The Published Articles of Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm. Asceticism in Modern Life

Asceticism in Modern Life

Introduction: Statement of the cross separated from the resurrection, with Problem fabricated penances, but especially with any device that would separate them from the The cross and the resurrection challenges and suffering of a full-time, represent the negative and positive poles of involved life with their fellow human beings. death and life in Christian existence. They are It is not a matter of being less willing to suffer correlatives. The evangelical demand of total or to strive, but rather of accepting the self- renunciation (Lk. 14, 26) is the direct and denial inherent in a love of God and this immediate counterpart of the law of total love world. “I would like to be able to have a great (Mt. 22, 37). Like poverty of spirit and love for Christ,” wrote one of the clearest contemplation in St. John of the Cross, spokesmen for this new asceticism, Teilhard unselfishness and charity are practically the de Chardin, “in the very act of loving the same thing; they exist in direct proportion to universe. ... Besides union with God and union each other. Total commitment to Christ is total with the world, is there not a union with God abnegation of self-centeredness. through the world?”2 Such a goal will bring its Death to the old man and a full life in own brand of asceticism; the asceticism of the Spirit are achieved by the process of material negations and explicit reduction of asceticism. This human effort under grace is interests and involvements will cede the place complemented by the passive purifications of honor to one which accepts the and mystical graces. In the past asceticism has unpredictable demands of daily life and duty, emphasized the negative pole and devised the trials and disappointments, the Teilhardian exercises and observances to chastise the body “diminishments” inevitable in the progress of and bring it into subjection (1 Cor. 9, 27), to human life. mortify the works of the flesh (Gal. 5, 16-21), This new approach appeals to modern to suffer with Christ in order to be glorified man. Is it viable? Is it as effective as the old with him (Rom. 8, 17). Asceticism’s task has asceticism of frontal attack and strategic been one of discipline and control, its purpose flight? Can the committed Christian of the the achievement of a dynamic equilibrium or 20th century find sanctity without cultivating detachment which is the proper disposition for the silence and withdrawal, the long formal possessing God in contemplative union. St. prayers and spiritual readings, the penances Teresa of Avila summed up this point of view and mortification, all of which were key rather neatly: “When we empty ourselves of points in the spiritual life of his forebears? In a all that is creature and rid ourselves of it for word is the old ascesis passé? These are the the love of God, that same Lord will fill our questions of the present paper. souls with himself.”1 Self-denial, renunciation, penance and sacrifice have thus been the first I. Basic Principles order of business in a spiritual life dominated by the cross and oriented to a loving All Christian life is a living of the knowledge of God. paschal mystery and consists in the passage Our age has reacted against this type of from death to life sacramentally expressed, asceticism as artificial and opted for a more especially in baptism and the holy eucharist, positive, outgoing, resurrection-centered and existentially lived in one’s daily life. spirituality. People today are impatient with a More concretely, the spiritual life is a process

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of mortifying egoism and deepening charity. II. Forms of Asceticism The passage may be characterized by its negative or its positive element, i.e., by a The state of perfect detachment and preoccupation with mortification or with perfect charity is attained only gradually. growth in virtue. Heirs of original sin, we enter the world Theologically speaking, either alienated from God and disintegrated within emphasis is acceptable because mortification ourselves. As Christians we are redeemed, it is implies charity, and acts of virtue are implicit true, and there is “no condemnation for those acts of mortification. In other words, Christian who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8, 1). But the asceticism is always and only ordered moral work of progressive redemption remains. We activity. Only inordinate self-love and selfish still experience conflict between the law of preferences need be rejected, even when it is a God and the law of the members within (cf. question of total abnegation which is a sine Rom. 7) and we still must struggle against qua non for high sanctity. Total abnegation enmity toward our neighbor without (cf. Eph. and perfect moral virtue are exact equivalents. 2, 14); ascesis is necessary to achieve Total abnegation does not imply that every integration within and unity without. The natural desire is evil. It accepts willingly work is the Spirit’s from beginning to end, but ordered loves of earthly values, enthusiastic he calls upon our free response and involvements in human affairs and activities, cooperation. The two forms of asceticism are or the “passionate indifference” of Teilhard de two such responses. Chardin. The older form conceives the Christian Whether the ascetical effort, therefore, life in terms of personal transformation rather is explicitly abnegation or virtue, it inexorably than service or apostolate. Transformation moves the person to detachment and charity. comes first; service is an addition or effect. The Christian’s fundamental option is not only This older spirituality is frankly an orientation to God but a conversion from contemplative; it centers the life of the inordinate self-love; hence it is equally Christian in prayer, i.e., in conversation with serviced by negative and positive acts. Proper God that begins here and continues into spiritual direction decides the individual eternity. It singles out the otherworldly, proportion of involvement in the world and transcendent aspects of the mystery of Christ, withdrawal from it, of the use or the concerns itself almost exclusively with the renouncement of human goods. Detachment individual’s relationship with God and not his actually implies a rich love of the world, since relationship to his fellowmen or his world and it is nothing less than freedom rooted in pays scant attention to man’s responsibility of charity. It is an utter openness to reality and a building up the new heaven and the new earth. willingness to respond to whatever call God The kingdom of God is a kingdom of souls, gives. Each Christian must be totally whose salvation is the “one thing necessary”, detached; pride and concupiscence must never the one absolute. All else is relative. Human get in the way of his service of God. But the affairs, for example, or temporal realities have detachment can be expressed as much in no permanent significance; they are mere dedication to building up the earth as flight to means, valuable in proportion to their the desert. “We at once see,” wrote Cardinal usefulness for the salvation of souls, but in Suhard, “on what conditions human endeavor themselves destined for the dust heap. is made possible and legitimate; it is not a In this perspective and in view of question of how much, or of where, but of the man’s weakness the only logical course of spirit.”3 action for the Christian is to consider this world a hazard and pitfall and to flee from it.

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Tutiorism takes over and counsels withdrawal own apostolic activity is caught up with from earthly concerns lest one be led astray. Christ. The spirituality of today is profoundly The practices of mortification aim to this-worldly, incarnational, even “religionless” neutralize the body’s influence; the senses and in Bonhoeffer’s sense. The world has been faculties are denied their proper objects in corrupted and used for sinful purposes, but it order to promote better equilibrium and allow is also a redeemed world, on its way to for the peaceful search of contemplative union complete redemption (Rom. 8, 2 1). There is with God. Silence and solitude discourage less concern today about sin in the world than dissipation and worldliness. Inordinate self- grace for the world, less thought about impure love is ruthlessly sought out in one’s every or ambivalent motivation in the Christian than action and directly dealt with either by his being an instrument of grace contributing rejection of the action or by protest; an to the extension of the kingdom of Christ on insurance against inordinate self-love is to earth. Sin and selfishness continue to be the seek the difficult rather than the easy, the blocks hindering the progress of the kingdom, unappealing instead of the pleasant. but these impediments are eased out by the Detachment rather than charity thus works of positive charity as effectively as by directs the ascetical efforts in this system. If direct confrontation. Today’s Christian looks God is to be encountered in prayer and upon efforts to neutralize or frustrate religious acts, it behooves a man to purify inordinate love as something outside the main himself of the profane and prepare his soul for axis of the spiritual endeavor. He is not the meeting. This he will do by putting off the concerned with purification but with old man and putting on the new. This commitment, and for him this means action, conversion is to be achieved by frustrating his work, doing for others. He is very optimistic, own earth-bound will, refusing his own sometimes quite presumptuous, in comfort, searching out the divine element in appropriating human motivations and all his acts. In the past this divine element identifying his projects as the work of the meant the good intention; a man had to justify Lord. He accepts difficulties; he knows he his works by the purity of his intention, since must rise above ambivalent or selfish feelings this gave the primary spiritual significance to and overcome frustrations, ingratitude and the his acts. In short, the spiritual life was a other obstacles to persevering efforts on his struggle between the two contraries of love of part. He thus finds abnegation and suffering in God and (inordinate) self-love. Cancel out the abundance. Self-imposed mortifications seem latter and the former will stand revealed in a contrived compared to the unavoidable crosses man’s life. The simplicity of this system has of the human condition. much to recommend it, but today one can This effort is sanctifying in proportion easily detect its weakness in its neglect of the to its virtuous character. It is a valid dimension of the temporal and created. implementation of the paschal mystery insofar The new asceticism differs from the as it is the incarnation of genuine charity. The old in many ways. Whereas the Christian of difference in the new asceticism, in other yesterday feared egoism and worldliness and words, is one of emphasis. The old asceticism tended to seek God outside this world in pure fought a rear-guard action and attempted to adoration, the Christian of today begins with keep the enemy outside the perimeter, to hunt himself and the world as he finds them and down and kill infiltrators that had penetrated expects to find God there. The resurrected into one’s own lines. The new asceticism is Christ lives and works now in the community offensive rather than defensive and carries the of his followers, and the Christian through his battle to new fields. It seeks to extend one’s

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own perimeter. It looks outward instead of presents a priestly asceticism of labor and inward; in fact, the new asceticism suspects care5 priests are encouraged to “cultivate the introspection, even for the purpose of asceticism proper to a pastor of souls, scrutinizing motives, and thinks introversion renouncing their own conveniences, seeking is a bad word. The new asceticism teaches a what is profitable for the many and not for way to God by extroversion, by action. It themselves”.6 tends to neglect contemplation, and this is one The main advantage of this kind of of its great weaknesses. But while the thrust of asceticism is that it finds God where God Christian love today is concern for the chooses to come to us, in the people we meet, redemption of the world rather than the work we do, the secular city we live in. contemplative union with the Lord, the apostle This down-to-earth emphasis precludes an soon realizes that these two goals coincide and unhealthy emotional withdrawal from the that both of them prosper or recede together. world about us on the plea of spiritual life. Such, then, are the two asceticisms, One can begin by striving to love nothing but described in black and white and hence God and end by loving neither the world nor caricatured to some extent. What is their God. This is a hazard of monastic flight or of a relative value? Can the second form replace fear of attachments that is premature or the first as the asceticism of our time? This is excessive. In other words, detachment, the question of the final section. consciously or unconsciously, can be used as an excuse for apathy to cloak over a selfish III. Evaluation of the Two refusal to be interested in others or to be Asceticisms involved in human tasks. This, of course, is a bogus spirituality that has received ample Vatican Council II reminds us that we criticism in our time. must continue to “bear about in our body the But there are also hazards in the new dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may 4 asceticism. Perhaps the most obvious one is also be made manifest in our bodily frame”. excessive optimism. Devotees tend to approve The Pauline phrase suggests the new all morally justifiable love and use of this asceticism, a putting to death of evil by world’s goods as authentic Christian action, indirection, i.e., by simply being a good without asking whether the usage or Christian, fulfilling obligations, accepting involvement is ordered and according to hardships and responding fully to the leading God’s will. “Incarnational” spirituality, as it is of the Spirit. Pauline asceticism is the gradual sometimes called, thus becomes the excuse for implementation of the exigencies of grace in self-indulgence. True incarnational spirituality all areas of a person’s life. It is not a technique is actually more demanding than the of neutralizing or deadening lower appetites in “eschatological” approach because it demands man in order to express later a higher activity, that the Christian relate positively to all reality but rather a response to the call of God to as containing its own measure of the mystery transcend oneself here and now in an act of of Christ. Intellectual honesty and objectivity love and service. The struggle is between as well as a purer love are demanded. sarkic-psychic man or man without grace and Eschatological attitudes can be pragmatic and the spiritual or pneumatic man who lives by utilitarian. It is often easier, moreover, to the Holy Spirit. strike out an attraction at one blow than The approach we have called the new continue to indulge the desire in proper asceticism is expressly taught in some of the moderation. “The royal road of the cross is no particular decrees. To cite but one example, more nor less than the road of human the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests

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endeavor supernaturally righted and his spiritual life is not structured around the prolonged,” said Teilhard de Chardin.7 problem of inordinate desires and attachments, However, the point is that the supernatural precisely because it is oriented to immediate righting and renewal are a real asceticism. action. Without constant checking a person can be Granting the new asceticism, will it swallowed up by his work or his pleasure, his bring the Christian to high sanctity? There projects facilely identified as God’s will, seems to be no good reason for limiting its duties neglected in favor of personal usefulness. A complete transformation must preferences. The new asceticism remains an take place, and this total love is won at the asceticism because it is the response to graced price of total abnegation. But the total reality in love and service. It is the way of the abnegation need not take the form described cross. by a St. John of the Cross. The Christian saint The most positive incarnationist must may well reach the heights in the world and therefore periodically withdraw, momentarily through the world; however, it will be through or at regular intervals, and, figuratively at approaching his life more and more as a least, go into the desert where he is face to service, a dedication and a love to the point face with himself and with God. He must where he is totally for the other, for God and reflect, pray, reorient himself. Otherwise he his fellowmen, and transcends his very self. will increase and the Lord decrease. Spiritual Until that point is reached he is serving two exercises like lectio divina and acts of masters. (Mt. 6, 24). But in the opinion of voluntary self-denial retain a real if limited many authors today there is no reason why a and less central place in his life. Some of the Christian cannot become totally identified old exercises, such as the discipline, can be with the one Master through the asceticism of discarded; others such as fasting need renewal love and service of God in the world. and reformation according to their real meaning and modern conditions. In any case

1 Interior Castle, “VII Mansions”, ch. 2, n. 7 2 H. deLubac, La pensie religieuse du Pere Teilhard de Chardin (Paris: Aubier, 1962), p.350. 3 “The Meaning of God,” in The Church Today (Chicago: Fides, 1953), p.211. 4 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, n. 12, citing 2 Cor. 4, 10 (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1964), p. 36. 5 Cf. nn. 5, 6, 12. 6 Cf. n. 13. 7 The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 78.

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