point myself. If only I could open those gates and cross over into that threshold of "God Alone." Everything that I am is as nothing before the truth of those two words.
As I entered the church I happened to pass by a couple of the monks. They nodded at me in silent greeting. They do not speak. I took my seat next to my wife and the Mass began as the monks took their places in the choir loft, which is the picture shown here. They began with the chanting of the Hours. At this point, tears were just streaming down my face. I love Gregorian Chant. To hear it in person like that just set my soul ablaze; it was as though I was hearing the music of heaven itself. It makes me laugh to think about Merton's journals; that he had so many complaints with the chanting; how they would be out of tune or someone would sing the wrong lines! They sounded good to me!! The Mass itself was phenomenal, and my overall experience there was one of enormous importance. I carry the Abbey with me in my heart, and I hope to return there someday on a full retreat.
It also got me thinking about the monastic way of life and how important it is for us today. I know the various monastic orders, both in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions have seen dwindling numbers over the years. Their influence seems to have waned a bit as well. There are many reasons for this.
One, I think is because they are often misunderstood. You think of a monk and the first thing that comes to mind is someone who has 'given up' the world' and shut themselves away from it. This isn't the case. Historically, it was the monks who were primarily responsible both for the spread of Christianity and the preservation of Christianity in the middle ages. In more recent times, I think of villages in Greece and Russia where the monks would go into towns and teach the people; or the people would come to them for advice.
And speaking personally, I had the privilege of befriending a Greek Orthodox monk and learning from him...at a book discussion group of all things! He was far from 'cloistered!' The Father was always travelling around, seeing people, ministering and assisting in the local Orthodox Churches.
The second major reason why I see the influence of Monasticism dwindling; and this is a bold statement coming from a Methodist (!) is because of Protestantism! While the Reformation succeeded in some areas; it failed drastically in others. And one of those key areas of failure is the interior spiritual life of the individual. Protestantism has always emphasized two things; study of the Bible and corporate worship. Click on the website of just about any Protestant or Evangelical Church and you will quickly see the emphasis on the 'coming together in the Body of Christ' and the corporate nature of worship. I am not saying this is bad! What I am saying is that for centuries we have seen the emphasis on the one, to the exclusion of the other. Martin Luther had been a monk. But after his battles with the Catholic Church, he rejected monasticism completely. He saw it as false piety. John Calvin took it even further.
In his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion he first (wrongly) asserts that monasticism was unknown to the early church. While it is true that monasticism did not exist in the Apostolic Age; the precursor or the ideal of monasticism was most certainly present. The ministry of Jesus was a public one; yes, but people forget that he went off into seclusion to pray on more than one occasion. He went into the wilderness to be tempted; which in turn became the mission of the early ascetics. They retreated into the desert to battle their own demons and the false self. If Jesus Himself was the model; then how can we rightly say its presence was absent? Next, Calvin tears them apart with accusations of corruption and false humility. He says that monks were guilty of a crime if "any one color deviates in the least degree from the prescribed form in color or species of dress" and that to be a contemplative meant a "life of idleness."
"[M]onks place the principal part of their holiness in idleness. For if you take away their idleness, where will that contemplative life by which they glory that they excel all others, and make a near approach to the angels?… [I]nstead of Christians, we hear some called Benedictines, others Franciscans, others Dominicans, and so called, that while they affect to be distinguished from the common body of Christians, they proudly substitute these names for a religious profession…"
His judgment on monasticism gets worse...
"It is fine to philosophise in seclusion, far away from the intercourse of society; but it ill accords with Christian meekness for any one, as if in hatred of the human race, to fly to the wilderness and to solitude, and at the same time desert the duties which the Lord has especially commanded.
Were we to grant that there was nothing worse in that profession, there is certainly no small evil in its having introduced a useless and perilous example into the Church."
So there you have it. A complete and total condemnation of monasticism from one of the 'godfathers' of Protestantism. This was the theological equivalent of dropping an Atom Bomb on the monastic orders and the monastic ideal; and that radiation has seeped its way into all forms of Protestantism ever since.
Now Calvin had some good points. There was corruption. There were monks who wanted to completely flee from society, as though the people were somehow their lessers. But one should condemn the practice not the institution. The monasteries needed to be reformed. Thomas Merton talked about this even in the 50s and 60s; how monks should be standing for social justice and actively condemning the Vietnam War and advocating peace. His own writings were censored several times for being too 'vocal' or 'provocative'. There is good and bad with every institution, however. Did Luther and Calvin think, for example, that their writings and words would give birth to literally thousands of different denominations? Would they have seen such a thing as a goal? Certainly not!
But because of such bad theology in this case; most Protestants have lost out on the wise teachings of a whole tradition. The closest thing Protestantism has had to a monastic order was the short lived group known as the Shakers, from about 1774-1932. But they were outcasts. Mainstream Protestant Christians rarely accepted them. The influence of Calvin spread that far!
I sometimes wonder if the Protestant emphasis on 'corporate worship' is because subconsciously we fear being alone in a room by ourselves; subconsciously I think we all fear the wilderness and the desert of the ascetics. Why go out into the wilderness and wrestle with God all night like Jacob when we can instead safely sit in the pews for an hour; then return to our 'normal' lives?
I would argue that while corporate worship is indeed important; that retreat into the wilderness, that cultivation of an interior life is equally as important; in fact I would say it's exactly what we need today. In our modern age; people are driven to distraction. We run an endless rat race from which we can never seem to slow down. Who has time for God? Who has time for practicing spiritual disciplines? Who has time for quiet, contemplative prayer?
Indeed, the monastic way of life would have much to teach us, if we could but slow down for a moment to listen. Imagine, not a life that is idle; but unhurried. A life that retreats from the world so that it can learn to truly love the world. This is the true monastic ideal; and in our fast paced, frantic and hurried lives, we need to hear that voice. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend the movie Into Great Silence, about life inside a Carthusian Monastery. When you see the profound simplicity of their lives; it will stop you in your tracks and make you think about your own walk with God. I have provided a link to the trailer of it at the end of this post. Check it out, it will seem out of this world!
In ages past, ascetics and monks would retreat into the desert to draw nearer to God. Today, we must bring that desert into ourselves. The desert must become part of our hearts, our souls. Now how do we do that, though? There will be more on this to come....
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