REIMAGINING MARIST FORMATION FOR DEEPER INTERIORITY:

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TRADITIONAL SOURCES AND THOMAS MERTON’S CONCEPTION OF INNER EXPERIENCE

by

Kevin Patrick Dobbyn fms

TTC (NZ), B.Theol, M.Couns (Massey), M.Theol (MCD)

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree

of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Divinity

2020

Declaration of originality

I hereby certify that this thesis is original material. Neither does it include material presented for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or other institution. To the best of my knowledge the thesis contains no other material previously published by another person apart from previously published material duly acknowledged and referenced in the text.

Signed: ______

Date: 6 October 2020 Word Count: 99,908

~ ii ~

Abstract

This thesis is premised on the observation that formation for Marist brotherhood and ministry has been marked by ample attention to behavioural expectations and preparation for active ministry but with insufficient attention to the formation of authentic inner experience flowing from the Christian mystical tradition. The thesis critiques the formation process for a deeper interior life in the vocation for Marist Brothers whose primary goal is ‘to follow Christ as Mary did’ in the ‘special call to live the brotherhood of Christ with everyone particularly with young people, loving them with a self-less love’.1 Addressing this issue requires processes that give greater emphasis to an ‘applied mystical theology’2 in the vocation of a Brother of Mary.

To this end, Thomas Merton’s integrity in the search to become truly himself in following Christ, his appropriation of the Christian spiritual tradition, and his work as formator within the Trappist community, led him to discover the tools which can be used to discern authentic ‘inner’ experience. As an educator and formator of young people (student monks) he serves as an exemplar for Marist Brothers to live with greater interiority the transcendence of the self in its unique expression in consecrated life.

In conversation between the sources of the inspirational founding period of the Little Brothers of Mary and Merton’s insights, Marist formation for a deeper interiority can enable today’s Brothers to live afresh and more fully the spirit of the charism as Marcellin Champagnat and the first Superior General, Br François Rivat intended.

1 Marist Brothers of the Schools or Little Brothers of Mary, “Constitutions and Statutes” (Marist Brothers’ General House, ed. 2010), §3, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/constitutions2011_en.pdf, accessed April 7, 2019. 2 Len Kofler, “Formation Today,” The Furrow 62, no. 5 (May 2011): 295. ~ iii ~

Contents

Declaration of originality ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Contents ...... iv Acknowledgements ...... ix Dedication ...... xi Abbreviations ...... xii Works by Merton ...... xii Marist Documents ...... xiii Monograph page numbering ...... xiii Glossary ...... xiv Introduction...... 1 Chapter 1 ...... 6 Experience in the Formation of Christian spirituality Introduction ...... 6 Formation from a cosmic perspective ...... 7 Experience as the building block of consciousness ...... 8 Relationship as the teacher of consciousness...... 9 Formation towards inner experience ...... 10 Experience as the birthplace of meaning ...... 11 Accessing ‘inner experience’ ...... 15 The emergence of the spiritual in experience ...... 16 Experience within the Christian context of faith ...... 17 The temporal aspect of experience ...... 19 From personal experience to spirituality...... 21 The roots of spirituality ...... 22 The necessity of authenticating inner experience-in-faith ...... 27 Experience or encounter? ...... 29 From religious tradition to inner experience to spirituality ...... 29 An aggiornamento of Christian spirituality ...... 31 Conclusion ...... 34 Chapter 2 ...... 36 Inner Experience in Faith Tested by Tradition Introduction ...... 36

~ iv ~

The Christian Wisdom Tradition ...... 37 The New Testament sources of inner experience ...... 38 Divinization as the transformation of inner experience ...... 42 Irenaeus and Clement ...... 42 Origen: ‘kissed by God’ ...... 44 Augustine: divine indwelling through the Spirit ...... 46 Bernard of Clairvaux – divinizing love: loving as God loves ...... 48 Early Modern Catholic awakenings to interiority ...... 52 The Spanish stream ...... 52 The French revival ...... 63 Vatican II: all are called to the one holiness ...... 74 Conclusion ...... 77 Chapter 3 ...... 80 Thomas Merton: Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Introduction ...... 80 Merton as one for whom ‘only experience counts’ ...... 81 The inner world is the entire source of life and love ...... 82 Merton: Master of attention to the world of ‘inner experience’ ...... 84 Questioning experience: Merton’s approach to forming interiority ...... 85 Different types of inner experience...... 88 Journaling the question ...... 96 Merton’s unifying goal: freeing the inmost self-in-God ...... 96 Merton as one who dives beneath the surface of experience ...... 98 To the inner self in simply being ...... 99 an ‘entire substantial reality’ ...... 100 Merton as an experiential educator of the true self / false self ...... 100 Faith: the formative environment for the inner life of the true self ...... 102 Experience-in-faith means engaging in love ...... 102 With the ability to distinguish between interior and exterior self ...... 104 Awakening to the inner self through detachment from the exterior ...... 105 And to know the inner self of Christian experience-in-faith ...... 105 To confront the illusory self by intentional self-awareness ...... 106 In solitude and its accompanying silence...... 108 Toward the gradual emergence of an authentic inner self ...... 112

~ v ~

The end of experience ...... 116 Conclusion ...... 118 Chapter 4 ...... 121 Formation for Marist Interiority: Inspiration and Adjustment Introduction ...... 121 A charism inspired by a need ...... 123 A spirituality formed by the inner experience of faith ...... 125 A fundamental approach in the formation of interiority ...... 128 An intuitive knowledge of the dispositions necessary in a candidate ...... 128 The formator as one who engenders affective, authentic friendship ...... 130 Br François as one whose interior life is expressed outwardly ...... 131 The formator as one who lives interiority in all its phases ...... 134 as one who encourages fervour and devotion ...... 137 as one who is a future-focused encourager ...... 138 Champagnat as the ‘textual’ source of interiority ...... 139 An interiority grounded in love...... 141 ‘You yourselves give them what you have’ (Mk 6:36) ...... 144 Educating for interiority ...... 147 The uniqueness of the person ...... 147 Prayer and practice ...... 148 Community as instrument in the formation for interiority...... 150 Dimensions of interiority for religious life ...... 151 Specific aspects of formation for interiority ...... 151 From visionary zeal to institutionalised memory ...... 156 Forming the inner life of brothers in the midst of apostolic activity ...... 156 Conclusion ...... 159 Chapter 5 ...... 161 Towards Deeper Interiority for Marists: conversatio divina through courageous vulnerability Introduction ...... 161 ‘to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time’ ...... 162 Experience as the soil of the interior life ...... 163 Humility as the compost for growing a deeper interiority ...... 167 The formative environment necessary for ‘the spirit of faith’ ...... 175 The practice of the presence of God ...... 176 The necessity of studying spirituality ...... 178 ~ vi ~ Silence and solitude ...... 183 Attention to and reflection upon inner experience ...... 185 Openness to the variety of experience ...... 185 Dreams, the consciousness of sleep ...... 186 Trusting vulnerability as a means to encounter the divine ...... 188 Writing as a source of discovering the inner self ...... 189 Developing an interiority open to the universal ...... 190 Marist interiority amid the blossoming variety of inner experiences ...... 193 Conclusion ...... 196 Chapter 6 ...... 199 By way of a conclusion: towards a ‘School of Interiority’ Experience-in-faith as the foundation of a ‘school of interiority ...... 199 Discernment through the test of Tradition ...... 200 Incarnational inner experience as the path to deeper interiority ...... 201 Through a ressourcement of the re-spirited original charism ...... 202 The building blocks of a ressourcement ‘School of Interiority’ ...... 203 Elements of the ‘curricula’...... 204 The Marist Sources ...... 205 Interfaith dialogue and participation ...... 205 With Champagnat Marists as ‘Brothers of Mary’ ...... 205 Epilogue ...... 207 Abrupt and interrupted to fellow Christ-bearers Bibliography ...... 209 Web page references ...... 288 Appendix A ...... 230 The Changing Language of the Rules/Constitutions ...... 230 The Common Rules of 1947 and 1960 ...... 230 The ‘Disruption’ of Vatican II ...... 232 The specific call of the Church to religious: Perfectae Caritatis ...... 233 The response of the Marist Brothers to Vatican II ...... 233 Formation of brothers (1986-93) ...... 236 A linguistic shift to the mystical ...... 236 An overview of the 20th century Formation Guide ...... 239

~ vii ~ Elements of the formation for interiority ...... 240 Accompaniment ...... 240 Discernment ...... 241 Initiation into the world of the Spirit, ...... 242 Studies: professional and religious ...... 242 Insertion ...... 243 Essential tools of interiority ...... 244 Silence ...... 244 Solitude ...... 245 Appendix B ...... 247 Humility and nothingness in contemporary Marist texts ...... 247 Appendix C ...... 253 Principles and Practices of Dream Work ...... 253 Principles...... 253 An Example of Practice in Dream Work ...... 254 Dreams and Dreaming: a preliminary list ...... 255 A list of journaling resources ...... 257

~ viii ~ Acknowledgements

I have first of all to thank Br David McDonald, as Provincial and then District Leader of the Pacific, and Br John Hazelman who followed him, for encouraging me in this work. It would not have happened without the generosity of the Australian Government for granting me the scholarship to both begin and complete this work.

I wish to thank also Maryanne Confoy who encouraged me in my undergraduate studies and who introduced this very slow learner into the craft of academic writing. My counselling supervisor, Margaret Bowater, was also very encouraging even if the thesis took a different turn to what we both initially dreamed of. I have much to be grateful for in my supervisors: Michael Green for his historical exactitude and genuine 'Marist-ness' and Micheál Loughnane whose Jesuit spirituality is grounded in an understanding of Merton as teacher and formator. Their expertise, their patience and helpful suggestions enabled me to fine-tune not just my thinking but how I expressed it. Any flaws are mine, not theirs.

Thanks are due also to the Brothers of the Province of Australia, to Br Peter Carroll, the Provincial and the hospitable welcome and conversations I had with brothers: Justin Guthrie when I stopped in Fitzroy in the early stages and Hubert Williams and Julian Casey in Coburg. I was privileged to spend most of 2019 in Coburg to begin the writing in earnest. For two to three days a week I had a delightful space at the Jesuit College of Spirituality where, sharing lunch with Deb, Micheál, Kat and Sarah, we would have the most wide-ranging and interesting conversations. Thanks also to Brothers John McMahon and Edward Clisby, holders of Marist archives in Melbourne and Auckland respectively, and to the Brothers of my own district, Romuald Gibson and Kevin Wanden who read, corrected and commented on parts of earlier and near final drafts.

Closer to home, I have Covid-19 to thank for the imposed isolation. It began in the Brothers of the district allowing me our beach house. When Covid-19 imposed the heavy restrictions of movement, I had to move to allow the newly appointed leader to self-isolate upon his return from Rome. So I have my brother Dave and his wife Liesje to thank for the use of their bach (holiday house). For the eight weeks of strict lockdown, it became an unexpected way of seriously introducing me to the solitude and silence that so captivated the early Christian mystics, through to Marcellin Champagnat, Gabriel Rivat (Brother François) and to Thomas Merton.

~ ix ~ It goes without saying that no such venture as this can happen without the kind generosity of librarians: those at Dalton McCaughey Library in Melbourne, the John Kinder Theological Library and the Eugene O’Sullivan Library in Auckland. My thanks are equally due to the Merton Legacy Trust for making so much of Thomas Merton’s writing available as published material. I owe thanks also to the Research Office of the University of Divinity with its supportive, encouraging staff in what is now the School of Graduate Research; and finally, thanks also to Margaret Stiles for her proof-reading.

An acknowledgement of thanks would not be complete without recognising the many supportive friends both in Australia, the U.S. and in New Zealand who have been not only encouraging but who have challenged me by their questions and their friendship. To name them would be to risk unintentionally leaving some excluded; as one becomes more centred on living in Christ, then a universal mind and heart can only be inclusive. They remind me that the heart of a deep interiority is the universe Itself in all Its diversity.

~ x ~ Dedication

To my father, who taught me the tenderness of God and my mother whose creative generosity taught me how to give.

To the young adults, single and married, in partnership and with families, and new brothers among them. They have welcomed me into their lives. I am richly blessed by their friendship and love.

~ xi ~ Abbreviations

Vatican Documents AL Amoris Laetitia EG Evangelii Gaudium FC Familiaris Consortio GS Gaudium et Spes IMRB The Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church LG Lumen Gentium LS Laudato Si MC Marialis Cultis PC Perfectae Caritatis RM Redemptoris Mater VC Vita Consecrata VS Veritatis Splendor

Works by Merton

ACCM A Course in Christian Mysticism CGB Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander CP Contemplative Prayer CWA Contemplation in a World of Action DQ Disputed Questions DWL Dancing in the Water of Life ETS Entering the Silence F&V Faith and Violence HGL The Hidden Ground of Love ICM An Introduction to Christian Mysticism IE The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation L&L Love and Living LTL Learning to Love NSC New Seeds of Contemplation

~ xii ~ OSM The Other Side of the Mountain RMW Reflections on My Work RTM Run to the Mountain SFS A Search for Solitude SJ The Sign of Jonas SL The Silent Life SSM The Seven Storey Mountain TIS Thoughts in Solitude TTW Turning Toward the World WD The Wisdom of the Desert WTF Witness to Freedom ZBA Zen and the Birds of Appetite

Marist Documents

C&S Constitutions and Statues of the Marist Brothers (1986/2010) FG Formation Guide (1994, 2006 repr.) RL Wherever You Go – Rule of Life of the Marist Brothers (2019) WfR Water from the Rock: Marist Spirituality in the Tradition of Marcellin Champagnat (2007) Life Life of Joseph Benedict Marcellin Champagnat (Bicentenary edition 1989) AFM Archives of the Marist Brothers, General House, Rome Letters of Marcellin J. B. Champagnat 1789-1840, Vol.1 Texts (1991) The numbers in boldface type refer to the letters, those in ordinary type to the page numbers of the volume, e.g. Letters, 1:64, Doc.23 = Letters V.1, p.64, Document/Letter 23.

Monograph page numbering Some e-books are published without the page numbering of the printed edition. Excepting those in Kindle Reader for Windows, those e-books, regardless of the font size, do have a fixed number of ‘pages’ which can be read in either Mantano/Bookari, Librera, or Adobe Digital Editions (Adobe PDF). Pages are referred to as # / #, e.g. 271/491 where the first number indicates the page reference and the number after the forward slash represents the full number of pages of the digital book.

~ xiii ~ Glossary Postulant One who begins the first formal stage of formation for religious life. Novice A person who has chosen and been accepted to begin an intensive two-year period of preparation to become a Religious, in this case, a Marist Brother. Scholastic A period of further personal and spiritual formation that includes periods of community and missionary experience Candidate One who is thinking of joining the Brothers and taking part in various activities at his local level and in partnership with Lay Marists and Brothers. Religious Life The term used to denote those who make a vowed commitment to live their consecrated life as members of a particular congregation or order within a recognised charism recognised by the Church. Religious When capitalised, one or many who live the consecrated life in a group so recognised officially in the Church.

~ xiv ~ Introduction

The motivation for this thesis began some thirty-five years ago in a conversation with one of our senior brothers during a drive to the village in which he grew up, a village not far from the outskirts of the town where many brothers made their novitiate. What captured my imagination was his relating an experience he had had when he was a novice; he named that experience as an encounter with God. It triggered the memory of an experience I had had, also as a novice. I listened intently as he related how he had drawn upon that experience as a tangible memory for when times were good as well as during the difficult times of leadership in schools and of the brothers. The memory of that experience continued to sustain his inner life now that he had retired.

At the time, I recall thinking that this was the kind of story all young (and not so young) brothers should hear. Marist Brothers in the 1970s and 1980s had a global reputation for being hard workers. Unfortunately, with some superb exceptions, they had a lesser reputation for being men of prayer. During my years in Kiribati since then, I had developed an interest in dreams and inner experiences, the kind that are not scientifically quantifiable and which cannot be verified other than by the person relating their experience. Recalling my own encounter with Mystery, I renewed an interest in the mystical literature of the Christian Tradition that had awakened my heart and soul after my own direct and original encounter with the love of God. So, I began listening with interest to others’ experiences, particularly during the many years I have been involved with accompanying other young adults in vocation ministry, as well as in the different stages of initial formation for religious life.

That work led to a research project into the inculturation of Marcellin Champagnat’s Marist charism in Kiribati: how to live that charism no longer in its French origins, nor in its New Zealand cultural expressions but in its Kiribati form. While that thesis is finished, the inculturation of Marist spirituality in that land is still in the process of becoming, as Marist communities become more global and intercultural at every local level, where the responsibility for Champagnat’s spirituality shifts primarily to those of the local culture. In continuing work with young people in Kiribati, especially those considering priesthood or religious life for women and men, I developed an interest in dreams and dream-like experiences as a kind of threshold into the mystical life of Christians. With the approval of the Human Research Ethics Committee, I began some initial research listening to dreams and other alternately conscious experiences of several brothers and some priests. However, despite the wariness of the academe to venture into the alternate

~ 1 ~ Introduction consciousness from which dreams can arise,3 notwithstanding examples of such in both the First and New Testament Scriptures,4 it is nonetheless appropriate to examine encounters with what believers perceive as a spiritual or religious experience of the divine; moreover, there is more to human experience than what is termed ‘religious’ experience.

This has led me to examine inner experience in faith. This is the kind of experience of which Thomas Merton writes, the experiences of one’s inner, as well as outer world and their integration. Faith is the context of one’s experiences, both internal and external, both conscious and alternately conscious. Faith in this sense has little to do with doctrine or dogma or a set of beliefs, although they are part of the whole; so that faith is the striving for truth and the knowledge of one’s deepest self in relationship with the Divine. Alternately conscious experiences, such as dreams or visions, are only part of that faith journey leading one into deeper trust, true humility, and greater openness to love. The investigation, therefore, raises several questions:

• What is the inner experience of faith and how can it be better formed and deepened?

• How can inner experience be shared so that one’s own and the faith of others may be enriched?

• What further processes need to be in place so that Brothers of Mary might strike a better balance between and integration of the mystical, prophetic life and the mission and ministry to young people in need?

3 One can only surmise that the academe has yet to incorporate psychology and its development past Freud and Jung through to the field of transpersonal psychology and religious studies both of which, together with the other human sciences are part of the multi-disciplinary study of spirituality. See Kelly Bulkeley, “Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice,” Anthropology of Consciousness 7, no. 2 (1996): 1–15; Kelly Bulkeley, Spiritual Dreaming: A Cross-Cultural and Historical Journey (New York: Paulist Press, 1995); Stanley Krippner, Christophe Jaeger, and Laura Faith, “Identifying and Utilizing Spiritual Content in Dream Reports,” Dreaming 11, no. 3 (2001): 127; Harris L. Friedman and Glenn Hartelius, eds, The Wiley- Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2013). 4 The following authors are but a sample of scholars who have examined such experiences: B. J. Koet, “Divine Dream Dilemmas: Biblical Visions and Dreams,” in Dreaming in Christianity and Islam (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 17–31; B. J. Koet, ed., Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas, Studies in the history and anthropology of religion 3 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012); Kate Adams, B. J. Koet, and Barbara Koning, Dreams and Spirituality: A Handbook for Ministry, Spiritual Direction and Counselling, 2015; John J. Pilch, Flights of the Soul: Visions, Heavenly Journeys, and Peak Experiences in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011); John B. F. Miller, “Convinced That God Had Called Us”: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God’s Will in Luke-Acts, Biblical interpretation series v. 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); John B. F. Miller, “Dreams/Visions and the Experience of God in Luke-Acts,” in Experientia: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1, Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 40 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 177–192; Bonnelle Lewis Strickling, Dreaming about the Divine (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007).

~ 2 ~ Introduction

Thomas Merton is one who woke up to a conversion as more than simply becoming Catholic or becoming a monk. As one who took notice of all his experience and who regarded experience as crucial to understanding self in living the Christ-life, he was determined to know more of his inner self. In waking up to his inner self, his whole life became focused on unearthing what he named as his true self, his ‘inmost self-in-God.’ At the same time, he was a formator of novices and scholastic monks throughout the momentous changes to religious life through the Vatican II shifts in the perception of the Church in the modern world. With his writing and teaching commitments, including his own journaling, as well as his one-to-one accompaniment of young men at the initial stages of formation, he was no less busy than many Marist Brothers have been as educators, which makes him an exemplar from whom Brothers of Mary can learn today. Just as Merton was able to integrate aspects of his inner self and live more contemplatively an interiority enabling his true self-in-God to emerge, so with a return to their own mystical roots, Marist Brothers also have the potential to set their hearts and the world on fire. In the Vatican II call for religious to return to their origins and update for the present era, the research of many Marist scholars and historians reveal dimensions of the spirituality of the Little Brothers of Mary that reflect an interiority drawing on the deep mystical river of Christianity. This thesis will endeavour to answer the questions posed above through engaging with the deep mystical Tradition of the Church, with Merton’s insights as well as those drawn from early Marist spirituality; it is hoped that through a conversation with these sources, a formation for a deeper Marist interiority will be realised in a truly mystical and prophetic Marist Brotherhood.

Chapter 1 establishes working definitions for this thesis of the principal terms of the title: formation, experience, inner experience or interiority, and Christian spirituality. Each of those key words is a thesis in itself; hence, for the purpose of this research, a working description suffices.

To cover the mystical tradition of the Church, naturally begins with the experiences of the first Christians, especially as contained in the New Testament. Next in line in Chapter 2 are the Patristic writers who emphasize that any reflection upon experience must be linked with that very personal encounter one has with the Risen Christ. That reflection becomes theology. Throughout the Christian Tradition, an originating encounter with Christ cannot be separated from one’s reflection on that experience; in short, spirituality cannot be separated from theology. The chapter covers the tradition in very broad sweeps, but, in its second half, focuses on the saints and mystics who have contributed to what is Marist spirituality through its originating charism in Marcellin Champagnat and his foundational companions.

~ 3 ~ Introduction

In Chapter 3, the monk and writer Thomas Merton has insights into interiority because not only did he count experience as its foundation, but he gained insights into the world of inner experience through his own authentic search for God, a search that was steeped in his experience- in-faith. Through his study of the deep tradition, in the light of his own experience, he gained the insight that experience-in-faith leads to a greater awareness of one’s inmost self, an inmost self- in-God, which is the fullest way to be human: by the freedom of being in Christ. His insights into the formation of that inmost self reveal the necessity of distinguishing the true self from the false self, and the necessary attributes needed for the true self to emerge, and therefore, to attain in some measure, the union with God that is the innate, if unknown, desire of every human being.

While Merton insisted that it is only experience that counts, his writing clarified that it is not enough; what is demanded is deep retrospective reflection on all experience, including that gained through reading and study, which can provide the language for interpreting experience. That encounter can awaken the inner self to the possibility for conversion, never a once-only experience, but an ongoing process in which a person awakens to a growing awareness of the true self; for it is only in the true self that a person can discover their oneness with Christ and ‘taste’ that union with God.

Chapter 4 begins with the period, two hundred years ago, which saw the beginnings of a group known as the Little Brothers of Mary whose founder, Marcellin Champagnat, taught a path of interiority to country lads; in time they became the Marist Brothers of the Schools. His spirituality, and their interpretation of it, in those foundational years of the charism has formed and continues to form Champagnat Marists today, both brothers and lay members. Like most religious congregations and orders, Vatican II gave birth to an upheaval which, in the third decade of the 21st century has ‘widened the space of their tent,’ to include people in a variety of vocations. The chapter lays out the formative approaches of Champagnat and the solid foundations of a Marist interiority established in the difficult years of balancing an active, apostolic life with a contemplative attitude to ministry in the mission of making Jesus known and loved. It is the intention to focus on interiority rather than to address everything that the Formation Guide outlines. At the beginning of the third decade of this century, that there exists a solid formation for interiority is essential to the renewed vitality in so-called ‘apostolic religious’ congregations.

~ 4 ~ Introduction

Initially, Chapter 5 is a return to those founding origins through the vision of Champagnat’s successor, Gabriel Rivat (Brother François),5 as he endeavoured to remind the brothers of the importance of the work of interiority; the ‘inner work’ so crucial to developing a Christocentric spirituality through the embrace of Mary. It is at this point that a conversation can begin with the insights Thomas Merton can offer, both in those made explicit in his writing, as well as those he demonstrated in his living contemplatively what was an equally busy lifestyle to that of the majority of Marist Brothers of last century, as well as those of the 21st century. Such a conversation has the potential to enrich Marist interiority so that Brothers of Mary can give birth to Christ in their hearts and in their world, becoming the prophetic mystics Marcellin and Superiors General since have urged them to be.6

A way forward in Chapter 6, is a ‘school of interiority’ which serves as a conclusion in which several avenues are suggested as further enrichment for a deeper Marist interiority. As illustrated throughout the thesis, and backed up by the inner experience of Thomas Merton, the deep interiority to which Marists are called, must be grounded in the rich mystical Tradition of the Church. At the same time, such Christocentric mysticism that is Marial must be open to ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue in a rapidly changing world that demands inter-disciplinary collaboration at every local level while also on a global and universal scale.

5 Throughout the thesis the first Superior General after the Founder, is referred to as ‘Brother François’ or simply ‘François,’ while the footnotes refer to his family name in referenced works. The same method is adopted also for other early brothers whose works are either referred to or quoted. 6 Interiority has been given renewed and urgent emphasis in the first circular of Superior General Br Ernesto Sanchez Barba, “Homes of Light” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, September 8, 2020), 19–35.

~ 5 ~

Chapter 1

Experience in the Formation of Christian spirituality

Introduction

In the early hours of 14 November 2016, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale hit the town of Kaikoura, New Zealand and was felt in many parts of the country, with concomitant tsunami and flood warnings in low-lying parts of the coastline and the lower North Island. Such unsettling planetary events, accompanied by heavy storms and flooding in other parts of the country, the disrupted infrastructure, the fractured homes and lives of the small town of Seddon, including death and injury indicate how fragile is human dwelling on the plane. Of significance, in relation to this particular earthquake, was the visible shift in the earth’s surface. A reef that was once the hidden home of mussels and crayfish on the Kaikoura coastline has now surfaced above sea level. This event clearly illustrates that the formation of the earth is an ongoing process that takes aeons.7 As the context and environment for conscious human beings, formation occurs in ways that enhance ‘our common home’8 as the compassionate activities of the Student Volunteer Army demonstrated during the days following the tragic Christchurch earthquake in 2010.9

Like the formation of the earth itself, human formation is a gradual process, taking a lifetime that includes a multitude of experiences. Situating the human person in the cosmic context places the human being in the larger context of the created universe. From a cosmic perspective, then, human formation is an ongoing evolving process. Christian formation, and Marist formation, therefore, is a developing journey, which the 1986 Formation Guide (and its later editions) has largely considered in an approach that such a formation intends.10 This thesis aims to go beneath the surface of Christian practice and address the inner experience that leads

7 de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard. The Human Phenomenon (Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2003), 33; Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2004), 4. 8 Pope Francis, “Laudato Si’,” §13, last modified May 24, 2015, accessed May 12, 2019, hereafter, LS, http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa- francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf. 9 “UC Student Volunteer Army,” Student Volunteer Army, accessed January 4, 2017, http://www.sva.org.nz/. 10 Marist Brothers, “Formation Guide” (FMS General House, Rome, 1994), §§87, 147, hereafter FG, accessed January 9, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/documenti_maristi/GuidaFormazione93_EN.pdf. ~ 6 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 to a deeper Marist interiority for the Marist Brothers of today. This chapter examines the principal language used as expressed in its title, an understanding of which provides the foundation for understanding the thrust of the thesis: formation, experience, interiority or inner experience, and Christian spirituality.

Formation from a cosmic perspective

The cosmos has taken nearly 14 billion years of continual formation to the present era in which the dynamic unfolding of life has led to the evolution of more and more complex lifeforms.11 This dynamic unfolding is a kind of primal Energy in which life is lived ‘within the streaming mutual life of the universe.’12 This pulsating Energy has given rise to the emergence of human beings through whom the cosmos is gradually becoming conscious.13 Consciousness, which is ‘woven into the fabric of the universe,’14 includes all the mental activities in the complexity of the human mind in which the formational activity of the cosmos becomes self- reflective. Formation is an evolving process:

[in which the] evolution of matter from the beginning leads to the evolution of consciousness in [human beings]; it is the universe itself which becomes conscious in [human being] … It is the inner movement of the Spirit, immanent in nature, which brings about the evolution of matter and life into consciousness and the same Spirit at work in human consciousness, latent in every [human being], is always at work leading to divine life.15 While others refer to this Energy as ‘Cosmic Consciousness,’16 the ‘Cosmic Player,’17 or the Transcendent, as well as Brahman and other names, Bede Griffiths names It as Spirit whose aim is to draw human consciousness into the life of God. In becoming conscious, human beings initially rely on the five senses which contribute to the development of memory. Memory is the bank from which people draw out selected images and events, thereby creating a narrative which contributes to a developing identity of the self. For example, one may not be conscious of this or that childhood memory, but a walk past the smell of a certain shrub or hedge may trigger a

11 Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, Kindle, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), Loc. 654/4418. 12 Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald G Smith, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 15. 13 de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon, 153–54. 14 Stuart Hameroff, “Overview by SH | Quantum Consciousness,” accessed January 7, 2017, http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/content/overview-sh. 15 Bede Griffiths, Return to the Centre (London: Collins, 1976), 31. 16 Richard Maurice Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (Philadelphia: Innes & Sons, 1905). 17 Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968), 76, hereafter ZBA; Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, ed. Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1975), 350, hereafter AJ. ~ 7 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality remembered event of feeding horses over a fence; with that image are associations of the people within that episode together with the accompanying emotional content which colours the memory. While consciousness includes memory, a more developed consciousness has the capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection upon experiences gained through the five senses in the external world, and the inclusion of experiences of the inner world through feeling, dreams, thought and imagination. Humanity’s great advances stem from persons’ abilities to carefully observe, examine and discern what emerges from the wealth of human experience.18

Experience as the building block of consciousness

No one can ever be completely known either by self or others, except by God. It is in one’s experiences that one begins to know and recognise the complexity of being. But it is only with reflection on experience that one realises in ever deepening degrees one’s consciousness. Consciousness, suggests John O’Donohue, ‘is the subtle light which coaxes experience to yield its meaning.’19 Consciousness makes use of memory, and like the cloud one uses to store files, can download, for example, a past childhood episode, which slips into the working computer of one’s consciousness, even if that consciousness is asleep or hibernating; an experience can be brought to mind by some interaction with another person, place or thing. Consciousness, like an Internet server, initiates an ongoing, circular three-way conversation between experience, memory and itself.20 Working together they shape one’s identity into a narrative which allows for experiences to be revisited many times so that one discovers at ever greater depths that there is more to knowing one’s self, the starting point of meaning. This dynamic therefore means that formation of human consciousness in a person21 is a process of integrating one’s experiences in the external world with one’s inner world, by which one learns to live an interiority authentically connected to the four relationships: self, others, world, and God.

18 Diarmuid O’Murchu, In the Beginning Was the Spirit: Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012), 5. 19 John O’Donohue, “Spirituality as the Art of Real Presence,” The Way - supplement 92 (1998): 86. 20 Ibid. 21 Beatrice Bruteau distinguishes between individual and person. An individual, as an infant, lives at the first stage of reflexivity; evolution towards greater reflexivity enables human beings to become conscious of being conscious which means an interior activity and new awareness of the interiority of others creating the potential for communion in consciousness, even more so when people are united in Christ. Noted in Beatrice Bruteau and Ilia Delio, eds., Personal Transformation and New Creation: Essays in Honor of Beatrice Bruteau (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2016), 115. ~ 8 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1

Relationship as the teacher of consciousness It is in relationships that a person fully develops as a human being. Formation for relationships, and therefore in consciousness, begins with primal carers and gradually to a wider circle of other human beings through family, culture, and society, and eventually through relationship with Mystery whom Christians name as God.22 It is in relationship that the Spirit energises human consciousness through the interactions human beings have with the created world, including those they have with one another.

If human interaction is to move to relationship, there are essential components required for a connection to be termed ‘relationship,’ the principal of which is trust, also expressed as ‘faith in’ something or someone, which is very different to ‘belief’: beliefs can be held lightly and do not necessarily require commitment, such as a ‘belief about’ some fact or other to be true or false.23 On the other hand, one can have faith in an altruistic value like compassion or in an ultimate value such as faith in Jesus as the Way to be fully human. Through this kind of trusting relationship, a person becomes aware of one’s own self with the potential for relationship with the totally Other, particularly when that Other is embodied in the Christ. Consciousness at this level presumes an evolution from matter to spirit24 into the kind of relationships no longer confined to the biological human being.25 Intrinsic to human consciousness is the capacity for the human being, to not only sustain and develop relationships with self, others and the created world but to transcend one’s material environment towards communion with and in God, in the energy of the Spirit who brings about a transformation in Christ in the person.26 Formation, therefore, is not simply about human being, but human becoming,27 of which inner experience is the foundation.

22 Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 100–06. 23 Harvey G. Cox, The Future of Faith (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), 8/223, accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.contentreserve.com/TitleInfo.asp?ID={243F1527-3517-49C8-B157- 583909324C28}&Format=410. 24 de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon, 216–18, 222–23. 25 Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness, Catholicity in an evolving universe (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 53. 26 Carla Mae Streeter, Foundations of Spirituality: The Human and the Holy: A Systematic Approach (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 40–41. 27 David G. Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2012), 69. ~ 9 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality

Formation towards inner experience

Like the formation of the cosmos human formation is a gradual process. The ongoing conversion of the ‘not there yet’ Christian life is a gradual process which takes account of ordinary human development. Catholic teaching speaks of the ‘law of graduality,’ initially in terms of moral theology;28 it applies also to wider issues of human, societal and planetary development.29 Although biological development is generally a linear path, spiritual transformation tends to be ongoing, but through circuitous routes of meaning and a series of awakening moments.30 Those moments trigger an awakening to and awareness of the self; but self-awareness is not a ‘once only’ event. Instead, there are successive awakenings challenging a person to become more and more authentic.

Those awakenings or moments of insight have the potential to lead one to greater interior depth. With self-reflection as the groundwork of one’s consciousness, a person develops, usually in a gradual way, the self-awareness of one’s whole being in relation to the self (interiority)’ the world, and others including God in the Christian tradition (exteriority).31 The foundation block of that consciousness is enhanced by self-reflection upon experience. It is this inner experience, which in fact is the interpretation of one’s experiences – and their cognitive, imaginative and emotional aspects – that awakens a person to one’s inner self where may be discovered an ‘inner world of thoughts and emotions, a world of imagination and dreams, a world that contains a shadowy “I”, a mysterious person … who appears to be able to watch and observe both the outer and inner worlds.’32

28 Pope John Paul II, “Veritatis Splendor,” §119, last modified August 6, 1993, accessed April 18, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis- splendor.html; “Familiaris Consortio,” §§9, 34, last modified November 22, 1981, accessed April 18, 2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp- ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html. 29 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia (2016), §§ 293–97, hereafter AL; Pope Francis, LS, §§ 9, 102, 180. 30 Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation, 68. 31 John A. Berry, “What Makes Us Human? Augustine on Interiority, Exteriority and the Self,” Scientia et Fides 5, no. 2 (August 24, 2017): 87–88. 32 David Fontana, The Meditation Handbook: The Practical Guide to Eastern and Western Meditation Techniques (London: Watkins, 2010), 3–4. ~ 10 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1

Experience as the birthplace of meaning Experience involves the interplay of inner and outer happenings in human lives. Those happenings or events may appear random, but instead they are pre-conditioned.33 It is impossible for one to take into one’s consciousness everything that happens in the course of a day. Certain experiences are selected over others dependent upon the cultural background, personal history, the intellectual and emotional content, and worldview of one person or another. What one receives and focuses upon through the five senses is ‘filtered’ and that innate filtering is brought to every experience a person has.34 It means that an experience is brought into an inner world already made up of instinctual needs and fears, prejudices, interests, likes and dislikes, loves and thoughts, stories and imagination. In this complex inner life of the person are found various mental and intentional commitments, promises, and intended actions that form part of one’s external experiences; these involve other persons, events, and things in one’s engagement with the physical environment.35

The reflective self pieces together the different experiences, interpreting them within one’s inner world; then, through retrospective analysis, one adds the associated emotional and imaginal content to create a narrative,36 which forms a story of the self. That self-story is a construction,37 an ‘ego-identity’38 but one through which a person finds meaning for understanding oneself. That identity is basically stable, although further life experiences can alter the meaning one attaches to one’s identity, when external events and circumstances can, and do, challenge one’s previous ideas of the self.

Whether or not a person’s experience is rich and meaningful, whether their interpretation of their experience makes sense, depends on how much one is prepared to notice and observe in their environment both inner and outer events.39 Though the five senses may be the starting point for an interpretation of experience, the art of knowing oneself, of the self, observing and noticing oneself, is self-awareness. True self-awareness leads a person beyond the senses, beyond the

33 Tad Dunne, “Experience,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 368. 34 Ibid., 367. 35 Ibid. 36 David Brian Perrin, Studying Christian Spirituality (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007), 48–49. 37 Dan P. McAdams, “Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Framework for Studying Persons,” Psychological Inquiry 7, no. 4 (1996), 295–321. 38 Not to be confused with false self, this ego-identity is normal development of the first half of life. 39 Dunne, “Experience,” 368. ~ 11 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality knowledge gained through the materiality and physicality of the senses.40 If self-awareness is authentic, however, one can never be isolated from one’s environment which necessarily involves one in relationship with others, with the world, with the self, giving rise to the existential questions that life (in all its complexity) asks of the person. Experience at this level becomes participatory because self-awareness brings one into relationship and potential communion with other self-aware persons and therefore to the possibility of love. That possibility in which one becomes much more aware of one’s interiority demands, not only trust, but a certain vulnerability in one’s relationships with other people,41 necessarily some more than others. In the experience of being loved and loving one awakens to the all-loving Other whom Christians name as God, embodied in Jesus the Christ. This is the stance from which this thesis addresses inner experience as both practice (experimental), and reflective (experiential).42 That stance is shaped by Catholic tradition and in the spirituality whose guiding star is the mother of Jesus through the pathway cut by Marcellin Champagnat and his first companions; its vowed expression is in the Religious Life of Marist brotherhood.

To be Christian is to love God wholeheartedly with the heart, the soul, one’s strength and mind, and love of neighbour as oneself (Lk 10:27). This is the teaching of Jesus who summed up the laws of the Torah. Once a person has encountered God as the ultimate reality in their life, this two-fold law becomes the natural response to knowing, rather than believing, that ‘love is from God… [for] everyone who loves is born of God and knows God’ (1 Jn 4:7-8). A person can only love God, because they first know by experience or have encountered the very personal truth, which they cannot scientifically prove, that God loves them. God loves first, which, like any love relationship, engenders a response of mutuality insofar as is possible from a human perspective. Love is always the initiative of God as prime mover (1 Jn 4:19). For Christians, it means an encounter at a deeply personal level with the God incarnate in Jesus as Risen Lord. Tad Dunne remarks that since William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, ‘experience as the sole measure of one’s relationship with God [has] wormed its way’ into Christian spirituality.43 Yet, Christianity rests on the experiences of the first disciples in their encounters with the Risen

40 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1972), 27, hereafter, NSC. 41 Jorge N. Ferrer and Jacob H. Sherman, eds., The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), 23. 42 Sreeramana Aithal, “Innovations in Experimental Learning – A Study of World Top Business Schools,” Munich Personal RePEc Archive, no. Paper No. 71748 (May 2016): 5 of 16, accessed August 25, 2020, https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/71748/1/MPRA_paper_71748.pdf. 43 Dunne, “Experience,” 364. ~ 12 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1

Lord (Lk 24:1-49; Jn 20:1-28; 1 Cor 15:5-10; 2 Cor 12:1-9), as well as the encounters other disciples have had throughout the history of the Church. However, it is all human experience in which God reveals Godself, and not simply those experiences that are ecstatic or deemed ‘religious’ or ‘mystical.’44 Seeking after such experiences is little more than a form of narcissism and certainly delusional.45

There is always the interaction of outer happenings with the inner world of the person. Inner events, those that are consciously inner speech or thoughts, imagined images, as well as those that are unbidden, alternate moments of consciousness (asleep or awake) either visual or aural, are influenced by what one has learned through others, by acquired cultural mores and heritage, by one’s own likes and dislikes, loves and responsibilities.46 Included are one’s bodily needs, instincts, fears and prejudices, all of which contribute to one’s stance to the world, a stance determined by how one filters the information of the senses: through knowledge of the precise facts of experience, or by intuition, assembling the whole, more than simply the sum of the facts.

There is no such thing as ‘pure experience’ because of the filtering that is automatically connected with each happening. Filtering experience, then, is an attempt to make meaning, which is done by piecing together different filtered experiences and constructing a story, a narrative that becomes a way of shaping one’s identity.47 Childhood experiences of trauma, one’s cultural and socio-economic background and religious beliefs and the emotional memory (in the mind and/or the body) influence one’s adult perception of the world. They also influence how one interprets one’s experiences throughout the life-cycle.48 For example, when Moses sees the burning bush and hears God speak, it is likely that his origin as a son of Hebrew slaves, even at an unconscious level of awareness, and his living in the house of the Pharaoh had an impact on his adult life very

44 Ibid., 365. 45 Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, ed. William Henry Shannon (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004), 4, 116–17; hereafter, IE. 46 Dunne, “Experience,” 367. 47 Dan P. McAdams, Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich, eds., Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative, 1st ed., [The narrative study of lives v. 4] (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006), 223–29. 48 Sarah E. Hampson, “Mechanisms by Which Childhood Personality Traits Influence Adult Well- Being,” Current directions in psychological science 17, no. 4 (2008): 264; Brent W. Roberts et al., “The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes,” Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science 2, no. 4 (December 2007): 313; Office of the Surgeon General, Chapter 2 Culture Counts: The Influence of Culture and Society on Mental Health, Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US), 2001), accessed April 18, 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44249/. ~ 13 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality probably at the time he was confronting issues around identity.49 Those issues included his becoming conscious of his identity as an Israelite in a covenantal relationship with the God of his ancestors. Without the experiences of mind and heart Moses would not have noticed the bush and the Exodus story would never have been told.50

Like Moses, those who wish to develop their relationship with God begin to take responsibility for noticing, till noticing, observing and pondering become habitual approaches to their experience. It is then that one can notice what is life-enhancing rather than life-denying. Whatever is life-enhancing can lead a person to value the kind of experience that engenders hope, harmony and peace: ways of being that people long for, because they point beyond the friction and frailty of ordinary human existence.51 It is the ‘beyond’ towards which persons strive that they regard as ultimate value,52 which for many, is named God, or the Transcendent. The search for meaning becomes a narrative, a story, which is how people construct their identity; they then link that identity with the Spirit they have sensed acting in their lives. People of integrity may well explore and examine traditional teachings about faith, about God, about Jesus, searching for meaning in the meta-narrative Christianity provides.53 Such a person will notice the breath of the Divine in every experience where they notice the invitation to relationship with God whom they begin to discover in ordinary everyday experience. That discovery leads to God being a crucial part of their own narrative of meaning and identity. Jesus’ injunction to seek and find (Mt 7:7-8; Lk 11:9-10) applies equally to the search for God and the yearning to know oneself more deeply, in ways that match one’s own experiences in life.54

49 Erik Homburger Erikson, Childhood and Society (Frogmore, St. Albans: Triad Paladin, 1978), 234– 36. 50 Ridley Scott’s 2014 film, Exodus: Gods and Kings has a clip of Moses talking with God which illustrates the very personal nature of experience, especially that regarded as spiritual or mystical. Moses is talking with God in the form of a child, standing beside a fire. Then, the camera moves to Aaron hiding behind some bushes watching and listening to Moses. The camera then shifts from Aaron’s standpoint to focus on Moses, giving the impression that Moses is standing alone beside a fire. The clip gives emphasis to Moses’ experience that was not Aaron’s: ‘God Talks To Moses_YouTube’, accessed May 5, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ueBrtHPdypU. 51 Dunne, “Experience,” 368. 52 Sandra M. Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 3, no. 2 (2003): 166. 53 See, for example, the story of a millennial looking for that meaning in the meta-narrative of the Christian mystical tradition: Cathleen Falsani, ‘For Millennials, Mysticism Shows a Path to Their Home Faiths’, CathNews NZ and Asia Pacific (blog), 16 May 2019, accessed May 17, 2019, https://cathnews.co.nz/2019/05/16/millennials-mysticism/. 54 Dunne, “Experience,” 369. ~ 14 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1

Accessing ‘inner experience’ Inner experience is not directly accessible; only available are reports of what has been experienced: autobiographical or semi-autobiographical accounts as found in Augustine, Teresa of Avila, or in the teachings of the mystics and Church Fathers such as Irenaeus, Origen, Bernard, sand later, John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola or Thomas Merton. The experience or encounter and the report or text of it are not the same, whether or not the writing (or the telling) is produced close to the event, or at some distance in time from the related experience.55 What is most significant in texts about such encounters or experiences of the divine, more than the report itself, is the impact it makes on the person, as in the case of Augustine’s account of the encounter he shared with his mother awaiting at Ostia, or on the community, as in Peter’s trance on the roof of the house and its ripple effect on the whole Church (Acts 10:1-11:18).

The Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Bible have many examples of such inner experiences shared; these are indications of potentially transformative interiority, where the prophet or disciple encounters the living God through a variety of inner experiences, that include a breadth of mind/heart-events at various levels of consciousness.56 Among such inner experiences what is chiefly significant is the conviction of the one who experiences such an encounter of the divine; Thomas Merton is able to record his experiences because of the vividness of them etched into his memory, such as the appearance of his father at night before he had entered the monastery, or his encounter with the divine in the church of San Francesco in Havana. He does not question the truth of such experiences, even ten years later when he writes his autobiography. He illustrates the importance of such inner experiences in coming to faith. These kinds of experience, while significant at certain moments in a person’s faith journey, are but part of all one’s experience, infused as it is with the person’s faith in whatever is perceived as of ultimate value.57

55 Jennifer Windt, “Reporting Dream Experience: Why (Not) to Be Skeptical about Dream Reports,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7, no. 708 (2013): online; Compare a contrary opinion in Brigitte Boothe and Dragica Stojkovic, “Communicating Dreams: On the Struggle for Reliable Dream Reporting and the Unreliability of Dream Reports,” in Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, e-Book. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 415–428, accessed March 15, 2018, https://sci.libgen.pw/item/adv/59e686ec3a04465a5e4765; the authors, both from a Freudian orientation do not acknowledge the integrity of the one, in this case experiencing a dream, and they do not allow for any sense of mystery, or the possibility of “cosmic consciousness”, let alone divine communication. 56 Noted in Pilch, Flights of the Soul, 112. 57 Roger Haight, Spiritual and Religious: Explorations for Seekers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2016), 3, 5. ~ 15 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality

The emergence of the spiritual in experience The formation of inner experience for the Christian is not simply a matter of collating experiences in their variety, such as a collection of dreams over a period of time. As just one element of inner experience, the dream can point to what is happening beneath the surface of conscious, cognitive awareness, awakening a person to an aspect of their life infused with significance and meaning.58 For example, St Jerome illustrates his own intellectual conversion when ‘caught up in the spirit’ he was challenged to focus less on the philosophers of his day, and more on the Scriptures as they were at the time in Christian history. The dream became a pointer for the direction his life had to take next; listening to his inner experience, he then moved to the desert and began to study the Scriptures in earnest.59

The spiritual emerges in one’s life when a person reflects upon experience, a reflection made richer when one retrospectively sees past events in life and looks for their meaning, creating a narrative that connects them with future possibility. The human fascination with narrative indicates that human beings innately create a story out of their experiences. But the story is not simply a list of events such as a five-year-old constructs in telling the class what they did during the holiday break. Instead, adults look for meaning in the various events and create a narrative that makes sense of their lives that answer the existential questions of humanity, begun in a primordial way with the ‘Why?’ and ‘How come?’ of the four-year-old. Just as a four-year-old might look to their father or mother for an answer to those questions, so also do adults seeking meaning to their collation of experiences look to others, be it in the narratives of myth, or of religious tradition, in a way that enables them to situate their own narrative, their own identity.

To make sense of one’s personal narrative a person looks to others, in the present and in the past, through cultural and religious myths or traditions. As an emerging adult, for example, that search may begin with a fellow student or workmate. The person may intuit a connection with another in a felt sense that arouses trust in the other and within one’s inner experience; in that connection there begins a relationship in which one has faith in that other person. The kind of relationship that develops depends on circumstances in both persons’ lives, whether either chooses to remain at the level of ordinary polite transaction, acquaintance, cordial friendship or

58 Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 62. 59 Morton T. Kelsey, God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams, Rev. and expanded ed. Kindle (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991), Loc. 2031-2040 of 4805; 'caught up in the spirit' is an expression that signifies a dream. ~ 16 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 at a level more intimate. Each level demands an increasing commitment of time and concomitantly varying degrees of charity and love. This experience of faith is essentially no different from that experienced by the first Christians sensing that Jesus of Nazareth was one in whom a person could place complete and utter trust,60 so much so that Christ was worth dying for. It is through an increasing variety of relational experiences that a person searches for a greater narrative, in which one finds one’s own place within such a meta-narrative. This is the journey one takes, one who is fascinated by the Jesus story and whose experience-in-faith and openness in trust leads to identification with Jesus and awakens the desire for God in Christ as the ultimate end in, or, the purpose of one’s life.

Experience within the Christian context of faith

The essential truth of Christianity is that God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. After his death and resurrection his disciples recognised him fully as the Christ, as Lord and God. In experiencing the Risen Christ, it was not enough for individual disciples to meet Jesus as Risen Lord, who, they were convinced, was dead and buried (Lk 24:9-11, 13-24), as they had anticipated by going to the tomb, (Jn 20:1-10, 11-15). Individual experience was insufficient testimony; it was only in sharing that experience (Jn 20:8-9, 16-18; Lk 24:28-35) and having it affirmed by the community, that the realisation fully dawned on the disciples that what they had never thought was possible, was not only possible but was in fact a completely new reality (Lk 24:36-43).

For one who is Christian, experience requires the context of a faith setting, even if one’s initial encounter with the Word was outside a particular Christian community. One cannot be Christian without being actively part of a Christian community, commonly called Church. It is in a community of relationships with others whose experience and reflection has brought them to Christ that one’s interior life grows and develops; those relationships also include other witnesses in the community who have in the past encountered (and recorded) their inner life in Christ. In the gospels, when Jesus asks for faith, he does not ask the friends who brought the paralytic to him through the roof to recite a credal formula. He simply asks for or, sees faith (Jn 11:26; Mk 2:5).

The disciples Jesus gathered became a community centred on their experience-in-faith of the Spirit uniting them in Christ (Eph 4:3-4). Paul’s letters emphasised the corporate need for

60 Dunne, “Experience,” 375. ~ 17 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality believers to support one another and thereby grow in unity with relationships centred in Christ, with Christ as head and all the members in their various functions parts of the one body in Christ (1 Cor 12:12-14, 27; Rom 12:5-10; Phil 2:5-8). This connection and unity mean that one is linked as a member of the Body of Christ to others sharing the same faith context, with all the resources of that Tradition (LG §§,7-8). That Body of Christ, the People of God called Church includes its Scriptural, historical, and mystical texts, its teachings and its particular identification with the Gospel through its prayers, symbols, its music and art, its mission and ministries and its local and universal dimensions. The rich Tradition of the Church enables one to better understand one’s own experience-in-faith through sharing in the experiences of other believers, saints present and past.61 In turn, that faith-sharing becomes a way of mutual encouragement (Rom 1:12), as well as necessary discernment (Mt 7:16; Ga 5:22). It is in this setting of Christian community in the riches of its past and present that interiority grows; such is the formation of a Christian consciousness that leads to a transformation of the self,62 which is a reconfiguring of one’s identity as a transfiguration of the self.63

The ultimate purpose of the formation of Christian experience is to lead people ‘into a more direct and more intense relationship with Christ, such as will outlast by several decades their early years of formation.’64 Within the Christian community, then, experience is oriented towards a transformation into Christ, the divinization or Christification of a person within the community as early Patristic writers sought to explain. The core message of Jesus was the reign of God, the heart of which is ‘community and engagement with others.’65 Therefore, a personal commitment to deepening one’s knowledge of that message – the Word himself – has the potential to make a difference to the whole environment in which the Christian believer and community immerse

61 O’Donohue, “Spirituality as the Art of Real Presence,” 94–95. 62 The phrase ‘transformation of the self’ implies that the transformation is not self-initiated but is the result of a self that responds to an encounter of the Transcendent; it is Other-directed and very different therefore to self-actualisation or self-transformation. 63 Transformation suggests a complete and irreversible change such as that of the caterpillar to the butterfly. Transfiguration suggests an elevated change to what is more beautiful and awesome, emitting Light bringing clarity and purity, as the Mt Tabor experience of Jesus’ transfiguration, or revealed in the resurrected Jesus (his wounds still apparent) in his appearances to the disciples; Darrell Wayne Estes, “Physical and Ontological Transformation: Metamorphosis and Transfiguration in Old French and Occitan Texts (11th–15th Centuries)” (PhD, Ohio State University, 2017), 4–8. 64 Michael Casey, The Art of Winning Souls: Pastoral Care of Novices, Kindle ed., Monastic wisdom Series No. 35 (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2012), 22. 65 Pope Francis, “Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” § 177, last modified November 24, 2013, accessed April 26, 2017, hereafter, EG, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione- ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. ~ 18 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 themselves (GS §1). In so doing, they can facilitate the transformation of, not only their neighbours and among them the poorest,66 but also the planet, their common home.67 If a single person is committed through reflection to deepening their inner life-experiences in Christ, then that person’s transformation will affect the whole world.68

The temporal aspect of experience A significant dimension of meaningful consciousness, therefore, includes the notion of time: past, present, and future. For consciousness to be meaningful, as in the example just cited, it involves reflected and interpreted experiences which form stories; these stories then become the narrative of history. History can be circular and repetitive, which Matthew’s gospel illustrates through its emphasis on being faithful to the tradition, with its drive to conserve what is best in that tradition. Too much stress on this approach to time and history gives overemphasis to authority to the neglect of the wind of the Spirit moving where It will (Jn 3:8). Fundamentalist thinking is the aberration of this approach.69

Another view of history regards it as random which takes for granted that God exercises authority by acting unexpectedly where all experience is new, particular, and surprising. This view regards time as interruptive, demanding greater trust that God will provide the resources necessary for faithful believers. Trust is the basic attitude required in the spirituality of believers with this worldview. John’s gospel favours this approach because of its emphasis on the present moment, keeping eternal life always in view. The negative dimension of this approach, however, ignores the need for long-term strategies for development, and struggles with the tension between taking command and letting go of control.70

Luke-Acts builds on growth which sees history as progressive, like the seed that grows into the tree with many branches (Lk 13:19). This sense of time finds expression in a spirituality that regards science and evolution as ongoing progression towards God and therefore finds good in all creation as the opportunity to discover grace. However, a spirituality dominated by such a

66 Pope Francis, LS, §§ 94, 95. 67 Ibid., § 13. 68 J. Lee Whittington, “Spiritual Disciplines for Transformation, Renewal and Sustainable Leadership,” in Handbook of Personal and Organizational Transformation (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018), 401– 25. 69 Dunne, “Experience,” 373. 70 Ibid. ~ 19 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality world view is at best, naïve, and at worst, blind to human personal and structural sin which leaves no place for either mercy or forgiveness.71

Yet another view of time is to see history as a struggle, a series of revolutions as people suffer to survive in the fight for life. In psychological terms this worldview sees experience as a battle of opposing desires so that spirituality is an arena of winners and losers. Nevertheless, it is centred on the discernment of spirits which can uncover the reality of sin, while discovering the work of grace in the human soul. Jesus’ question to the disciples in Mark’s gospel (Mk 4:40), in contrast to the other synoptic gospels (Mt 8:26; Lk 8:25), reflects a categorical stance towards history in this spirituality. At worst, this approach justifies hating one’s enemies or upholding approaches to justice such as the death penalty.72

Taken singly, these approaches to understand experience as time-bound leave little room for the full mystery of the Incarnation which, much later, in the spirituality initiated by Pièrre Bérulle was enunciated through the various ‘states and grandeurs of Jesus’ in a participative and contemplative Christology.73 There are believers who consider certain historical events, for example the Covid-19 pandemic, as God’s punishment for the world’s sin; while others will see it for just what it is, and regardless of any faith stance they will express their spirituality by service to others in need, especially to those most vulnerable. There are also Christians who see the event as a way for people to prioritise their values based on kindness towards others and an opportunity to take time for the existential questions all human beings must face. Throughout history, there have appeared people whose experience of life has convinced them of an integrated temporal view that moves them towards faith in the Transcendent through the embodiment of Jesus of Nazareth, alive and real as the Christ of faith. For Christians, history matters because it is the unfolding of ‘salvation history’ through which a person’s inner life finds its place and meaning. This kind of faith acknowledges, like Mary of the Magnificat, that one is loved by God in the way Jesus loved everyone, especially those on the margins of life, those most in need of mercy. In that gift of faith, a person can acknowledge that one’s essence, one’s soul does ‘glorify the Lord’ (Lk 1:46). The knowledge that faith brings becomes the ground of one’s soul so that one’s spirit can acknowledge the truth that one is loved in one’s very being by living a joyful life in God as Saviour, the One who frees people from the darkness of illusion, setting them in the all-

71 Ibid., 374. 72 Ibid. 73 William Thompson-Uberuaga, Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid to Be Partners, Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 117. ~ 20 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 embracing mercy of faithful Love (Lk 1:47-55). Such knowledge through faith is gained by the constant and deepening reflection upon inner experience matched with external happenings (Lk 2:19) at a personal, as well as global, level.

From personal experience to spirituality For consciousness to find meaning in one’s experience at any moment requires calling upon memory of the past which in turn allows one to imagine possibilities for the future. Memory is crucial to inner experience because it serves to bring to the present an event, with both its inner and external happenings that include the recalled emotional and imagined content.74 It is the making present through memory that experience is interpreted anew and given a meaning that looks forward to a future in a way different to its past, not less meaningful, but more so for the present and the immediate future. The best example of such an experience is in the breaking of the bread when Jesus tells his disciples to ‘Do this in memory of me,’ by re-membering what he did. Through a sacred meal with his disciples, Jesus established communion with them in a way similar to the Passover Exodus event for Jewish believers; in celebrating Eucharist, Christians of any time make present the New Passover of Jesus’ death and saving resurrection in the eternal NOW.

While people construct narratives to give shape and meaning to their identities, they draw on the memory of past experiences to create identity, as Christians do in celebrating Eucharist, as individual persons do in telling their stories. That identity is shaped, not simply by one’s individual experiences, but also by cultural, societal, and familial backgrounds. The values contained within such cultural attitudes are part of what determines the values a person adopts for oneself. For example, in societies with a high socio-economic level where there are contrasts like obesity or bulimia, or with issues such as physical and mental well-being, nutritionists or fad-diet promoters are prone to use slogans such as ‘We are what we eat.’ But if the last word in the slogan is given a wider meaning than food consumed, the clause suggests that a person draws on a variety of values absorbed and experienced as one’s way of being in relationship within one’s cultural setting. From those values a person chooses certain values over others, that form one’s principal determining influences in how a person lives their life. Those determining influences are chosen. It is the choosing, rather than simply ingesting, that determines a person’s pattern of behaviours or character. To choose is to act; actions are determined by and flow from

74 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 4. ~ 21 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality the inner experience of values that guide the actions. To choose is to decide upon appropriate actions which are the outward expression of one’s internal self-understanding that rests on what is considered of Ultimate value.75 Francis de Sales named this consciously lived experience as living ‘the devout life.’ Early Marists named it as living ‘the spirit of faith,’76 or the ‘spirit of the Institute.’ Since the 20th century, and, more decisively, in the present century, especially when religion has lost its hold on society,77 ‘spirituality’ best describes the response of the human spirit in persons and groups to what some scientists regard as an innate ‘religious’ dimension to being human.78

The roots of spirituality

The term ‘spirituality’ has acquired postmodern meanings that have disconnected it from its origins in the Latin spiritualitas and spiritualis (spiritual). The Latin is a translation of the Greek terms pneuma (spirit) and pneumatikos (spiritual).79 The Hebrew word rû(a)h, for which ‘spirit’ is a translation, originally refers to ‘breath in motion’ and occurs frequently in Isaiah where it designates God’s Spirit coming into or down upon a person. In contrast, the Hebrew nephesh – literally, throat or neck – indicates the ‘heart’ of human being, mostly translated as ‘soul, living being, life’ or ‘person.’80 The words are a contrast to the Platonic thinking that settled for a linguistic dualism of the New Testament Greek. Although Paul distinguished between body, soul and spirit, early Christian apologists were heavily influenced by Platonic thought which regarded the physical body as a hindrance to the soul or spirit. Paul’s distinctions were not based on Platonic philosophy; that was left to later Christian writers like Clement of Alexandria, or Origen, though the latter considered himself a student of the Bible rather than of philosophy.81 The New Testament use of psyche (soul) and pneuma (spirit) were used interchangeably, though Paul gave them more definition. For Paul, psyche was the ‘human being as a thinking, working and feeling person’ where the human being is alive, seen as one who strives, who exercises the

75 Ibid., 3. 76 Gabriel Rivat (Brother François) wrote his first four circulars entitled ‘The Spirit of Faith’ which are referred to in chapters 4 and 5 of this thesis. 77 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 163. 78 Andrew B. Newberg, Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us about Spirituality (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 2–4. 79 Philip Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality, Blackwell brief histories of religion series (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007), 2–3. 80 Anne C. Jacobs, “Spirituality: History and Contemporary Developments – An Evaluation,” Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 78, no. 1 (April 15, 2013): 2. 81 Anthony Kenny, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy, Illustrated ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006), 104. ~ 22 ~ Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 will with reason and purpose; the pneuma, on the other hand, refers to the invisible, immaterial self, who relates to God and to people. Although pneuma also refers to the Holy Spirit who, if welcomed, moves people away from the ‘works of the flesh’ towards living in the Spirit in love, joy and peace, expressed by the fruits of life lived in the Spirit (Gal 5:19-22).82

When the Hebrew and biblical Greek terms are taken together with the wealth of meaning those linguistic cultures provide, they point towards the kind of spirituality that is more holistic and indicative of how ‘spirituality’ is beginning to be understood by many in the 21st century. Despite the sharp distinction between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’ which is to the detriment of persons and communities, there are indications that ‘spirituality’ is more than a protest against one’s religious upbringing. The word ‘spirituality’ is part of the ready vocabulary of medicine, counselling and psychotherapy and other workplaces, aside from its traditional place in Catholic and Christian religious practice to the point where debates about public values – especially after a global crisis and climate change – are part of popular parlance demanding the transformation of attitudes and social structures.83 But there is little hope for change to a particular external situation or set of experiences without there also being a shift first in one person’s inner experience when that inner experience is interpreted and understood in the light of ultimate reality and then shared with others.

A ‘working definition’ of spirituality that can be applied to any person or group regardless of identification with one or another faith stance, whether faith is religious or otherwise; Roger Haight advances a general working definition:

Spirituality refers to the logic, or character, or consistent quality of a person’s or a group’s pattern of living insofar as it is measured before some ultimate reality.84 This inclusive definition implies that all people have a spirituality. There is a growing recognition of ‘spirituality’ as a descriptor of faith practice in other religious traditions as well as in diverse fields,85 even if some of those fields and persons have a distaste for any religious expression of

82 Jacobs, “Spirituality,” 2–3. 83 Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality, 1–2. 84 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 2. 85 Mark Kam Loon Loo, “Spirituality in the Workplace: Practices, Challenges, and Recommendations,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 45, no. 3 (September 2017), 182–204; Galit Marmor-Lavie and Patricia A. Stout, “Consumers’ Insights About Spirituality in Advertising,” Journal of Media and Religion 15, no. 4 (October 2016), 169–185; James A. F. Stoner, “Creating a Spiritually Friendly Company,” in Handbook of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace: Emerging Research and Practice (London: Springer, 2013), 491–517. ~ 23 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality spirituality.86 If personal narrative is how one verbalizes one’s spirituality, it also means that one’s spirituality is more than the narrative; for one cannot be fully conscious or aware of the depths of one’s spirituality because there are elements that reside deep in the unconscious, some of which only surface in dreams or in slips of the tongue or other alternate moments of consciousness. One’s interior life is more complex than what a person can simply articulate or recall at a conscious level.

One’s spirituality cannot be reduced to a set of beliefs or logical propositions attested by facts and empirically scientific or even theological formulations, because spirituality is about a human life lived and living. A person’s inner experience is subjective experience, but it is subjective experience in relationship to other subjects, each of whom have their own spirituality. One can only understand another with one’s own experience.87 When one is with other subjects and each of those persons considers their own experience of spirituality, the existential questions arise: Who am I? How am I to be? With whom do I belong? For whom and for what is my life destined?

These existential questions are better answered by teasing out the meaning of the term ‘spirituality’ in a way that better enables a person’s search for a meaningful spirituality. To say that one has a spirituality is firstly to mean that one’s experience is basic to any way of defining spirituality. It means that spirituality is not an abstract idea, theory or ideology.88 Neither is it philosophy or theology, even though these two branches of human knowledge are the fruit of spirituality; that spirituality is one’s lived reality which has actively conscious and alternately conscious receptive dimensions.89 Second, spirituality demands conscious and ongoing participation in a venture. That it is ongoing means it is not a feeling of awe stemming from a view of snow-capped mountains, nor the result of ingesting psychedelic or mood-altering drugs,90 although the former may be a contributing component of one’s spirituality. In essence, spirituality is an approach to life in progress, a participatory turn towards that which one considers Ultimate reality. Undertaking the venture, thirdly, is the inner work of integration; a labour of love that

86 Newberg, Neurotheology, 224. 87 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 10. 88 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 167. 89 To be actively conscious is to be a consciously cognitive, embodied participant at a personal and communal level; to be alternately conscious is to be open in mind and heart to transpersonal phenomena; see John J. Pilch, “Paul’s Ecstatic Trance Experience near Damascus in Acts of the Apostles,” HTS: Theological Studies 58, no. 2 (2002), 691–94. 90 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 167. ~ 24 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 involves one’s whole being. The effort of uniting what is apparently fragmented parts of one’s life means avoiding the dualistic compartmentalising of body and soul, or mind and spirit. Integrating work is all inclusive of thought and emotion, mental and physical activity in active and passive ways, in the journey of continuing growth and development as a human person in relationship.91 It is in relationship that the fourth and necessary dimension of authentic spirituality comes into play: the transcendence of the self towards that which is regarded as ultimate value. What is of ultimate value is not necessarily God; it could be life, or the love of family, or care of the earth, or justice for all, or union and intimacy with God as the ultimate value in one’s life.92 When a person approaches transcendence in terms of relationship, then to speak of ‘ultimate value’ is no longer adequate, since values are human considerations regarding worth, excellence, usefulness or importance. However, discernment is needed to ground one’s search in an authentic interior life, because that which is ultimate has to be Ultimate and not simply what turns out to be an idol,93 full of false promises, as becomes clear in the object of various addictions.

When a person is seeking a spirituality, they are seeking relationship with ultimate Reality, and of its nature such a relationship is personal, involving the whole self. Although there is no such thing as a generic spirituality,94 in the 21st century, there is a pluralism of religions and spiritualities in a world so different from the fear-inducing, popular, pre-Vatican II understanding that extra ecclesiam nulla salus in which ecclesiam was taken to mean the Catholic Church.95 Since the 1960s fewer people are identifying with any particular religion.96 This is especially true

91 Ibid. 92 Ibid. 93 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 2; Oswald Bayer, “Tillich as Systematic Theologian,” in The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 34 The author quotes Tillich who warns that even one’s concept of God can be idolatrous. 94 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 167. 95 The Latin clause was popularly understood as “Outside the Church no one can be saved.” The author clarifies the translation of “extra” which certain Catholic websites do not appear to have realised; Philip Gray, “Without the Church There Is No Salvation,” Catholic Education Resource Center, last modified 1999, accessed April 24, 2020, https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and- philosophy/apologetics/without-the-church-there-is-no-salvation.html. 96 Australian Bureau of Statistics, “Media Release - 2016 Census: Religion” (c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of Statistics, June 27, 2017), accessed April 25, 2020, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/ 7E65A144540551D7CA258148000E2B85. ~ 25 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality of Christianity,97 particularly of Catholic Christianity.98 In such a pluralistic global village many declare themselves as having no religious affiliation.99 The postmodern world rejects absolutes or master narratives, which means seekers are faced with a mentality that regards all religions as relative, as well as other institutions of society such as law, or authority. When everything is relative, one person’s inner experience is as good as another’s: a situation when either person could hold views that cannot be objectively judged or reconciled because there are no absolutes, no ultimate values, no unifying narrative of what is true, good, or beautiful.100 Such a directionless relativism makes for confusion and an intensely felt lack of belonging in a world disconnected from the past,101 focused on the present and unclear about any future,102 until some global tragedy, such as a pandemic, presents an opportunity for radical re-thinking of what it is to be truly human.

When a person pays attention to inner experience, it gives rise to the search for the kind of spirituality that makes sense of one’s own history, past and present, but connects with the world at local and universal levels of experience. However, a personal spirituality that stays at the level of the private individual and is not earthed in some historical religious framework, may be disconnected from necessary reality which demands accountability for one’s existence in it. This kind of individualistic spirituality ‘creates no necessary personal relationships or social responsibilities’ with no moral authority beyond one’s own conscience or opinions; it can be easily abandoned on a whim with little thought for any kind of commitment because there is ‘no institutional or community affiliation.’103

People who are serious in their search for spirituality may look to traditional monotheistic faiths to align their own spirituality with a particular religious tradition. It is at the conscious level of inner experience that such a person draws on their remembered experience in choosing a

97 Chris Reed, “Losing Faith: Why Fewer New Zealanders Are Attending Church,” NZ Herald, last modified June 28, 2018, accessed April 25, 2020, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12074520. 98 Contributor, “Australia Sees Drop in Catholic Population of 2.7% between 2011-2016,” Crux, April 7, 2019, accessed April 25, 2020, https://cruxnow.com/church-in-oceania/2019/04/australia-sees-drop-in- catholic-population-of-2-7-between-2011-2016/. 99 Michael Lipka, “Religious ‘nones’ Becoming More Secular,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, November 11, 2015, accessed April 25, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/11/religious- nones-are-not-only-growing-theyre-becoming-more-secular/. 100 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 173. 101 John L Allen, “Benedict Battles the ‘Dictatorship of Relativism,’” National Catholic Reporter, September 16, 2010, accessed April 30, 2020, https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/benedict-battles- dictatorship-relativism. 102 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 173. 103 Ibid. ~ 26 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 religious faith or a particular tradition within that public spirituality. Even if one is born into a particular religious tradition, it need not be abandoned, as Augustine sought to do in his adolescence and young adulthood, but a person may discover that one’s spirituality can re- appropriate the faith of one’s childhood104 in an authentic adult faith. The inner life of Thomas Merton’s experience-in-faith in coming to and owning his inner experience illustrates the discernment necessary in an interiority, formed also by his deep knowledge of the Christian mystical tradition; his story demonstrates a way of incorporating a public religious spirituality into his own:

If I know anything of intellectual honesty … I do not intend to divorce myself at any point from Catholic tradition … But neither do I intend to accept points of that tradition blindly, and without understanding, and without making them really my own. For it seems to me that the first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it.105 It is in living the faith of a historical and public spirituality at the level of heart as well as mind that makes it a religious spirituality. At this level religion is ‘the fundamental life stance’ for one who acknowledges and believes in the Transcendent.106 Such a person does more than adopt appropriate behaviours in the face of that Transcendent reality so experienced. Sociologically, religion of whatever tradition, is ‘a set of beliefs, values, and practices that together identify what ultimate reality is and help establish the relationship that obtains between this ultimate reality’ and those who are members of that tradition.107 It is true that a mature spirituality is open to all people and to other spiritualities, as Merton illustrated in his own life; however, this thesis addresses the inner life of human beings from a specific spirituality whose home is in the Catholic tradition of Marist spirituality in the footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat.

The necessity of authenticating inner experience-in-faith The experience of the Risen Christ in the hearts and minds of believers enables them to make sense of Jesus’ death and resurrection; it is the meta-story through which their own life journeys find meaning to their ongoing, existential questions in all their experience and not simply the kind of happening people deem to be religious or mystical. It is not enough to regard such religious or mystical experience as authentic in itself; for there is no such thing as ‘pure

104 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 7. 105 Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 11/174, Adobe PDF. 106 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 168. 107 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 6. ~ 27 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality religious experience’, not even when it is related or reported by the person whose experience it is. All experiences are interpreted experience.108 The experience needs to be validated and verified by other believers because experience is ambiguous, needing discernment, because it is subjective; as such it is not transparent and cannot be authoritative unless critically reflected upon and authenticated by the community. The tools to unlock genuine, authentic experience include probing questions and thoughtful analysis. Such questions challenge the believer to be open and even vulnerable in the face of the community. The questions may be like the following:

“What did you experience?” “What did it mean for you?” “What, specifically, did you learn from this experience?” “What insights do you have about yourself as a result of this experience?” 109 If the experiencer has a desire to make sense of an event and responds to these and similar questions, then the person must answer in language that frames the experience which then becomes interpretation in the telling. Using such critical reflection allows the person to be open to different ways of seeing and understanding the experience, and, all the more so, if one is open to feedback from others in the Christian community. One’s interpretation, then, is tested in conversation with others; calling on the wisdom of the community at theological, historical, scriptural and ecclesial levels,110 as well as in the psychological and spiritual levels.111 Sharing transparently at this level may challenge self-concepts, especially those which Merton considered to be illusory.112 Such openness implies readiness to be vulnerable and allows for the possibility of deepening one’s relationship with self, with others, with the world and with God.113 Over the course of one’s life journey, actively incorporating the Christian faith into one’s being and manner of relating ‘requires an appeal to experience,’114 that is, as Merton explains his vocation, experience counts, but not without critical reflection.

108 Gerald O'Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology: Toward a New Fundamental Theology (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 49. 109 David Brian Perrin, Studying Christian Spirituality (New York; London: Routledge, 2007), 48. 110 Ibid., 50. 111 The above questions could be expanded so that the experiencer could better benefit from their challenge: What elements of the experience did you notice? What feelings did the experience engender? What has been happening in your life up to this point? Do you remember any other event or experience that this one connects with? Are there aspects of your life that you had not realised before this experience? Does the experience suggest that some specific changes are called for in your outlook or your behaviours? How does this experience connect you more closely with your ultimate value, with God and the Body of Christ? See the Select Bibliography for relevant works by neuroscientists, dream researchers, spiritual writers and psychologists for further ways of discovering the meaning of numinous experience. 112 Merton, IE, 2, 46. 113 Perrin, Studying Christian Spirituality, 50. 114 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 19. ~ 28 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1

Experience or encounter? Experience without interpretation would be little more than sensation. As creatures of language and cognition, human beings cannot have a non-interpreted experience, for in each experience, the process of interpretation is operating. All experiences are interpreted within the cultural setting of the interpreter.115 The process may not last very long in the case of trivial experiences, but it may last all through one’s life for experiences so life-transformative.116 Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus is an example of such a profound life-changing event, a narrative occurring three times in Acts (9:3-8; 22:6-11; 26:13-19) besides his own account (Gal 1:13-23).117 Peter’s ‘dream-vision’ or trance during the day, which might be described as a waking dream triggered by hunger is also a life-changing experience, not just for Peter himself but for the early Christian community who were still Jewish (Acts 10:1 – 11:18). Without Peter’s experience and his interpretation of it beyond the literal meaning, to which he first objected, the Church would never have extended beyond Judaism, because it opened the way for Saul/Paul to go out to the Gentiles.118

From religious tradition to inner experience to spirituality

Those whose inner experience causes them to search for goodness, truth and beauty may be wise enough to consider what can be gained from the great religious traditions of the world which are able to ‘awaken persons to an imaginal grasp of the ultimate conditions of existence and enable them to celebrate or assent to the visions of transcendent value and power’ to be found in the precepts and practices of each.119 It means, as Merton illustrates, that the content of a

115 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 65/239. 116 O’Collins, Rethinking Fundamental Theology, 49. 117 Maggie Ross, Silence: A User’s Guide. Volume 1 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 78–79; contrary to Merton’s use of the word ‘experience’ Ross proposes that a better term is 'encounter' or 'incident.' ‘Experience’ is a mistranslation of the Latin experimentum, though she allows for the term ‘religious experience’ to mean ‘the reception, acknowledgement, and interpretation in religious terms of insights from the deep mind.’ The actual difference is a difference of language associated with different eras (Ross has expertise in Middle English as used by the mystics she has studied). 118 The New Testament makes no clear distinction between ‘dream’ and ‘vision’; for this reason John B. F. Miller conflates the terms into 'dream-vision', explaining that some are more visionary while others are auditions and yet others include both image and voice, see ‘Convinced That God Had Called Us’: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God’s Will in Luke-Acts, Biblical Interpretation Series, v. 85 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2007), 8-14, 206–12; Miller examines Peter's dream-vision in more detail noting the impact it had on Peter himself, on Cornelius and his household and eventually leading to an openness to Gentile believers not having to be bound by Jewish law. 119 James Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest of Meaning (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1981), 29. ~ 29 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality religious tradition – the beliefs, practices, theology, doctrine, its various spiritualities, and in the case of Christianity, whether Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, and the various traditions and movements in each – may be objective in the public ‘story’ in the events regarded as revelation. The public, objective, historical and experimental content (in practice) can only be fused or merged with the seeker’s own experiential, historical experience (through reflection on practice).120 The Christian, therefore, sees Jesus as the norm of what it is to be fully human which ‘means to live a good life individually and socially, to thrive, to have a sense of purpose, and to know joy in the midst of life’s challenges.’121 This is at the heart of Christian interiority. Such a spirituality from Origen and the early theologians of the Church, for whom the separation of theology from spirituality or religion from spirituality was unimaginable,122 saw Christ as the only way – as ‘no other source’ – to become fully human:

Those who have come to believe and are convinced that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (Jn 1:17) and that Christ is the truth, according to his own statement "I am the truth" (Jn 14:6), derive the knowledge that calls human beings to live a good and blessed life from no other source than the very words and teaching of Christ.123 Christian tradition, especially its mystical stream, has added much to thought and talk about God, but its base is always God embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. Time and again in renewal movements within the Christian Tradition it is Jesus who is at the centre of any resurgence in Christian life, as the next chapter illustrates in the lives of those exemplars of deep interiority calling them to mission: Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and the Spanish and French mystics.

It is interiority that people of the third millennium speak of when they describe themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious,’ with the result that spirituality has been separated from religion. The honest search for the integrity of one’s inner life is to be found in how people live their lives in the face of the transcendent Reality they regard as ultimate: this is their spirituality which is not simply a set of propositions assented to, nor a philosophical system; what people on an honest search yearn for is a relationship with that Reality Christians call God. When people suggest they are ‘not religious,’ what they frequently mean is that they do not identify with a particular religious tradition. In the case of Christianity, they generally mean they have moved away from,

120 Aithal, “Innovations in Experimental Learning – A Study of World Top Business Schools.” 121 Christopher A. Beeley, “Christ and Human Flourishing in Patristic Theology,” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 25, no. 2 (May 2016): 127. 122 Sandra M. Schneiders, “The Discipline of Christian Spirituality and Catholic Theology,” in Exploring Christian Spirituality: Essays in Honor of Sandra M. Schneiders (New York: Paulist Press, 2006), 199. 123 Beeley, “Christ and Human Flourishing in Patristic Theology,” 128. ~ 30 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 or find irrelevant, the particular Christian denomination of their upbringing. What is more the experience of so many, Christians among them, is the institutionalisation of religion.124 Religion and specifically, Christianity, needs to find a way to reconnect with people who live in the midst of secularization, religious pluralism, and scientistic thinking; such a connection needs to take into account the language, not only of the cultural systems which shaped Christianity, but also the cultural systems in which it presently finds itself.125 Nonetheless, a mature Christian spirituality is firmly earthed in the Christian Tradition, especially the long tradition of encounter with Christ and how mystics and prophets, theologians and saints have taught from their own experiential encounters.

An aggiornamento of Christian spirituality

Such an anthropological approach to spirituality entails a return to the origins of Christianity, a return which began at an institutional, universal level with Vatican II, an aggiornamento, ressourcement and rapprochement, putting an end to the polemical apologetics of defence in Catholic approaches to the world.126 Aggiornamento involves a return to the Sources of faith and not to (lowercase) traditions. Throughout the history of the Tradition, such returns affecting the inner life of believers have always been happening, usually led by certain individuals called and chosen by the Spirit. In some sections of Catholic experience, across generations and ethnicities, theologies and varied understandings of Church, spirituality is still rule-bound, devotional and catechism-based. By contrast, the starting point for a spirituality earthed in human experience is simply ‘following Jesus.’ A person is not likely to follow Jesus of Nazareth unless one first knows him and then trusts him, which can only happen through engaging with others. The Christian Tradition acts as a kind of ‘holding environment,’ a safe place which offers the necessary conditions127 in which one can find the sources of Christian faith through which a person can experience a sense of the Transcendent.128 However, it is in the Gospels and the writings of the New Testament that one gets to meet this Jesus, getting to know him in his

124 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 169. 125 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 16–18. 126 Anthony J Ciorra and Michael W Higgins, Vatican II: A Universal Call to Holiness (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), 19-21/161, accessed November 20, 2019, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=587704. 127 Donald W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (London: Hogarth Press, 1965), 46. 128 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 19. ~ 31 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality religious and cultural context which was Jewish and, since the resurrection, the experiences of Peter and ministry of Paul, is now Christian (Acts 11:26).

From his own faith tradition through the Hebrew scriptures Jesus presented God, not only as the transcendent Reality and LORD of the universe, but also as the One who cared tenderly for creation. God had only to speak and it came to be. God’s reign and rule became the message of Jesus proclaimed in his teaching on prayer in which God’s will is to be done on earth as in heaven (Mt 6:8-10). That Jesus spoke of God to his disciples as ‘Our Father’ indicates that, for him (as for Jews and Muslims alike), God is personal, intimately connected with creation and especially those created in God’s likeness (Gn 1:26). ‘Father’ expresses the intimate reality of the God of Jesus, a reality that is equally maternal, indicated by the images Jesus used in his parables and teaching.129 That Jesus’s name for God is ‘Father’ is prefaced by the plural pronoun ‘Our’ indicates a very personal relationship with all those God has created who can then speak as siblings of Jesus able to know the Almighty, All-powerful and Transcendent also as Abba. However, the most astounding and yet empowering dimension of the God Jesus presents to his disciples is that the God who creates, who is king and ruler of the universe, is the God who loves.130 This is the spirituality that Jesus lives and in which he loves, for it is love for the world and all within it, that is the motivating power of God in Jesus’ relationship with ‘Abba’ and with those to whom he has been sent.

To internalise the teachings of Jesus is to begin the work of identifying with him. As one takes up the New Testament, and initially the Gospels, one discovers the attraction Jesus’ disciples had for him. They spent time with him, listened to him and learned his way of speaking about God, and sharing in his work of healing and engendering hope in people, restoring them to their full dignity. Jesus precipitated a spirituality of trust and commitment in his disciples as they allowed their hearts to burn within them (Lk 24:32), despite their fears, doubts, and hesitation, as they realised they had experienced the God who loved them in his presence, by his words and deeds. Jesus’ way was also the pattern for Marcellin Champagnat’s approach to forming interiority, making him also an inspiring figure to follow because he himself was centred on the love of Jesus, often expressed as the Sacred Heart. It is by his humanity that Jesus expressed the relationship of God to people and to the world in God’s care for sparrows, for lilies of the field, for lost sheep and those on the edge of society. In allowing themselves to be so challenged, his

129 Ibid., 20–21. 130 Ibid., 21–22. ~ 32 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 disciples grew in confidence and took on Jesus’s attitudes to God and to the world, aware that he was present with them still in their endeavours as they continued to do what he told them (Jn 2:5). By associating with Jesus, his disciples could be emboldened, especially after the resurrection, to speak truth without fear and with confidence, to give all that they had by healing in Jesus’s name (Acts 4:6-8).

Similarly, it is by associating with Jesus, that a person enters into the stories of Jesus in their imagination. To enter into the gospel stories requires one to use the imagination, which many think is no more than ‘a private act of the human spirit,’ ignoring the possibility that imagining collaboratively engenders connection and hope.131 That hope is a connection with Jesus in much the same way that his disciples had with him in Galilee. The one searching the sources of Christian Tradition is one who hopes to discover a spirituality that is uniquely theirs but aligned or ‘fused’ with a greater narrative than one’s own.132 In imagining oneself as a character or a participant observer in one of the gospel stories, or even as one among the crowds listening to Jesus, a person gets to feel the impact of Jesus in the situation and the impact on those Jesus addressed or healed. In a certain sense one becomes a movie director entering into the characters his actors are playing; but in this venture one is not simply acting to have to debrief afterwards. Instead, in this process of merging one’s narrative with the meta-narrative of the Gospel, a person enters into the journey of discovering their spirituality through which the door is opened to experience an encounter with the human Jesus who is also divine. The work of imagination can then lead to ‘trying on’ (imitating) the approach of Jesus in one’s own real-time, real life situation.133 Marist formation works in a similar way at the early stages, developing a life of prayer and practice in the ordinary life of a community in ministry. Apart from the intensification of the spiritual dimension of life, candidates and novices also get to ‘try out’ living in communities engaged full-time in ministry, as well as learning from the different experiences of community and ministry not only to imagine future possibility as brothers, but also to ‘taste’ what it may be like. In debriefing and reflecting upon those experiences, it is hoped they will discover their own possibility to be more authentic selves.

Imagination and imitation work together enabling a person to discover an authentic self, upon whom God gazes and loves, not the ego-image one has, but the self, centred on Jesus

131 William F. Lynch, Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless (Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1965), 9, 23. 132 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 23. 133 Haight, ibid.; also Lynch, Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless, 14. ~ 33 ~

Chapter 1 Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality through one’s experience-in-faith within the richness of the Christian Tradition. In being both cherished and challenged by such Love, one becomes more authentic in all one’s relationships. That authenticity brings about a reconfiguring or transfiguration of one’s self where the many masks fall away that had previously blinded one to the essential reality of the self that God sees and loves. When one’s interior life becomes so centred on Christ, then, like Jesus in his own societal, political, religious and cultural setting, a person in their own 21st century context draws closer in union with God as Love incarnate, knowing in its fullest sense the reality Paul proclaimed: It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me (Ga 2:20). This is the goal and end point of any formation in Christian interiority, the solid foundation from which Brothers of Mary make Jesus known and loved in their ministry to neglected children and young people.

Conclusion

In this chapter, the key terms were outlined and analysed. Like the evolution of the cosmos, and its emerging consciousness in human beings, the formation of the human person is a slow, non-linear process, particularly from the early adult years to the end of life. Once a person’s basic needs are met, the rest of one’s life centres on one’s relationships and life’s meaning: the purpose of one’s existence and what, how, and with whom one is to play their part in contributing to the world. In the formational process of the person that seldom goes to plan, one develops crucial four-fold relationships: with self, with others, with the natural world and in the discovery of one’s spiritual dimension, with God, or however Ultimate Reality is perceived. On the journey to greater self-discovery persons are influenced by family and friends, teachers and events and the world around them, through which they discover their own cultural and spiritual roots and connections.

As persons mature, they begin to wake up to their inner experience. In reflection upon their experience, a person begins to recognise that one can remember with a memory that can stretch back to early childhood, and depending on the event or circumstance which can trigger a remembered image or interpretation of the event, one comes to realise that one is conscious in a way that other elements of the created world are not. Memory is the workhorse of consciousness, a consciousness shared with other human beings. Thus begins the discovery of the importance of relationships in order to discover one’s place in the world; through coming to understand oneself as a self, in relationship with others, with the world and one’s personal relationship history, a person begins to look for ways to interpret their experience and make sense of it all in a meaning that connects the whole of one’s life. Depending on one’s set of relationships, one’s education,

~ 34 ~

Formation, Experience, Christian Spirituality Chapter 1 especially the informal kind, one continues to reflect, for the most part retrospectively, to find meaning. Discovering meaning in an integrated system also depends on how much one is prepared to notice one’s environment in real time, as well as in historical time,, in the great epochs of humanity’s social and spiritual history. It is the care that one takes with noticing that one comes into greater self-awareness as a self in all its complexity.

This kind of reflection leads a person to discover a source of meaning that is beyond the experience of the material world; a reflection that becomes more and more a feature of one’s inner experience. This can be the period during which, through the influence of educative relationships as well as family and friends, one explores the great faith traditions of humankind, testing out that which one may have been born into or finding other religious traditions that other people find is their Ultimate Reality connecting all of life in an ultimate meaning.

One can discover, through association with people of the Christian faith tradition, the real possibility of an experience of the divine in the Risen Christ. In consciously becoming more familiar with the Christian story, a person may experience Christ as an encounter with the Divine. One’s spirit is awakened to faith that ceases to be simply an intellectual assent to various truths and beliefs in dogmatic formulae, but a living faith realised in one’s relationship with the Jesus of the Gospels, present in one’s real-time world, the here-and-now. So begins an educative journey into the sources of one’s faith, and the realisation that such experiential love has been active in the human community for aeons and in the Christian community in a specific and very tangible way. The story of such experiential love is told in the river of the Christian mystical tradition, and its many streams. Chapter 2 examines, albeit briefly, the various waters of Christian spirituality in the Catholic Tradition that spring from the solid Rock of inner experience-in-Christ. In ever-changing temporal and cultural contexts, those different waters of Catholic spirituality have contributed to and influenced the interiority of Marist spirituality. Moreover, for the latter to be authentic, it needs to be tested against the Tradition, which means a ressourcement, a return to the origins, especially the Scriptures, as well as the experiential developments through time of the fundamental encounter with and interpretation of the Divine.

~ 35 ~

Chapter 2

Inner Experience in Faith Tested by Tradition

Introduction

The previous chapter defined for this thesis what is meant by formation, experience, and spirituality. Theology was briefly defined as the interpretation of spirituality; both are equally necessary. In the Catholic tradition, many believers learned their faith by question and answer, but the questions were never theirs.134 In the pluralistic world of the 21st century, it is spirituality that counts and is inclusive of all human experience, not simply the cognitive or imaginative dimensions of the mind. Spirituality in the Christian Tradition comes before theology, but for spirituality to be grounded and authentic it needs the sources of Tradition to provide the answers that 21st century questioners seek, answers that are generally not found in changing (lowercase) traditions. Lived faith experience is a spirituality of inner experience and the consequent awareness of the inner self, which is where this chapter takes up the advice that the Hindu sannyasi Bramachari gave Thomas Merton: “There are many beautiful mystical books written by the Christians… Yes, you must read those books.”135 A Christian cannot know anything of depth or vitality in their inner experience, without being formed by the sources of the Christian tradition.136 This same Tradition was the source of formation by Champagnat’s early companions entrusted with forming new brothers. A formation in those sources ideally leads to and/or enriches one’s inner, experiential encounter with Christ, transforming one’s consciousness in the journey to greater self-awareness toward becoming one’s true self in God. The Christian’s inner experience comprises not only a penetrating self-awareness, but also a graced intensification of faith and

134 Learning the catechism was simply part of being a culturally conditioned Catholic, that was as much part of one’s ethnic heritage on top of what it meant to be Irish, Italian, Greek, even for second or third generation Australians or New Zealanders. 135 Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, 50th anniversary ed. (Orlando: A Harvest Book, 1998), 248, 252, 274/507, Adobe PDF, hereafter SSM, accessed June 10, 2015, http://ebook.3m.com/library/BCPL- document_id-duy89g9; See also Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984), 113; Edward E Rice, The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and Hard Life of Thomas Merton (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 33. 136 Thomas Merton, A Course in Christian Mysticism: Thirteen Sessions with the Famous Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, ed. Jon M. Sweeney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017), xii–xiv, 1–11, hereafter, ACCM, an edited version of An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 3, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell, Monastic wisdom series MW13 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2008). ~ 36 ~

Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 knowledge of God as present within one’s inmost self.137 This is no less the goal of Marist formation for religious brotherhood.

The constraints of a thesis mean that this chapter can only present some of the spiritualities of that mystical strand within Christian history.138 Apart from the root stock of the New Testament they are chosen, on the one hand, for their contribution to the spirituality of Marcellin Champagnat and his early companions. On the other hand, these mystical ancestors played a significant part in the spirituality of Thomas Merton, whose insights can contribute to a 21st century formation for Marist interior life and spirituality; that spirituality is immersed in a context calling for greater inclusivity and genuine conversation in deepening a Christocentric spirituality with the heart of Mary for the world.

The Christian Wisdom Tradition

With the plurality of religions, evident in almost every urban setting in what is now a global village, ‘mysticism’ is a term that fascinates some people while others may be dismissive of the word.139 However, where various forms of mindfulness spiritualities are fashionable, people can be ignorant of Christianity’s hidden treasure of mysticism. While recent Superiors General have urged Marist Brothers to be prophets and mystics, they presuppose an understanding of the deep Tradition of Christian faith. There are brothers, however, who are wary of the terms, and perhaps

137 Merton, IE, 12. 138 “Mysticism” cannot be conflated with “spirituality” even if, as Merton suggests, the former is open to all, rather than the preserve of a few. In the past, mysticism was often associated with various unusual phenomena or altered states of consciousness. Mysticism is part of spirituality, which is more broadly holistic. See Celia Kourie, “Christ-Mysticism in Paul,” The Way - supplement 102, (Fall, 2001) 79, n.6. The mystical writers of the Christian Tradition are more concerned with living the Christ life, and living it intensely, rather than being concerned with its physical or mental manifestations. See Philip Sheldrake, “A Critical Theological Perspective,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (Blackwell, 2013), 533. 139 Among the scholars of spirituality there is debate about the role of interpretation in experience, which proposes that mysticism is interpreted or constructed experience such as Steven Katz suggests with other proponents of constructivism? Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); on the other hand, classical perennialism (or neo-essentialism) argues for mysticism being an unmediated human phenomenon regardless of interpretation which is extrinsic to the experience as Otto, [Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1936)],James [William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience a Study in Human Nature (London: Routledge, 2002)] and Underhill [Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: The Preeminent Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness, 1st ed., An Image classic (New York: Doubleday, 1990)] hold, as does Martin Dojčár, “The Phenomenon of Consciousness from the Perspective of a Comparative Study of Mysticism,” Studies in Spirituality 23 (2013): 1–2; this author holds the perennialist view. However, a 'both-and' approach may contribute toward a better understanding, since a related phenomenon of human experience, the dream cannot be understood apart from the one who dreamt, who first needs to report the experience for which language (itself already an interpretation) is vital; it cannot be witnessed nor verified by another apart from the experiencer her- or himself; neuroscientific imaging, at this stage at least, can only demonstrate patterns of brain waves; see Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary, The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul (New York: HarperOne, 2008).

~ 37 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition have associated them only with saints like Padre Pio or Teresa of Avila, and therefore out of their league. Mysticism has primacy of place in Christian experience, and therefore demands a formation in that stream of Christian practice, in which various religious orders and congregations play a significant role. On that point Thomas Merton as formator and, in the century before, Marcellin Champagnat and his first brother formators were insistent.140

Without mysticism there is no real theology, and without theology there is no real mysticism. Hence the emphasis will be on mysticism as theology, to bring out clearly the mystical dimensions of our theology … Some think it is sufficient to come to the monastery to live the Rule … we must live our theology, fully, deeply, in its totality. Without this, there is no sanctity.141 Contemporary writers and theologians echo Merton’s claim, although they avoid the term ‘mysticism’ since it is too readily associated with the esoteric or narcissistic.142 Merton insists that theology and spirituality cannot be separated and implied in his statement is their connection to religion, which ensures that ‘mystical experience’ is not something ethereal, isolated from the connectedness of daily life, tangential to the Church and the greater religious and Christian Tradition. Instead, Christian mysticism is earthed in the historical yet ever present Sources.

The New Testament sources of inner experience

Jesus was human in every way but sin (Heb 4:15; GS §22). As a Palestinian Jew, faith in the God of Israel was the ground of his daily life in which he grew in wisdom and maturity, at the same time waking up to a more intimate relationship with God (Lk 2:52). He noticed in every experience his own deep yearning within and beyond the materiality and concrete exteriority of experience: an inner movement which he acted upon, leading him to the Baptizer. Jesus then ‘saw’ the heavens open and the Spirit like a dove descend upon him (Mk 1:9-11). What he ‘saw’ became for him an originating encounter, a ‘reality check’ of his true relationship with the Father. It served as a confirmation of his call and mission, which would have been shared with the disciples he trusted.

The author of John’s Gospel, including the letters of John, is the ‘greatest mystical Doctor of the Church’143 and together with Paul’s letters, they are the source of mystical theology.144 The

140 Rice, 101; Chapter 4 of this thesis examines the Marist approach. 141 Merton, ACCM, 1, this text is an edited version of the more scholarly Thomas Merton, An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 3, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell, Monastic wisdom series MW13 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2008). 142 Merton, ACCM, 6; Perrin, Studying Christian Spirituality, 315–16. 143 Merton, ACCM, 12. 144 Ibid., 6-8, Merton is careful to define Christian mysticism, as the context for his study of the mystical tradition. He was acutely aware of “false mysticism” as little more than egotism. With the rise of spiritualist movements like theosophy (http://skepdic.com/theosoph.html, accessed 3 July 2019) and New Age

~ 38 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 prologue of the gospel centres the Christian mystic on knowing Christ who is the Light come into the world, enlightening those who are ‘born from above’ (Jn 3:3) and who, in a spiritual transformation, become children of God (Jn 1:1-18). The mysticism of John is relational, giving emphasis to communion with God in Christ. Where ecstatic mysticism swallows up the personality of an individual into metaphysical pantheism, John’s theology focuses on the communion of the Christian with God, through faith in Christ.145 The way to know God is through faith in Christ, for it is Christ who makes the Father known (Jn 12:44-60, 14:7-9; Mt 11:25-27). The links with the sacraments of the Church in Jn 3:1-15 (Baptism) and Jn 6, 13 (Eucharist) are evidence that John’s mystical theology is not simply about the individual united with God.146 Instead, it is through faith in Christ, in union with him in the here and now of everyday reality, that opens one to a mutual unity, made present in the familiar which is the instrument of divine life in the sacramental system. The vine and the branches of Jn 15 underscore the mutual abiding of Jesus and his disciples who together abide in the Father.147 It is Jesus who exemplifies by his very existence, as well as in his death and resurrection, that the One who initiates this divine-human communion, is God as Father (Jn 14:7-11; 1 Jn 4:19). It is through faith in this Incarnate Son that the disciple receives the power and energy of the Spirit who reminds disciples of all Jesus has said (Jn 14:26). By that gift of faith and love received, the Father and Son bring about a divine in-dwelling (Jn 14:23) that is mutual between God and the believer, and concomitantly, the community of disciples.

Communion with God is realised most fully through the glorified Christ whom disciples see and know, and therefore, love.148 For Johannine ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ God is embodied in a living person (Jesus) and is an experience of beholding the Word of God.149 Those who live in union with Christ, having his mind and heart, live in union with one another. The Christ-life becomes visible to others by what they see of the Christian community. These disciples, like the branches of the vine, can be safely pruned, then, to bear even more fruit (Jn 15:2-3), because they

movements (https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement, accessed 3 July 2019) clarifying Christian mysticism requires that “there are standards of judgement that can and must be objectively applied - those of revelation” (ACCM, 7); Merton, IE, 25; Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (New York, NY: Image Books Doubleday, 1971), 87. 145 James McPolin, “Johannine Mysticism,” The Way 18, no. 1 (1978): 26. 146 Raymond E Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988), 13. 147 Jey J. Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John: An Inquiry into Its Background, (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 264–65. 148 For John, “seeing” and “knowing” are inseparable; they are not simply about understanding or intellectual agreement. Instead, believers “who perceive the glory of God in the life of Jesus have attained the knowledge of Jesus, which is the real ‘vision of God’.” See Kanagaraj, 273–76. 149 Ibid., 274; Maggie Ross gives greater significance to “behold” in “Jesus in the Balance: Interpretation in the Twenty-First Century,” Word & World 29, no. 2 (2009): 155.

~ 39 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition are connected to the Vine; that being so, they have the responsibility ‘to manifest God’s glory in their daily life …[so that] a true perception of God includes both mysticism and the daily life lived in love and honour to one’s neighbour.’150 This divine in-dwelling is the core of Johannine mysticism: ‘communion with God means [one’s] integration into community within God’ and therefore the integration of the human person, ‘by which [one’s] life in human community is radically changed.’151 John’s Gospel and letters get specific mention in the Marist Formation Guide (FG 410) but only in the chapter concerning ongoing formation.152

The event on the road to Damascus was not just a decisive moment for Saul of Tarsus. For a well-intentioned but self-righteous Pharisee, it was an epiphany moment of the greatest magnitude which he interpreted as God’s call commissioning the renamed Paul to those outside of Judaism. That same encounter he also interpreted as his call to be an apostle (1 Cor 15:9-11) adding authority to his mission. This experience was foundational for Paul, setting the direction for the rest of his life. It becomes a memory to which he returns time and again, making direct (and narrated third party [Acts 9:3-8; 22:6-11; 26:13-19]) reports of the Damascus call (Gal 1:11-17; 1 Cor 15:3-11) as well as direct references to the event (1 Cor 9:1-2; Rom 1:1; 1 Cor 1:1; 2 Cor 1:1; Gal 1:1).153 As such, it reinforces his authority for the work among the various Gentile churches. Paul saw this event as a work of grace, a grace given and received by which he was no longer living for himself but was now living in Christ. Being in Christ is the basis for living in the Spirit (Gal 5:25), which in turn enables the believer and the community of disciples to bear fruit by the gifts of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) for the ‘relationship of the believer to God and to Jesus takes place in the Spirit’ who brings about the new life of grace.154 The other Pauline text (2 Cor 12:1-10) of note is replicated in similar ways in the reports of other mystics in the Christian Tradition, such as those noted later in this chapter. Paul speaks of himself in the third person:

2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. 3 And I know that such a person – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows – 4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat … he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” … so that the power of Christ may dwell

150 Kanagaraj, 269. 151 McPolin, “Johannine Mysticism,” 28. 152 Given that the story with which this thesis began of a novice at 19 experiencing an encounter with the divine, the Gospel of John as an entry into the mystical life deserves a place at an earlier stage in Marist formation. 153 Bonnie Bowman Thurston, “Paul on the Damascus Road: The Study of the New Testament and the Study of Christian Spirituality,” Lexington Theological Quarterly 38, no. 4 (2003): 232–236. 154 Kourie, “Christ-Mysticism in Paul,” 78.

~ 40 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

in me. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.155 Paul repeats that the experience was at God’s initiative, not his (vv. 2-3); it was out of his control or conscious manipulation. Even though he is recalling a memory of the event (v.2), the vividness and ineffability of the experience is beyond any ready language to describe it, for it is direct experience which cannot be reported. Instead, there is only what Paul tells his listeners or readers; that report then becomes his interpretation of what he ‘saw,’ and for that Paul has to resort to metaphor (Paradise) which explains no more than whatever concept his audience may have had. This experience is beyond the world of empirical science, for not all human knowledge belongs to the consciously rational domain of the human mind.156 Mystery is also an element of inner experience and the ‘knowledge’ gained thereof.157 Paul affirms the truth of his encounter with Mystery and is quick to point out that any revelation of grace does not set him apart from or above anyone else. The vision immediately challenges Paul to remember his weaknesses. While Paul received such gratuitous mystical encounters, his flaws and faults made him acutely aware of his continuing need for and dependence on grace: humility, an essential attitude in the lived reality of Christian discipleship.158 Believers are called and missioned through similar experiences and divine encounters – authentically interpreted – throughout the history of the Church to the present.

It is at the point of weakness that through faith in Christ one discovers one’s true identity, which is crucified with Christ (Gal 2:19), breaking ‘through the superficial exterior appearances’ that form one’s ordinary and illusionary vision of self and the world, to find oneself ‘in the presence of hidden majesty…that we do not see with our eyes’ for it is within.159 In putting to death the fiction of the false self, one can make real the following verse: it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me…the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, and where divinization of the self continues with a willing, rather than wilful, spirit.160

155 It is beyond the scope of this thesis to provide an exegetical analysis of this section of Paul’s letter which can be seen in the work of James B. Wallace, Snatched into Paradise (2 Cor. 12:1 - 10): Paul’s Heavenly Journey in the Context of Early Christian Experience, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 179 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011). 156 Austin Cline, “Einstein Says Religion and Science Are Driven by Mystery,” Learn Religions, accessed July 6, 2019, https://www.learnreligions.com/einstein-quotes-on-mystery-249860. 157 Alister McGrath, “On Truth, Mystery and the Limits of Human Understanding,” Text, ABC Religion & Ethics, last modified November 12, 2016, accessed July 6, 2019, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/on-truth- mystery-and-the-limits-of-human-understanding/10096364. 158 Merton, ACCM, 19. 159 Merton, NSC, 41–42. 160 Gerald G. May, Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2009), 5–7.

~ 41 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

In the post-resurrection stories of the Gospel, the disciples experienced the power of such encounters with the Divine in the Risen Lord, shared and tested with the disciples, therefore giving their experience the force of authority because of their trusting faith.161 In the community of believers this authority had given them authenticity and conviction that their experience was real and to be trusted. Such authentic experience throughout the history of the Christian community, spearheaded often by creative saints and reformers, has enabled the Church to constantly renew itself, with fresh perspective on the outlandish truth that God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

Divinization as the transformation of inner experience

From the divine in-dwelling of John, and Christ alive in the depths of the disciple in Paul, there are intimations of divinization in which, through faith in Christ,162 human beings are not only adopted as daughters and sons of God (Gal 3:26; 4:5) but also participate in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) becoming perfect in love as disciples are called to be (Mt 5:44). By faith in Christ, loving God and one another, disciples participate in the resurrection not only as God’s children (1 Jn 3:2) but will share in the same changed immortality as Christ (1 Cor 15:52-54). The clarification of the New Testament message, even before there was a canon, was brought about by the early Patristic writers.

Irenaeus and Clement One of the earliest Church Fathers, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, had to deal with the errors of Gnosticism, more correctly named Pseudo-Gnosticism.163 In writing against these errors he insists that it is through faith in Christ and through him, that believers ‘shall become accustomed to

161 Schneiders, “Religion vs. Spirituality,” 170. 162 The terms “divinization” and “deification” are now synonymous; the former term was associated with Orthodox theology until John Scotus Eriugena used it in the 9th century. The latter term preferred by some scholars was used with reference to the Caesars becoming gods. Jonathan M. Ciraulo, “Divinization as Christification in Erich Przywara and John Zizioulas,” Modern Theology 32, no. 4 (October 2016): 479, nn.1, 3; the latter term, more associated with Eastern Christianity, is not found in the Latin theologians until the 9th century with John Scotus Eriugena, Norman Russell, “A Common Christian Tradition: Deification in the Greek and Latin Fathers,” in Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 272; some scholars associate “divinization” with the ’elevation of heroes and rulers to the status of gods. Contemporary scholarship regards the terms as interchangeable, though divinizing human beings suggests the work of grace in the human soul. See Carl Mosser, “The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Antecedents, and the Origin of Christian Deification,” The Journal of Theological Studies 56, no. 1 (April 2005): 30, n.2. 163 Merton, ACCM, 27–28.

~ 42 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 partake in the glory of God the Father’.164 It is in the beholding in faith that the relationship with Christ allows a person to share in the glory of the Father that Christ has as resurrected Lord, where to behold God is to ‘see and know’ God in the Johannine sense – an ‘inner vision.’165 It is only in Christ that a human being can be fully alive, as Irenaeus of Lyon claimed:

For the glory of God is a living [human being]; and the life of [a human being] consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.166 Irenaeus had reflected upon Ps 82:6 by addressing the question of who were the ‘gods,’ suggesting that the term was synonymous with ‘sons’ who were therefore the baptized.167 Clement of Alexandria builds on the work of Irenaeus by incorporating Greek philosophy and other strands of thought to contribute to Christian gnosis in which he could claim that ‘the true gnostic unites in himself the understanding of human sciences alone with the assistance of faith in order to prepare the mind to grasp divine realities’ so that the high point of a gnostic life was to be led into the divine nature: “The Son of Man became [Human] in order that you might learn how [the human being] becomes God.”168 Clement’s teaching, which included a broad education, considered the Scriptures as ‘the royal road to gnosis,’ as distinct from pseudo-gnosis with which Irenaeus took issue. Meditation on the Scriptures became the pathway by which ‘true Gnostics’ understood they were drawn by the Holy Spirit to the Father, through the Son.169 However, Clement does create an impression that not ‘all achieve the perfection of his Hellenic Christian, who is distinct from other believers.’170 This distinction between the ‘perfect’ and ordinary believers was not the teaching of Jesus and the early Church. This ‘class system’ of holiness, that could have misrepresented Clement, can still infect the community of disciples in the 21st century. Origen and others who

164 Irenaeus of Lyon, Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, online., vol. 1 (CCEL, n.d.), 565, hereafter, Against Heresies, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01/anf01 Bk V, 35:1. 165 Maggie Ross, Writing the Icon of the Heart In Silence Beholding, (La Vergne: Wipf and Stock, 2013), xvii–xxii, accessed July 8, 2019, http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=5705110. 166 Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, 1:490, Bk IV, 20:7; Some writers complain that the 21st century “cult of the self” has led to a poplar misunderstanding of Irenaeus by the focus on the first clause of the first sentence; life to the full (Jn 10:10) implies a relationship, the awe of beholding, with the “living man” who is Christ; see, for example, Patrick H. Reardon, “The Man Alive,” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, accessed July 8, 2019, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-05-003-e. 167 Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 12. 168 Clement quoted (and translated) in Merton, ACCM, 29–30. 169 Ibid., 31. 170 Eric Francis Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 27.

~ 43 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition followed Clement, addressed a system which appeared to depart from the teaching of the apostles.171

Origen: ‘kissed by God’ Originally a student of Clement, Origen, who replaced his master at the Alexandrian catechetical school, taught that

from [Christ] there began the union of the divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those who not only believe, but enter upon the life which Jesus taught, and which elevates to friendship with God and communion with Him every one who lives according to the precepts of Jesus.172 Despite being misunderstood by some among his contemporaries as well as others who came much later,173 Origen echoes Irenaeus in this statement. In suggesting that those who enter into the life Jesus taught are raised to ‘friendship with God,’ which implies a mutuality that means one shares in the divinity of Christ. However, such friendship entails living according to the teachings of Jesus. Such a spirituality, for Origen, means also communion with the Church in the present world as well as with the saints and martyrs who have already died.174 Origen’s spiritual teaching considered certain of the Wisdom books of the Bible to be a graduated pathway on the journey to mystical union with the Word of God (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs).175 Then, from reading, the first step of his praxis was knowledge of the self, knowing one’s habits, instincts and tendencies toward the ephemeral. Such self-awareness entails an inner struggle to leave aside thoughts and actions that lead in directions other than to union with Christ. Origen emphasized a life-long asceticism that included celibate chastity and virginity.176 No longer a beginner, the

171 Merton also addressed this pre-Vatican II distinction between the “state of perfection” regarded as religious life and married or single Christians, a perception still to be found in 21st century Catholicism in some cultures and some reactionary Catholic spiritualities invested in a return to the Tridentine era, Merton, IE, 130–141. 172 Origen, “ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second - Christian Classics Ethereal Library,” Book III, 28, accessed 8 July 2019, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.ix.iii.xxviii.html. 173 Mark Edwards traces the history of Origen’s contribution to the mystical tradition and concludes that despite some errors few theologians today would discredit his huge contribution, nor the fact that he was the first theologian to speak of the Trinity as three hypostases: Father, Son and Spirit; as an exegete and the first to do so, Origen could elicit a more than a literal interpretation of the Scriptures; see “Origen of Alexandria,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Patristics, 1st ed. (Hoboken: Wiley, 2015), 98–110; see also Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen, Repr. of the 1st. ed. 1966, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) 67-68. 174 Benjamin P. Blosser, Become like the Angels: Origen’s Doctrine of the Soul (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 246. 175 Merton, ACCM, 36. 176 Ibid., 34; contrary to Merton’s comment, it is doubtful that Origen took celibate chastity to an extreme degree, as Chadwick points out. From a young age Origen’s asceticism attracted admiration (in Eusebius) and envy. It is possible that Origen’s lack of compromise regarding the necessity of asceticism gave cause for

~ 44 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 believer seeks to be formed in the virtues of Christ. Aware of human frailty and sinfulness, Origen was convinced that the human being is created in the image and likeness of God but lost through illusory distractions.177 Nevertheless, the likeness remains but has to be rescued through crucifixion with Christ and reclaimed by love and grace. With the metaphorical language typical of mystics, Origen teaches that

[the] soul is not made one with the Word of God and joined with Him until such time as all the winter of her personal disorders and the storm of her vices has passed so that she no longer vacillates and is carried about with every kind of doctrine. When, therefore, all these things have gone out of the soul, and the tempest of desires has fled from her, then the flowers of the virtues can begin to burgeon in her.178 This purification is followed by a deepening of the meaning of Scripture identifying with Christ in his suffering, in which one also faces one’s own internal suffering. At this point one is open to the movement of the Spirit in the depth of one’s soul. Filled with the Spirit who awakens the person to a richer understanding of Scripture, one notices with greater realization one’s desire for God in the insight that one is utterly loved by God (through the ‘wound of love’). That insight prompts one’s own spirit to respond whole-heartedly, to hold nothing back in the desire for mystical union with the incarnate Word of God.179

Origen was not satisfied simply with knowledge about God, a second- or third-hand knowledge through teaching and stories which do not satisfy the longing for direct experience that lovers seek.180 The intellect and the emotions cannot be separated,181 for Origen linked understanding and love in the one passionate desire for the intimacy of God in his commentary on the Song of Songs:

When the mind is filled with divine knowledge and understanding through no agency of man or angel, then may the mind believe that it receives the very kisses of the Word of God. … As long as the soul was not able to receive the full and substantial teaching of the very Word of God, she had the kisses of His friends, knowledge that is from the lips of teachers. But when she begins of her own accord to see things hidden, . . . to expound parables and riddles . . . then may the soul believe that she has now received the very kisses of her Lover, the Word of God.182

malicious gossip which included the story of his castration, Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, 67–68. 177 Merton, ACCM, 37. 178 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 56. 179 Merton, ACCM, 36–39. 180 Ibid., 33; Origen’s pioneering path of spirituality had a profound influence on the spirituality of monks in the West and set the pattern for what developed as mystical theology. 181 Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2014), 47/201, accessed July 15, 2019, http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=4462786. 182 Merton, quoting Origen (translated), ACCM, 37-38.

~ 45 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

His mystical path is marked by transitions that form the basis of mystical theology in the centuries ahead.183 That mystical journey is marked by steps and plateaus in which individuals intentionally journey toward ever deeper friendship with Christ walk through stages of purgation, illumination to the union of mystical marriage.184 Not only does Origen set the tone for a new kind of exegesis in his commentaries on the Scriptures, but he outlines the skeleton of what Augustine will develop as a theology of the Trinity within the human soul, as well as the Christian community.

Augustine: divine indwelling through the Spirit Augustine of Hippo has an experience on his journey to conversion that would be later echoed by Merton. Amid shame about his sinfulness and delay in taking action to make changes in his life, Augustine recounts an experience in which he heard a voice telling him to take up the Bible and read:

I said these things and wept most bitter tears in the brokenness of my heart. Then suddenly I heard a voice from next door—a boy’s voice or a girl’s, I do not know – singing, repeating again and again, “Pick up and read, pick up and read.” … so I stopped the flow of my tears and arose, taking this to be no less than a divine voice commanding me to open a book and read whatever passage I first came upon … And so, stirred by this voice, I returned to the … book of the Apostle … snatched it up, opened it, and read in silence the passage that first caught my eye: “not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts.” … As soon as I reached the end of this sentence the light of assurance was poured into my heart and all the clouds of doubt melted away.185 Significant in Augustine’s account leading up to his baptism, was the dread he had felt upon realizing his waywardness. His interest in Gnostic Manicheism was not bringing him the peace he desired in seeking the Truth.186 Whether or not the children next door spoke what Augustine relates is of no consequence; rather, it is what he himself heard (in mind and heart), aided by his recourse (even at an unconscious level) to Christian tradition in what, as a child he had been taught by his mother, as well as his knowledge gained through study and learning.187 Not only does Augustine have the support, the prayer and example of his mother, but his friend Alypius accompanies him in conversion. Augustine is further inspired by the example of Ambrose: another indicator that the spiritual journey requires, not only time for reflection and good books as well as sacred texts – he recalls St Antony’s conversion through opening the Bible. While waiting in Ostia to return to

183 Ibid., 54, 57–59, 88–89. 184 Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 58. 185 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2019), Book 8, 12:28-29, accessed July 12, 2019, http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=5717437. 186 Ibid., Bk 6, 6:9-10. 187 Augustine’s awareness of his sinfulness is echoed in Merton’s experience leading in turn to the latter’s own conversion. Both autobiographical accounts illustrate the narrative nature of the spiritual journey shaping their identities and consequent spiritualities.

~ 46 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

Carthage and with his mother before her death, they both glimpse the divine, albeit momentarily.188 This experience beyond words and any language but that of silent mystery became for Augustine, and his mother,189 an encounter upon which he reflected as he sought further to understand God as the Trinity: that experience of sheer grace he reflected upon as a way of examining the ecclesial nature of faith.190

Among the Latin Church Fathers, Augustine uses ‘deification’ more than any other.191 Acutely aware of the flawed frailty of the human condition, and yet convinced of the power of grace, Augustine realises that true growth in Christ is to recognize that human beings will never be without sin even as they are made in the image of God.192 The innate human longing for Truth becomes an ascent of the inner self, the soul, to God. The soul for Augustine has three faculties: intellect, memory and will, through which he could develop a theology of the incomprehensible Triune God in their correspondence to the three divine Persons: Father, Son and Spirit.193 That trilogy of intellect, memory and will was paralleled as: Christ in the Scriptures; liturgy and worship; and the testimony of others.194 He developed a neglected theology of the third Person of the Trinity by developing the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is the indispensable bond between Father and Son; that the Spirit’s person and mission are the bond, the glue and the connection between Father and Son. Augustine’s explication understood that the Spirit was the ‘consubstantial’ union of Father and Son. Orthodox theologians could now articulate that the Persons of the Triune God existed as a Relationship of equality and unity.195 Elsewhere Augustine names the Holy Spirit as the ‘friendship of God’, where the Holy Spirit is common to the Father and Son, and ‘is their very communion, consubstantial and coeternal. Call this friendship if it helps, but a better word for [her/him] is charity.’196 Thus, if the Spirit lives within the innermost being of the Christian (Rom 8:9, 11, 15; Eph 3:16-17), so also do the Father and the Son, for the Spirit brings everyone and everything into unity and love.

188 Augustine, Confessions, Bk 9, 10.24. 189 Ibid., Bk 9, 10.25-26. 190 Jared Ortiz, “You Made Us for Yourself”: Creation in St. Augustine’s Confessions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 154. 191 Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, 329. 192 Merton, ACCM, 92. 193 Ibid., 93. 194 Paul Rigby, The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 15. 195 David Vincent Meconi, The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2013), 149. 196 Ibid., 150, quoting from De Trinitate, 6.5.7.

~ 47 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

Augustine’s mysticism includes the reality of the Church, where humility, exemplified in the Incarnation, and love, through the outpouring of the Spirit’s gifts (Ga 5:22-25), can lead to a real embrace of love in the encounter with God that comes ‘in the flash of a trembling glance’ received as delight, albeit transient.197 That experience of love has a mediated effect in the mutuality of others in Christ, that is effected by grace in the lived experience of love and loving. It is this ecclesial dimension of Augustinian mysticism that provides the validation of inner experience. But that inner experience is also mediated in concrete (cataphatic) or positive forms through creation, seeking God outside of and within the self through love (caritas). It is an ascent to the hoped for moment of God’s direct embrace which can be experienced through the Gospel faithfulness of fellow disciples in the Church’s thirst for God in a mysticism of love.198 What Augustine does raise is how necessary is the testimony and example of others, especially the saints.199 The stories of mystics and saints reveal how important are the testimonies of those who are faithful to the movements of the Spirit. Part of Brother Basilio Rueda’s purpose in writing his circular ‘Fidelity’ was to provide a ‘whole crowd of witnesses’ (Heb 12:1) to inspire other brothers to be faithful to Christ.200 Those who persevere in the journey of the inner self-in-God encourage and remind others that the divinization of human beings is possible, as he himself illustrated in his circular ‘The Spirit of the Institute.’201

Bernard of Clairvaux – divinizing love: loving as God loves In contrast to Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) came from a devout Christian background, though like Merton, he excelled in letters, but nevertheless opted for monastic life,

197 Merton, ACCM, 94–95, n.1. 198 Ibid., 96, Augustine tends to leave aside the apophatic approach in the ascent of the soul to God, that kind of mysticism beyond forms referred to as the via negativa given emphasis by later mystics, especially John of the Cross. 199 Ignatius of Loyola would say of himself that if Dominic or Francis acted this way or that, so must he; see Ignatius of Loyola, A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985), 14; Teresa of Avila, The Complete Works of St Teresa of Avila, ed. E. Allison Peers, trans. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns & Oates, 2002), 56. 200 Basilio Rueda Guzman, “Fidelity” (Marist Brothers, September 8, 1984), 15–17, Circulars of the Superior General. 201 Basilio Rueda Guzman, “The Spirit of the Institute” (Marist Brothers, December 1975), 19, Circulars of the Superior General, accessed October 4, 2019, http://champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=2773 the page numbering refers to a Google translation of the French.

~ 48 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 bringing members of his family with him, to the new monastery at Citeaux.202 Not more than three years later at the age of twenty-five he was elected abbot to lead a new foundation at Clairvaux.203

Traditional spirituality had drawn from two ‘books’, the created world and the Bible. Bernard added a third, forming a connection with Merton and the post-modern era, that of one’s own experience.204 However, only a superficial reading would equate Bernard’s use of the word ‘experience’ with its common interpretation in the twenty-first century, especially when it is paired with ‘religious.’ Bernard did not give a precise definition of ‘experience’;205 rather, he included all experience, both ‘everyday’ experience as well as his own mystical experiences framed in biblical language.206 Bernard was speaking to, and writing for, monks.207 Nonetheless, in his claim that personal experience is a third book of a Christian’s spirituality, Bernard goes beyond the monastic context suggesting that experience, together with the teaching of the Church, is valid for every Christian to discover the ultimate truth of God’s embracing love.208 For Bernard then, experience is about the whole of life that includes the ordinary and the everyday. He appeals to his listeners (and readers):

Apply your hearing within, roll back the eyes of your heart, and you will learn by your own experience what is going on … If any of you does not perhaps believe me, let him believe experience, either his own or that of many others.209 Bernard echoes Jesus to John’s disciples (Lk 7:18-22). Although including everyday awareness of God’s presence, he nonetheless makes mystical experience accessible and not the specialty of those who claim extraordinary visions and other phenomena. An experience of the awareness of God’s presence is only known to those who experience it. For the person so graced, it is sufficient to know for certain that what one has received is recognised as divine gift, even though, like St

202 William of St Thierry, Arnold of Boneval, and Geoffrey of Auxerre, The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Hilary Costello, Cistercian Fathers series 26 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015), Bk 1, 1-21, William of St Thierry; Medieval biographers wrote hagiography, that is, their bias was to convince others that their subject was holy and worthy of canonisation; he was made a saint just 21 years after his death. Sifting through such writing is a challenge for historians; nevertheless, Bernard’s writing itself provides some basis to construct an outline of his life’s journey. William Harmless, Mystics (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43; see also Michael Casey, “Reading Saint Bernard: The Man, the Medium, the Message,” in A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux (Boston: Brill, 2011), 64-65. 203 Harmless, Mystics, 44. 204 Brian Patrick McGuire, ed., A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux, Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2011), "Sermons on the Song of Songs", 3.1; hereafter, SSS, #.#. 205 Michael Casey, “Bernard’s Biblical Mysticism,” Studies in Spirituality 4 (1994): 12; Hilary Knight, “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on Experience,” Medieval Mystical Theology 24, no. 1 (May 2015): 63. 206 Casey, “Bernard’s Biblical Mysticism,” 15. 207 Kilian McDonnell, “Spirit and Experience in Bernard of Clairvaux,” Theological Studies 58, no. 1 (February 1997): 5. 208 Knight, “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on Experience,” 60. 209 Ibid., 63–64 quoting Bernard (as are the following inset quotes).

~ 49 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

Paul’s encounter (2 Co 12:1-12), it is only partial knowledge.210 This is the way Bernard suggests that people can ‘taste and see’ the experience of knowing they are loved by God in such a way that one can feel joy at the awareness of the presence of God.211 An encounter can occur in the restful reading of the Word as in lectio divina, as when meditatively reading the Song of Solomon where the Bride ‘will detect with happy eyes the eye that gazes on her like a sunray piercing through the windows and lattices of the wall’ (Sg 2:9).212

Bernard’s experiences of the awareness of God’s presence are especially vivid in his commentaries on the Song of Songs in which his mystical theology is strongly Christocentric; he sees Sg 1:2 as kissing the feet, hand and mouth of Christ, as analogy for the purgative, illuminative, and unitive way of the mystical life in which the soul eventually becomes the Bride before Christ the Bridegroom.213 In the awe of God’s all pervasive presence he also becomes aware of his own depths and a greater knowledge of himself and the distinction between himself and the Word expressed in language reflecting the Scriptures (Ps 139; Acts 17:38).214

Whatever the experience, he draws on the Scriptures in the fashion of other medieval mystics because personal experience alone did not necessarily testify to Truth. It had to be discerned and in conformity with divine revelation, chiefly through the Scriptures and the Church’s Tradition. That requires the mystic to ‘give a higher priority to the data of faith’ than one’s own experiential interpretations; clinging to one’s own perceptions can block one from the touch and embrace of God in one’s life.215 Bernard describes experiences in such a way that emphasises mysticism as accessible to all, as his 20th century confrère Merton also does; experience becomes encounter: in the presence of God, being loved and loving God.

Bernard’s affective spirituality details a programmatic development of love. One may begin with the love of family, friends, and confrères, and with the created world. But human love at its fullest moves toward living and loving in God where, at the same time, one discovers fully one’s true self insofar as that is possible for the flawed human condition. That intimacy between Lover and Beloved spills out into love and compassion for others, the test of authentic growth and

210 Bernard, SSS, 41.3. 211 Knight, “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on Experience,” 71. 212 Ibid. 213 Harvey D. Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010), 78–79. 214 Bernard, quoted in Harmless, Mystics, 53. 215 Casey, “Bernard’s Biblical Mysticism,” 14.

~ 50 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 deification in action.216 Given his emphasis on the incarnate Word, this means the Christification of the person, enabling the disciple to share in the divine life of the Trinity.217

Being one with God in the incarnate Word does not mean that one’s flaws or sinfulness disappear into some heavenly ether. Bernard could make hasty decisions, yet, had the humility to admit mistakes; he could collaborate with others, encouraging them empathetically, and concerned for their welfare. However, like Merton, he did not have robust health, while yet able to be a peripatetic monk, which involved being drawn into the troubles of ecclesiastical politics, at times heavily, to the point that he could recognise the ambiguity of his position as a monk with a vow of stability:

It is time that I cease being forgetful of myself. My monstrous life cries out, and my bitter conscience. I am like a chimera of my age, neither a cleric nor a layman, for I have for some time thrown off the monk’s way of life, but not the habit.218 Bernard regrets the busyness of his life, as if warning against the lack of a realistic, embodied balance in one’s Christian life.219 Nonetheless, like Merton, Bernard also serves as a model for 21st century religious life, particularly that of a group like the Marist Brothers; such a congregation came to be known as an apostolic religious congregation, in contrast to contemplative religious orders.220 Although both Bernard and Merton were canonically ‘contemplative monks’, their lives of teaching and writing, hospitality and involvement in issues of their day were not dissimilar to those of many Marist Brothers of the 20th and 21st centuries, whose reputation for being hard workers and energetic educators have hindered reflective, contemplative approaches to their inner experience, a facet of their religious life considered in Chapters 4 and 5.

The shift away from strict, medieval monastic styles of life in Bernard’s time began in earnest in the following era with the mendicant orders after and alongside the strictly monastic reforms. The next section makes a brief examination of spiritualities that shaped this revival of the

216 Casey, “Reading Saint Bernard,” 99–100. 217 Mac Stewart, “The Honey-Sweet Doctor: Bernard of Clairvaux,” Covenant, August 20, 2016, accessed 27 July 2019, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/08/20/the-honey-sweet-doctor; the author elucidates Bernard Sg 1:2, "On the Love of God", Sermon VIII 'On the kiss of the Mouth interpreted of the Holy Spirit': Let him kiss me with the kiss of His Mouth. 218 Bernard, quoted in Casey, "Reading St Bernard", 68. 219 Susan Rakoczy, “Martha and Mary: Sorting Out the Dilemma,” Studies in Spirituality 8 (1998): 65. 220 In the opening decades of the 21st century these canonical distinctions cease to have relevant meanings. Perhaps a better terminology of distinction is to speak of vowed religious with this or that chief ministry.

~ 51 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

17th century which serves as a foundation for the spiritualities that flowered in the next three centuries in Europe, setting the scene for a spirituality that will undergird the Marist venture.221

Early Modern Catholic awakenings to interiority

Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent gave rise to a renewed energy of reform in the Roman Catholic Church. However, movements of reform are never completely original. An Italian reformer in the 13th century, the Benedictine Luigi Barbo (d. 1443) wrote a treatise on meditation and mental prayer.222 This writing influenced García de Cisneros (1455- 1510), Abbot of Montserrat, from where it spread through Spain.223

From the middle of the 16th century to the end of the 17th there emerged in Europe a new flowering of mysticism in a context of turmoil in Western Europe with Western Christendom breaking up into nation states.224 Despite sporadic signs of reform before 1517, the Catholic Church responded to the Protestant or European Reformation with its own reform, or revival, of Catholic life and spirituality based on the sources: the Scriptures and Tradition.225 In the latter half of the 16th century, a number of reformers emerged, particularly in Western Europe.

The Spanish stream In the first half of the 1500s, the Franciscan friar, Francisco de Osuna, was one of the most widely read spiritual writers in Spain, although there were many others, beginning with Garcia de Cisneros, not all were published.226 Osuna drew on a variety of sources from the Bible, the Church Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius as well as Greek philosophy and Islamic mysticism.227 is The Third

221 This broad overview is necessarily restricted to a Western European sampling. It leaves out, not only other Christian traditions of mysticism, but is chiefly focused on Spanish and French mystics, since they form the background to many of the religious orders and congregations that have appeared in the Church up to and beyond the founder of the Marist Brothers. 222 Jordan Aumann, Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, eBook in pdf format, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 180. 223 Ibid., 181–82; Merton, CP, 62. 224 Wendy M Wright, “Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 438–39. 225 Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450 - 1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation, European history in perspective (London: Macmillan, 1999), 8. In his opening chapter the author argues persuasively for naming this period “Early Modern Catholicism,” less polemic than that inherited from the Council of Trent's 'anathema' approach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_excommunicable_offences_from_the_Council_of_Trent, accessed July 28, 2019); Bireley's term recognises that all the churches, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant each have their own history and revivals in a now established ecumenical view among theological historians; see 1-25. 226 Merton, ICM, 221; Aumann, Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, 181. 227 Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, Jewish & Christian Mysticism: An Introduction (New York: Continuum, 1994), 119.

~ 52 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

Spiritual Alphabet (of six), the most mystical, dealt with the prayer of recollection.228 He argued that the spiritual life must begin by cleaning one’s conscience, leading to the kind of prayer which includes a process of vocal prayer, then prayer of the heart consisting of ‘holy thoughts;’ and lastly, the highest form of prayer, ‘spiritual prayer, in which the highest part of the soul is lifted more purely and affectionately to God on the wings of desire and pious affection strengthened by love.’229 This quietens the external person so that one’s inner world becomes recollected enough, emptied of self in the silence, though not perfectly because of one’s humanity; the heart now has no other distraction but to seek God. One can forget one’s weakness, transformed in God who, as Lover sees, Godself in the beloved.

However, Osuna suggests that the vocation to mystical prayer is not for all, while noting that anyone may be called. But it is possible for anyone who can love, to enjoy the friendship of God, an observation that reflects the thinking of Merton.230 It does require the discipline of purifying one’s heart and mind; that is, cultivating humility and meekness, joy, love, patience, while avoiding ‘superfluous care,’231 which translates into an unnecessary busyness. Osuna points toward an apophatic spirituality becoming ‘one spirit with God by an exchange of wills,’ of simply looking lovingly on God,232 such as that proposed by Merton. Osuna includes other forms of prayer as well, the highest of which is without words or thought.

An interesting note presumably made by Osuna is that ‘sad souls do not progress in contemplation.’233 This comment is particularly pertinent for the present era since there is growing concern for the mental well-being especially of young men in societies either constrained by rigid cultural expectations or enmeshed in a competitive climb of the socio-economic ladder.234 The tendency to sadness can lead to the kind of depression which imprisons people from opening their hearts and minds to wonder and the joy of knowing they are loved. Marcellin Champagnat warned

228 Merton, ICM, 226. 229 Ibid., 119–20, quoting Osuna (translated). 230 Merton, CP, 19. 231 Merton, ICM, 227–28. 232 Ibid., 228. 233 Ibid., 227–28; Merton comments on quoting from The Third Spiritual Alphabet in Peers’ Studies of the Spanish Mystics. 234 Depression is visited upon rich and poor alike, regardless of cultural background and can lead to suicide, chiefly among men in late adolescence and early adulthood, Mava Enoka, “When You Compare NZ’s Suicide Rate to Australia’s, the Stats Are Shocking,” RNZ, last modified January 20, 2017, accessed November 5, 2019, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/374427/when-you-compare-nz-s-suicide-rate- to-australia-s-the-stats-are-shocking; Hannah Martin, “Study: Pacific Youth More at Risk of Suicide than Any Other Group,” Stuff, last modified April 28, 2017, accessed November 5, 2019, https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/91938328/study-pacific-youth-more-at-risk-of-suicide-than-any- other-group.

~ 53 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition against the tendency to ‘sadness’ as a hindrance to reflective inner experience; it disrupts the transformation of the self, one’s divinization in Christ, though he provided his young companions with preventive measures with the common sense suggestions of Francis de Sales, who, in turn, had been influenced by Jesuit spirituality.235

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuits was not always considered to belong to the mystical tradition.236 His life as a military man of privilege came to an abrupt end when he was wounded in battle; his desire for glory was turned upside down in his profound experience of conversion and encounter with Christ.237 Drawing on his own experience, he wrote his Spiritual Exercises and wished to form those who would lead people in such a way that they could have direct experience of God, be inflamed with God’s love and disposed to better serve the Lord in the future.238

As one who could see ‘God in all things,’ Ignatius was very much a ‘mystic of the ordinary,’239 a phrase in various forms which has become a popular expression.240 Since Vatican II proclaimed that all are called to holiness by the grace of baptism (LG 40-41), the love of God and neighbour in the midst of everyday life are invitations made to all in the one life of holiness (Eph 1:4).

Ignatius brings to the mystical stream the use of the imagination. His Spiritual Exercises were a series of imaginative meditations on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Christ; the meditation exercises required the person to imagine oneself in the scene, taking part, listening or being healed, or becoming one of the apostles, or even in imagining oneself as Jesus healing. The

235 Jean-Baptiste Furet, Listen to the Words of Your Father: Opinions, Conferences, Sayings and Instructions of Marcellin Champagnat, trans. Leonard Voegtle (General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1927), 139–145; hereafter ALS. 236 Philip Endean, “The Concept of Ignatian Mysticism: Beyond Rahner and de Guibert,” The Way - supplement, no. 103 (2002): 77. 237 Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 227. 238 Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the Text of The Spiritual Exercises, trans. Joseph A Munitiz and Philip Endean, e-book, (London: Penguin Books, 1996), 15th annotation, accessed November 6, 2019, http://books.google.com/books?id=et8lAQAAIAAJ. 239 Philip Endean, Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality, Oxford theological monographs (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 14. 240 Lillian Thomas Strank, “Ordinary Myticism and Ordinary Mystics,” The Way 30, no. 3 (1990): 231– 43; Albert Haase, Becoming an Ordinary Mystic: Spirituality for the Rest of Us (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2019); John Montague, “Mystic of the Ordinary: Doing His Work,” Irish Pages 8, no. 2 (January 1, 2014): 110+.

~ 54 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 synoptic gospels become eminently suitable for the exercises and through the imagination Christian prayer is simplified and may even lead one to ‘consolation without previous cause.’241

Ignatius had also been a reader. The Spiritual Exercises reveal the influences of his reading the lives of the saints, Ludolph of Saxony’s Life of Christ, as well as The Imitation of Christ and the writings of Abbot Cisneros of Montserrat.242 As he imagined and dreamed of imitating the saints, he noticed the movements within him: the emotions stirring within. When imagining once again the life of being a nobleman he was left feeling disconsolate, whereas in daydreaming about imitating the saints he noticed that he remained happy and consoled, even after the daydream had faded. These two movements of desolation and consolation became pivotal in his rules for the discernment of spirits,243 a distinctive feature of the Exercises. The facility to recognise the ‘bad spirit’ leads a person to recognise their own sinfulness and yet to know that one is utterly loved by an ever gracious, Triune God. At one point, when morbidly considering his sinfulness or lack of honesty in confessing, Ignatius suffered from what he called scruples, to the point of suicidal ideation.244 With the development of psychology in the last hundred years, his condition would have been diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorder, usually treatable with good therapy and follow up.245 This was a lesson for Ignatius when he realised the need for a good spiritual director, a balanced rhythm of prayer, and the discernment of spirits.

On another occasion on his way to a little church near Manresa, he sat down facing the river below him when an unexpected moment of insight and understanding pierced his inner world with such clarity that everything seemed fresh and new.246 Such infused knowledge is a gift of the Spirit; not acquired by human effort, this gift is one of the more direct ways God may self-disclose to a person intent on obeying the will of God. It means emptying oneself sufficiently in silence to receive God’s self-communication,247 aligning one’s own will with God’s will; one can then

241 Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings, Rules more applicable to the second week, §330; Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 228. 242 Philip Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality, Blackwell brief histories of religion series (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007), 124–25; Aumann, Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition, 150. 243 Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 229. 244 Ignatius of Loyola, A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, 31–34. 245 “Types of OCD,” BrightQuest Treatment Centers, n.d., accessed November 7, 2019, https://www.brightquest.com/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/types-of-ocd/. 246 Loyola, Ignatius, A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, 38–39; Ignatius writes of himself in the third person. 247 Doris Donnelly, “Knowledge,” The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1993).

~ 55 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition recognise God’s unwavering love in the everyday and respond by discovering God’s presence in all things.

Ignatius’ Spiritual Journal reveals his mysticism to be Christocentric. With a significant number of his inner experiences (visions/dreams)248 recorded, as Bernard McGinn notes, Ignatius’ journal is ‘one of the purest examples of direct reporting of mystical experiences in Christian history.’249 From those entries, Ignatius’ interiority is clearly Trinitarian in his relationship with God, reflected in his understanding of the Church as ‘true Spouse of Christ our Lord.’250 Ignatius’ experience reveals certain facets of a ‘sacramental’ mysticism that is cataphatic, a mysticism that underscores word, image and symbol in which God can be reached through appreciating what God does in creation. To find God in all things is to learn to integrate both contemplative and active dimensions of living a mystical Christian life;251 a mysticism both apophatic and cataphatic, united in one becoming a ‘contemplative in action,’ following Christ as servant of all.252 That Ignatian spirituality is actively apostolic does not mean that Ignatius was any less contemplative or mystical. The use of the imagination in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, earths spirituality in Christocentric, cataphatic inner experience in faith. Still, there is also a place for the single- minded focus of apophatic centring prayer.253 The unbidden images that can arise during such prayer call for deep reflection. Occurring in the less than conscious imagination, either in dreams, or in a deeply meditative state,254 these images and/or aural messages can reveal aspects of the inner self needing the purification of the light of Christ, whose Spirit is the divine therapist.255

The writings of Teresa of Avila (1515-82) and John of the Cross (1542-91) have left an indelible mark on the mysticism of the Christian Tradition. As a child, Teresa was inspired by

248 John B. F. Miller, “Convinced That God Had Called Us”: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God’s Will in Luke-Acts, Biblical interpretation series v. 85 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2007), 8–14; The author draws on the work of John S. Hanson’s study of Dreams and Visions in Luke/Acts, noting that the biblical terms were ambiguous and not clearly defined. 249 Quoted by Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 230. 250 Ibid., 231–32. 251 Sheldrake, A Brief History of Spirituality, 126–27. 252 Harvey D. Egan, “Christian Apophatic and Kataphatic Mysticisms,” Theological Studies 39, no. 3 (September 1978): 403–05. 253 Thomas Keating points out that the difference in current apophatic Christian meditation practices is between John Main’s focused attention and Centering Prayer’s focus on intention, each with the same transformative goal; see Thomas Keating, “The Difference Between Centering Prayer and Dom John Main’s Christian Meditation,” Contemplative Outreach, last modified November 2017, accessed November 9, 2019, https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/article/difference-between-centering-prayer-and-dom-john-mains- christian-meditation. 254 Morton T. Kelsey, The Other Side of Silence: A Guide to Christian Meditation (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), 37–38. 255 Thomas Keating, The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation, The Harold M. Wit lectures (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 39.

~ 56 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 reading the lives of the saints and martyrs.256 At the same time, she was absorbed by the frivolity of fashion, and mixing with the wrong kind of friends. Later, while reading the letters of St Jerome during a period of illness,257 as well as by encouragement from a trustworthy friend, she decided to enter the convent of the Incarnation. However, after nearly twenty years of interior struggle trying different forms of mental prayer, and, reading Osuna’s The Third Spiritual Alphabet,258 she experienced a deeper conversion.

Disappointed with the lack of fervour among the Carmelites,259 she wished to return the order to its more contemplative origins. She wanted to help others by telling of her experience, about which she was ordered to write,260 which resulted in her Life, in which she recounts her conversion and the founding of the reform in the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites. Like Merton much later, she was a ‘natural writer and a mistress of metaphor, proverb, and telling image,’261 but no systematic theologian. As Merton 400 years later would reiterate, she wrote from her own inner experience of the journey towards deeper interiority, and felt she was better fitted to speak to sisters since she was one of them and they would better understand a woman’s perspective, who, like women of the time, had had little formal education:

I know that I am lacking neither in love nor in desire to do all I can to help the souls of my sisters to make great progress in the service of the Lord. It may be that this love, together with my years and the experience which I have of a number of convents, will make me more successful in writing about small matters than learned men can be. For these, being themselves strong and handing other and more important occupations, do not always pay such heed to things which in themselves seem of no importance … I should like my sisters to take warning by me. I shall speak of nothing of which I have no experience, either in my own life or in the observation of others, or which the Lord has not taught me in prayer.262 In a candid admission of her lack of education, which may have been an astute (and ironic) assessment of how easily some clerics fool themselves into a false sense of superiority, she insists that her experience was not the criterion by which to judge the Word of God in the Scriptures, but

256 Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, e-book, vol. 1 (Washington: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987), 66-69/695; Volume 1, Life, Ch.1, §§1-8 {1: Life, 1:1-8}. 257 Ibid., 1:79/695. 258 Ibid., 1:83/695; 1: Life, 4:7. 259 Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 242–43. 260 Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila V.2, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, e-book., vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987), 39/543; [Vol. 2, The Way of Perfection, Prologue 4 {2, WP, Prologue: 4}]. 261 Teresa of Avila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, trans. J. M. Cohen, e-book, (London: Penguin Books, 1957), Introduction, accessed November 8, 2019, https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=F990E942-B106-486A-84A9-B07C5BB230CE. 262 Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila V.3, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez, e-book., vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987), 39/543.

~ 57 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition the reverse. There is nothing self-deprecating in her statements; rather, a profound sense of true humility is evident. She acknowledges her capacity for love and the desire to educate others in the spirituality that will lead them to being one with Christ. In these apparently self-disparaging words, she is being both shrewd and innocent (Mt 10:16); at a time when the Inquisition was still very influential,263 she was aware that her family ancestry was Jewish.

Her works reveal a warm personality who engages readily with others yet is thoroughly convinced about the importance of contemplative living being the primary reason for her vocation. Among her works The Interior Castle stands out as the journey of the soul to God. Written at a time when her Life was being regarded with suspicion,264 it traces the journey of one wishing to go to the essence of the inner self, wherein God dwells, based on her own inner experience. She describes the seven mansions or dwelling places within the castle, 265 which is the soul, whose aim is to gradually recognise the truth that it is an imago Dei; one enters into the castle through prayer. The first three ‘dwelling places’ correspond to the traditional purgative way: vocal prayer, reflection, self-knowledge and humility; these ‘mansions’ in which there are many ‘rooms’ or the differing aspects of self-knowledge to examine mark the movement from sin or apathy to the practice of virtue.266 She insists on the perseverance in prayer, for anyone to move to the next dwelling places: in spite of any wrong those who practice prayer do, they must not abandon prayer since it is the means by which they can remedy the situation; and to remedy it without prayer would be much more difficult. May the devil not tempt them, the way he did me, to give up prayer out of humility.267 Self-knowledge has little to do with the modern corporate world of strengths and weaknesses, nor personality descriptors obtained through tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or the Enneagram, even if these are helpful in terms of confirming a person’s self-esteem. Instead, this level requires that one takes ownership of one’s true self through growing in an ever more intimate relationship with God. This kind of self-knowledge is always in the context of the Light that resides in the centre of the soul, the seventh mansion: this level of self-awareness brings into focus the difference between Creator and creature. Alternating between reflecting on the majesty of God

263 Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition, Historical Association studies (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006), 99–101. 264 Teresa of Avila, Works V.2, Interior Castle, Introduction, 315/543. 265 Ibid., 2: 339/543; the Spanish morada Teresa uses is reminiscent of ‘dwelling places' in Jn 14:2. 266 Thomas L. Mulcahy, “The Soul’s Journey to God: A Concise Summary of Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle,” Catholic Strength, March 23, 2017, accessed November 11, 2019, https://catholicstrength.com/2017/03/23/ the-souls-journey-to-god-a-concise-summary-of-saint-teresa-of- avilas-interior-castle/. 267 Teresa of Avila, Works V.1, Life, Ch. 8, 115/695.

~ 58 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 and the lowliness of the creature ensures that humility informs one’s self-knowledge.268 This is not the self-disparaging ‘humility’ of a 20th century, pre-Vatican II Catholicism. Instead, it is true humility in which ‘the soul is capable of much more than we can imagine, and the sun that is in this royal chamber shines in all its parts’ and is therefore unafraid to explore the various dimensions (rooms) of the inner self. It is by this route that one discovers the knowledge of self that cannot be learned without the perseverance of prayer, nor the humility to know and enjoy the superlative love of God whose mercy sees through and beyond the sinfulness and misery one may feel about oneself.269

The sign that one is ready to advance can be the dissatisfaction one feels with the type of prayer which has been one’s familiar way of relating to the Divine. In describing the fourth dwelling place, Teresa uses the metaphor of troughs filled with water: one, by dint of hard work and a variety of very conscious forms of prayer and meditation; the other trough is filled by a spring and it is overflowing, spilling over and forming a stream.270 There is an inexplicable joy experienced and those intent on this journey into the depths of the soul know that this is not of their own making but is pure gift from the One they seek in faith and love. At the same time, Teresa is insistent and repetitive about the need for humility.271 As one progresses through the other dwelling places of the soul, it becomes impossible to be occupied with discursive meditation which relies on the intellect and the imagination; a person at this point feels more inclined to be simply occupied with ‘beholding’272 the presence of God within, a faculty of the will which expresses the longing and the desire for Love Itself.273

Teresa discounts as union with God the phenomena sometimes associated with mystical experience such as levitation, bilocation, and other types of trance or ecstasy. These phenomena do not necessarily mean the one experiencing them is a mystic. She discusses them as signs that may indicate transformation of the self is taking place; though not necessarily, because in all things discernment is imperative for one determined to live humbly in the journey toward ever greater

268 Teresa of Avila, Works V.2, Interior Castle, Ch. 2:8, 344/543. 269 Ibid., 345–56/543; Interior Castle (IC), 2nd Mansion, 362-363/543; IC 3rd, 1:7-9. 270 Ibid., 2:379–81/543; v.2, IC 4th, 2:3-6. 271 Ibid., 2:381/543; v.2, IC 4th, 2:9. 272 Maggie Ross, “Behold Not the Cloud of Experience,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2011 [Exeter Symposium 8], ed. E. A. Jones (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), 29–50, accessed May 15, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt2tt1ms.8. 273 Teresa of Avila, Works V.2, 2:452–55/543; IC 6th, 7:7-15.

~ 59 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition interiority.274 Teresa’s mysticism is very practical: her life and writings indicate the need first for the desire to love God; to read the appropriate books among which the Scripture has first priority; to establish good and wholesome friendships; to persevere in prayer in all its forms while docile to the Spirit’s movement within the soul for which silence and solitude are necessary, as are the practicalities of daily life, and the expression of that love for God which overflows into one’s relationship with others.275 While Ignatian mysticism found expression in solidarity with the poor in whom is reflected the Trinitarian God, Teresa’s mystical (rather than speculative) theology is a theology gained by the inner experience of lived faith. Her theology is expressed in Christocentric and trinitarian terms in the exchange that happens in spiritual ‘marriage’ of the soul to Christ, exchanging her human nature for his, thereby becoming divinised in which the mystic is aware of all three Persons of the One God dwelling within (Jn 15:17, 23-24).276 The desire and thirst for God becomes the all-encompassing drive of the one so close to the Sun at the centre of the diamond castle, but without losing perspective in the necessary daily expressions of that love.

In contrast to Teresa, John of the Cross came from a poor family; his father died when he was only two years old, leaving his mother and himself penniless. Educated through a scholarship by the Jesuits, he helped to pay for his keep in his adolescent years by working for victims of syphilis.277 At twenty he entered the Carmelite order and once he had met Teresa of Avila, she elicited his help in the Carmelite reform. He was able to effect the reform among some of the Friars. Because of this he is considered to be co-founder with Teresa of the Discalced Carmelites,278 though they were collaborators in the revival project rather than close friends.279 John served as spiritual director and confessor to Teresa’s Discalced convents, as well as setting up houses for friars of the reform.280

His writing is like that of an academic theologian, even though he did not regard himself as such.281 Most of his writing was a combination of his own poetry and his commentary on each

274 Edward Howells, “Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2013), 431. 275 Teresa of Avila, Works V.2, 2:479/543;2: IC, 7th, 1:8. 276 Ibid., 478-79/543; 2: IC, 7th, 1:5-6. 277 Howells, “Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross,” 432. 278 Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 250. 279 Lawrence S. Cunningham, “Who Was St. John of the Cross?” sec.: John's Age. 280 Howells, “Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross,” 432. 281 Cunningham, “Who Was St. John of the Cross?” sec.: Poetry and Prose.

~ 60 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 verse and each line. Before his imprisonment he wrote an academic treatise, The Ascent of Mt Carmel, which he abandoned.282 His prose works were intended for the reformed Carmelites and the laity affiliated with them. It was in his work as spiritual director (he preferred the words ‘teacher’ or ‘guide’) that he was anxious to write for those who wished to advance in the spiritual life;283 he was especially concerned, as was Teresa, with bad or even ignorant spiritual guides.284 In The Ascent of Mt Carmel and The Dark Night John explains, through his commentary on his poems, the necessity of the purification process that takes place in one’s inner experience as one moves towards union with God. The Living Flame of Love expresses the goal aimed for by the exercises of The Ascent and The Dark Night. John’s main concern is to map out the pathway of the ‘night of the senses’ through to the dawn whose light appears gradually, giving birth to day, but only after the darkest part of the night.285 John’s darkness, however, is not a void but rather the absent presence of God, for his inner experience is rooted in faith. His ‘night of the senses’ and ‘night of the spirit’ are the necessary means to cleanse the soul of what Merton will call the ‘false self.’ These dark nights are ‘always to be understood in dialectical relationship to the deep mystery of God.’286 This seems to be his purpose in the paradoxes of his poetry as a way of speaking of the encounter with the mystery of what God is and is not: an experience of silent music, sounding solitude or vehement yearnings, 287 so that, for John, God is todo y nada, both all and nothing.288 The Canticle, substantial verses of which were written during his imprisonment, and the Flame also deal with the purification of the soul in darkness; they treat more of God’s presence in the depth or centre of the soul wherein dwells the Trinity through the breathing of the Spirit in the soul.289 Having journeyed through the purification of the inner self (purgation) and come to a stage where one benefits from the grace of insight in ‘betrothal with the Word’ (illumination),290 one

282 Ibid., sec.: John on Prayer. It is interesting that Thomas Merton considered his own analysis of John of the Cross’s treatise in The Ascent to Truth as less than good writing, see William H. Shannon, Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2000), 68. 283 Cunningham, “Who Was St. John of the Cross?,” sec.: John on Prayer. 284 John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1979), 103. 285 In certain Pacific peoples who live in rural areas (or outer atolls) without electricity, their language has a vocabulary much richer to describe the 24-hour day than that of those peoples who live in highly urbanized settings. In Kiribati there is a vocabulary of at least six words to describe the various darknesses of the night. 286 Cunningham, “Who Was St. John of the Cross?”, sec.: Song of Songs. 287 John of the Cross, The Collected Works, 525. 288 Cunningham, “Who Was St. John of the Cross?” sec.: Song of Songs. 289 Howells, “Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross,” 434. 290 John of the Cross, The Collected Works, 525–26.

~ 61 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition moves towards union in which the ‘living flame of love … a flame of divine life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of God’s life … so deeply as to make it dissolve in love.’291

Not so well known as his scientific, yet literary, approach to inner experience in faith are his maxims: a series of short and pithy sayings, named as ‘The Sayings of Light and Love’ to help one stay focused on the journey inwards.292 The maxims, written on pieces of paper he would give to his directees, are brief summaries of his greater works as in the following examples:

22. A bird caught in birdlime has a twofold task: It must free itself and cleanse itself. And by satisfying their appetites, people suffer in a twofold way: They must detach themselves and, after being detached, clean themselves of what has clung to them. 25. Withdraw from creatures if you desire to preserve, clear and simple in your soul, the image of God. Empty your spirit and withdraw far from them and you will walk in divine lights, for God is not like creatures. 28. The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquillity, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.293 The first maxim is a short-cut explaining the purgative process. The song thrush (a Spanish culinary delicacy), the soul or the person determined to grow in the interior life, needs to free the self from attitudes and ways of being (birdlime)294 that hinder the desire for deeper interiority and its goal of union with God. Those who want to advance in holiness must first move to a clean branch, that is, remove themselves from their present setting; in becoming aware of their sinfulness (the birdlime that still sticks to them) they need to detach themselves from clinging to things, ideas and people who hinder their advance towards the God of love and mercy. Maxim 25 suggests the need for solitude and greater simplicity of life to be ‘empty’ or more open to the movement of the Spirit. Maxim 28 makes explicit the need for solitude and silence, but with a significant emphasis: a warning about excessive regard for the opinions or esteem of others, to the point where people lack the courage to make a decision and act for fear of the judgement of others.295 Taking too much notice of those in authority or, of those one admires, is an attachment that hinders the work of interiority where union of God becomes possible.

291 Ibid., 643. 292 Ibid., 85–97. 293 Ibid., 87–88. 294 “Birdlime,” Wikipedia, September 27, 2019, accessed November 16, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birdlime&oldid=918155366; the sticky substance, used to trap birds, was spread in the twigs of a tree. 295 “Human Respect | Encyclopedia.Com,” accessed November 16, 2019, https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/human-respect.

~ 62 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

While John’s writing is intensely detailed in its exposition of what he names as mystical theology, he was, nonetheless, very active in the reform of the Carmelites and the encouragement of both nuns and friars of the Discalced: he travelled, for the most part on foot, nearly 29,000 km all over Spain, and as well, whenever he could he taught the children of the poor to read and write, animated by memories of his own childhood.296 Teresa also travelled throughout Spain, founding and visiting seventeen convents of the Discalced. As well as her major works during the last two decades of her life she also wrote nearly five hundred letters that dealt with foundations, the trials of the Carmelites and the reform, as well as of the Church of the time.297 What these two Carmelites reveal is a very active life in which they have integrated their inner experiences into the ordinary busyness of life. The integration of inner experience is no less the deepening of interiority in faith towards union with God equally demanded of those congregations formerly called ‘apostolic religious.’298

The French revival Born of parents who were peasants in the early 17th century, Nicholas Herman spent his early life with little education. At eighteen he had a sudden experience, an inner experience of the presence of God, a first conversion. At twenty-six, and inspired by his uncle, he joined the Discalced Carmelites and became Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Although not unintelligent, his clumsiness and lack of formal education was his background when serving as cook and sandal maker. Over time, his influence was felt, not only by his brothers, but by many others across the socio-economic and ecclesiastical spectrum.299

Lawrence’s path to interiority is based on a simple approach that acknowledged the presence of ‘absolute mystery, the gentle one burning with love.’300 He demonstrated an acute sense of God as living Reality while yearning to be the font of life and meaning for every person. So convinced was he of this truth that he could write:

when God finds a soul penetrated by an intense faith he pours out his graces in abundance. This torrent of his grace, impeded from running its ordinary course, expands impetuously and abundantly once it has found an outlet … sometimes we stop this torrent by our lack of appreciation for it … we

296 John of the Cross, The Collected Works, 17. 297 Teresa of Avila, The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2001), 7-8/888. 298 The distinction between contemplative and active religious life is less important in the present century when both are better described as Institutes of Consecrated Life. 299 Nicholas Herman (Brother Lawrence), Writings and Conversations on the Practice of the Presence of God, ed. Conrad De Meester, trans. Salvatore Sciurba (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1994), xviii–xxiv. 300 Ibid., xxxvi.

~ 63 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

must turn inward … we must never stop working since in the spiritual life, not to advance is to go backwards.301 In this letter he speaks of a friar (himself) whose deep faith is a wide-open door for the presence of God’s grace in abundance. He is aware also of what hinders that movement and growth: a lack of appreciation which also signifies a lack of sufficient self-awareness. His little manual, The Practice of the Presence of God, is as relevant today as it was four centuries ago. Like Teresa’s work, it is practical and simple, and anticipates by several hundred years, a manner of holiness, that made Thérèse of Lisieux’s ‘little way’ so popular in the 20th century,302 and Vatican II’s call and challenge to universal holiness (LG §40), rendering all vocations equal, though different.

Lawrence’s ‘method-less method’ presupposes a universal and democratic search for God,303 which means the practice of the presence of God is like breathing which can happen everywhere and is not confined to chapel or church: ‘We can make of our hearts an oratory where we can withdraw from time to time to converse with him there, gently, humbly and lovingly. Everyone is capable of these familiar conversations with God.’304

This practice, so recommended by Marcellin Champagnat to his brothers, is the soul of prayer.305 It consists of taking delight in God, ‘speaking humbly and conversing lovingly with him all the time, at every moment, without rule or measure, especially in times of temptation, suffering, aridity, weariness, even infidelity and sin.’306 The ordinariness of Lawrence’s practical mysticism presumes that one is intent on purifying one’s life, and at the same time, fostering the awareness of God within, which can happen in the midst of any and every activity, no matter how brief the recall of God’s presence within. Perseverance in the practice has benefits, the first being a more intense and effective faith so that one ‘could almost say: I no longer believe, for I see and experience,’307 a saying reminiscent of Paul and the mystical theologians after him, that Christ lives in the heart of the disciple, and the disciple knows it to be so (Ga 2:20). This kind of inner experience is informed by faith that has been the answer to some kind of struggle, tragedy,

301 Ibid., 54. 302 John F. Russell, “St. Thérèse and Her Little Way - Reflections on St. Therese,” Society of the Little Flower - US, last modified (n.d.), accessed November 17, 2019, https://www.littleflower.org/therese/reflections/st-therese-and-her-little-way/. 303 Herman (Brother Lawrence), Writings and Conversations, xxxvii. 304 Ibid., 73. 305 Marist Brothers, Constitutions and Statutes, 1986 with amendments, (Rome: Marist Brothers of the Schools [Little Brothers of Mary], 2010), 167; hereafter, C&S. 306 Herman (Brother Lawrence), Writings and Conversations, 115. 307 Ibid., 45.

~ 64 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 rejection, depression or personal loss. The interiority these mystics speak of must be continually nourished by faith, so that their spirituality becomes the conversation of lovers.

Born in the Savoy, Francis de Sales (1567-1622) came from a noble family in a part of the country bedevilled by conflict between Catholic and Huguenot factions. He was sent to Paris where he gained an education in Christian humanism through the Jesuits. That education gave him an appreciation of the arts and sciences where attention to experience and the interior movements of experience were essential aspects for discernment.308 With the Jesuits he heard about the God of love through an interpretation of the Song of Songs. In turn, he interpreted his spiritual life as a love story between God and himself.309 While at the Sorbonne he was thrown into a crisis of belief and self-doubt. Though he had heard positively of God’s love, his lecturers did not refute the dominant Calvinistic and Lutheran pre-destination interpretations of Augustine or Aquinas. This depression intensified, even physically affecting him. Once able to find solitude and silence (in the church he frequented) de Sales put his trust in God, not without an anguished struggle, as he prayed, ‘I shall love You, Lord, in this life at least, if it is not granted me to love you in the eternal life … grant me, at least, not to be among those who will curse Your holy name.’310 He was able to recall what he had received from the Jesuits, that the relationship of the Christian with God is a love story of the beloved with the Lover, and on leaving the church his depression lifted and his health was restored.311

Even today, what the 20-year-old de Sales experienced is not an uncommon experience in late adolescence and early adulthood.312 He was healed of what was very probably a period of depression conflated with anxiety. The memory of the experience and his way through it bore fruit in his later published Introduction to the Devout Life in which he offered sound advice on dealing with anxiety of the mind, sadness, and sorrow.313

When de Sales moved to Padua to continue his studies, he chose to adopt his own Rule of Life, in which can be seen the influence of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. His own

308 Wright, “Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism,” 439. 309 Ravier, Francis de Sales: Sage and Saint, 31. 310 Wendy M. Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), 25, accessed July 25, 2019, http://books.google.com/books?id=y2XZAAAAMAAJ. 311 Ibid., 33–34. 312 My own experience as formator and counsellor testifies to this. It is especially so in late adolescence or early adulthood when existential questions of identity, life’s meaning, and vocational choice (career choice to a much lesser extent) become highlighted. 313 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life (Blacksburg, VA: Wilder Publications, 2011), IV, Chapters 11 & 12; 146–149.

~ 65 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition rule, written as a young adult, reflects the focus that was to determine his life-long, common-sense approach to God and to others: As the body needs sleep to refresh and soothe its tired limbs, so does the soul need time to sleep and rest in the arms of its heavenly spouse … I will allot a certain time each day for this sacred sleep so that my soul, in imitation of the beloved disciple (Jn 13:23-24), will repose with complete confidence on the lovable breast, actually in the loving heart, of the Loving Savior.314 The intimacy suggested above centres on the heart, the Heart of Jesus in an exchange with the heart of the disciple. All else in a person’s life was to flow from this in true devotion; not the pious practice of this, or that formulaic prayer or ritual, nor the focus on external and extraordinary manifestations, ‘while all the time…mere phantoms of devotion’.315 Instead, de Sales sees that:

[True devotion] is simply a spiritual activity and liveliness by means of which Divine Love works in us, and causes us to work briskly and lovingly; and just as charity leads us to a general practice of all God’s Commandments, so devotion leads us to practice them readily and diligently… to be good, a man must be filled with love, and to be devout, he must further be very ready and apt to perform the deeds of love.316 Like the Church Fathers, de Sales is fascinated by the mystery that human beings are created in the image of God (Gn 1:26), a profound realisation for de Sales: ‘Since we are created in the image of God we receive all that is good from him’.317 The love of the Triune God within the soul of the disciple meant the human person was endowed with a dignity and nobility not altogether dissimilar from the reverence human persons give to God. Moreover, de Sales is also aware that, if authentic human transformation consists in loving God and others, the opposite is also a reality: a person is diminished and growth is regressive in sin and the failure to respond in love for God and others.318 The Introduction to the Devout Life is a set of spiritual exercises to grow in self-knowledge and the love of God:

It is not wrong to consider ourselves in order to glorify God for the gifts he has given us, providing we do not become vain and complacent with ourselves. It is a saying of the philosophers, but which has been approved as a good one by the Christian doctors: ‘Know thyself.’ … know the excellence of your soul so that you will not debase nor despise it. However, it is necessary always to remain within the terms and limits of a holy and loving recognition of God on whom we depend and who has made us what we are.319

314 Quoted in Wright, Heart Speaks to Heart, 27. 315 de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Pt I: I,1; 12. 316 Ibid., 13. 317 de Sales, quoted in Eunan McDonnel, “Understanding the Spirituality of the ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’ as an Asceticism of Love,” Salesianum 75 (2013): 653. 318 Ibid. 319 Quoted in Lewis S. Fiorelli, “Salesian Understanding of Christian Anthropology,” Salesianum 46 (1984): 488.

~ 66 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

Acknowledging one’s gifts and, by the creativity of a loving God, all that one is as gift, is the positive theological anthropology of de Sales; but included is a realistic recognition of the ‘unfreedom’ that ascetical exercise must attend to:

Our heart is made for God, … Yet five things impede the operation of his holy attraction: (1) sin, which removes us from God; (2) affection for riches; (3) sensual pleasures; (4) pride and vanity; (5) self-love, together with the multitude of disordered passions it brings forth…320 The Introduction to the Devout Life is de Sales’ asceticism of the heart, built on his own experience and inner battle, designed to free one’s heart for transformation into Christ, leading to one’s divinization so that one can, in the Salesian short-cut motto of Gal 2:20, ‘live Jesus.’321 The regimen of spiritual fitness that de Sales produced was intended for every Christian, regardless of their particular vocational expression. This everyday mysticism was already implied in Bernard’s approach to living God’s love in one’s life. It was directly intentional in the Bérullian stream and is the principal focus for all vocations in Francis de Sales.

Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), born in Cérilly near Troyes, came from a distinguished and deeply religious family, was educated by the Jesuits and then at the Sorbonne. He became a diocesan priest and founded the French Oratorians (inspired by the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Italy), a Society of diocesan priests. He established several colleges to train clergy who would prepare laity to take up their baptismal call to discipleship. He was also responsible for bringing the Discalced Carmelites to France and served as both visitor and spiritual director. He wished to devote himself to spiritual direction, to the reform of religious communities and uniting Catholics in the midst of Protestant influence in France.322 He met with other like-minded reformers, such as de Sales and Vincent de Paul, who developed their own traditions, as well as with his own disciples who were influenced very much by his apophatic mysticism. Similar to the mysticism of the German, Meister Eckhart, it placed great stress on the transcendence of God, the meeting of the divine-human spark in the soul, abandoning images and concepts and even leaving aside Christ’s humanity in the pathway to union with God.323

At a retreat in 1602, without departing from the apophatically focused mysticism, Bérulle was drawn to the person of Jesus as the Incarnate Word. His conversion to an authentic Christocentric mysticism was undoubtedly influenced by his relationships with the Carmelites and

320 Quoted in McDonnel, “Understanding the Spirituality of the ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’ as an Asceticism of Love,” 662. 321 Ibid., 667. 322 Egan, Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition, 275. 323 Ibid., 276.

~ 67 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition a Jesuit friend, Coton.324 His Christocentric mysticism became more specific in 1607, when gifted with the most significant experience in faith he had ever received. He wrote:

If the person of the Word is united to this humanity, the essence and the subsistence of the Word are also one with it. This humanity of Jesus Christ Our Lord bears and receives in itself not only the personal being, but also the essential being of God. For the word is God, God is man and man is God, according to the best and most commonly known concepts of faith. The Word is God through this divine essence and God is man through this humanity.325 His contemplation of Jesus led him to better formulate his understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation: because the Trinitarian person of the Word had taken on human nature in Jesus, Christ had become the exemplar of what it is to be truly human:

The person of the Word is divine and infinite. Thus, it has a completely extraordinary and unspeakable application to the human nature. The latter, without its own subsistence, needs that of the eternal Word which, we might say, activates and penetrates this humanity in essence, its powers, and in all its parts.326 A consequence of this encounter meant that acknowledging and adoring the divine-human, human- divine nature of Jesus became the way for human beings to be transformed themselves through union and rest with Him who is at the same time, I AM. Out of his inner experience of faith, came his concern to address the need for a better formation of the clergy.

In contrast to the growing humanism from the Renaissance of central Europe, Bérulle and his disciples including Jean-Jacques Olier, advocated a theocentric foundation to faith: God as God to be adored was the focus and not oneself. For this, they stressed the ‘annihilation’ (anéantissement) of oneself. But to adore God is to behold, gazing upon God in love. Belonging to God is part of the very nature of what it is to be creaturely, and human, which means to take up an attitude of servitude: to empty oneself, ‘annihilating’ oneself in adoring the love of God. It is best expressed in the dignity and integrity of the Church’s liturgy and sacraments,327 something to which Marcellin Champagnat was very attentive, perhaps too much so.328

The mysticism is Christocentric. However, because human beings are as nothing before God and because they are prone to sin, they cannot by themselves approach God. Though, with the Incarnation, the fullness of the Trinitarian God is realised in the Word made flesh. The hypostatic union of the divine and human in the Word, means that all the ‘states’ of Jesus’ interior life have

324 Bérulle quoted in William Thompson-Uberuaga, ed., Bérulle and the French School: Selected Writings, trans. Lowell M Glendon, The Classics of Western spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 36. 325 Bérulle quoted in ibid., 37. 326 Bérulle quoted in ibid., 38. 327 Raymond Deville, The French School of Spirituality: An Introduction and Reader, trans. Agnes Cunningham (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1994), 138–39. 328 Jean-Felix Tamet (Br Sylvestre) remarks this of Champagnat. See Chapter 4 of this thesis.

~ 68 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 been divinized; the ‘states’ (états) being the inner dispositions with which Jesus faithfully lived out his incarnation, life in ministry, passion, resurrection, and ascension.329 While these ‘actions’ of Jesus are historical, his inner disposition and his inner experience of them are not. The Christians contemplating Jesus have those dispositions available to them across time, thereby making it possible to be also divinized in him.330

Because the humanity of Christ is made apparent through the Incarnation, Mary has a special place in Bérullian spirituality. Bérulle writes of Jesus living in Mary’s womb as a temple, where the Christian contemplates ‘Jesus in this state, fully in the Virgin as her center and her heart’.331 He compares Mary to one of the planets revolving around Jesus who is the sun,332 and in an aside, hopes that Christians, including himself, might forget themselves so that the focus is on Jesus and Mary.333 Jesus is seen as the one who draws Mary to himself, ‘enrapturing’ her thereby uniting her, as it were, by nature, although their relationship is even more united, more intimate through grace, and by Jesus’ presence as Risen Lord, Mary lives in His Heart and He in hers.334 Nevertheless, in writing so tenderly of the relationship between Jesus and Mary, he places their union in the context of the Triune God of love: Jesus, being so united to his Mother, attracts and enraptures her in himself continuously; that just as he is being born and living in his Father an uncreated love who is the third Person of the Trinity, in the same way, as he is being born and living in his Mother, he produces in her a Spirit and a love that indeed is created, yet does not and never will have an equal after his own.335 Mary represents the Christians who ‘await this grace.’ Bérulle’s explication of the love that Jesus has for Mary is also the love he has for the Christian. Ideally, Mary’s response is the heart the Christian is urged to have. Olier’s prayer expresses it as: Jesus living in Mary, come and live in your servant…336 Faith is a call to relationship, to have Jesus as the central focus of one’s life so that faith is not simply an assent to dogma and doctrine. In this one sentence, Bérulle echoes the Patristic, Augustinian337 and medieval view (illustrated in the life of Bernard) that theology and spirituality cannot be separated.338 Participation in the divine life of the Trinity is not just an

329 Wright, “Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism,” 445. 330 Lowell M. Glendon, “French School of Spirituality,” in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, e-book in biblia.com, (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 421. 331 Thompson-Uberuaga, Bérulle and the French School, 161. 332 Ibid., 161. 333 Ibid. 334 Ibid. 335 Ibid. 336 Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 93. 337 Thompson-Uberuaga, Bérulle and the French School, 78. 338 Ibid., 9.

~ 69 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition affirmation of Nicene faith, but a living relationship in which one is moved by the Spirit, with, through and in Christ, to the Father, as expressed in the enduring Trinitarian formula of the liturgy.

A profound inner experience of encounter with God is the foundation of this spirituality. For Bérulle it was a retreat as a young priest in 1602, and again in 1607, which moved him towards a complete self-surrender to God. He saw that ‘Jesus Christ alone is the end and the way to the end’; that Jesus is the fulfilment of what it truly is to be a human being, for, by ‘putting on Christ’ one can carry out Christ’s ‘marvellous deeds.’339

For Jean-Jaques Olier, however, in the midst of preaching missions in the diocese of Chartres in 1641, he had, what would be popularly termed today, a breakdown or ‘burnout.’ It was a ‘severe, interior trial’ leaving him in such a depression that he was unable to continue his missionary activities or to preach at all. In the Catholic theology of the time, Olier saw himself as nothing, full of arrogance and ego-driven to the point that he believed himself condemned by a judgemental God.340 Such an episode is not unusual in a mystic and can often be the trigger to an unexpected consolation. When one comes through such torment and utter desolation, regardless of the mental unbalance or psychosis, the experience is interpreted as consolation. In the language of mystical theology, it is infused contemplation that contributes to the realignment of one’s faith and stance in life. To acknowledge one’s complete dependence on God’s love brings about the transformation of one’s interior life, reflected also in one’s external life and relationships. Nevertheless, in Olier’s case it is reasonable to wonder if there was an overemphasis on anéantissement that may have contributed to the depression; his upbringing could have also contributed, but this does not negate his religious experience and encounter in faith. Absorbing what appears to be a negative approach to understanding the self can well be detrimental to one’s spirit. It is much more difficult to respond to a God of abundant life-giving love if one’s sense of the self entertains suicidal ideation. After a long period of rest and convalescence, Olier came to see his restored health as both an interior and exterior transformation in which the Holy Spirit was both prime director and divine physician: I was astonished at so many changes that took place so suddenly in me: so much light, instead of darkness; such clarity of thought, instead of confusion; such freedom to speak, … instead of great dryness I had experienced in myself and caused in others; such feelings and transports of love for

339 Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 33–34. 340 Ibid., 81; It is probable that psychologists or spiritual directors today would name this as “burnout”, too frequent an issue for clergy, religious, teachers and clinicians who work conscientiously. From Deville’s scant description, there seemed to be something of the neurotic about Olier's episode.

~ 70 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

God, in place of that hateful, unhappy preoccupation with myself. I was forced to admit: It is the divine Spirit.341 Olier’s experience convinces him that the first place in the Christian’s spiritual life is assigned to the Holy Spirit.342

These French reformers were appalled at the state of the 17th century Church in France and recognized the urgent need to form good priests. Olier would insist that to be a priest ‘one must enter this state by the door of a vocation’, that is, one must have the right intention.343 To this end Olier founded the Society of St Sulpice.344 The Bérullian founders and mystics gave emphasis to the formation of priests,345 while intent upon renewing the faith equally for all, together with de Sales and Brother Lawrence. In many ways they were forerunners of Vatican II’s universal call to holiness (LG §40), because throughout their writings they claimed that this spirituality of living the Christ-life was for all Christians.346

In significant ways, Marcellin Champagnat drew on the La Sallian methods in the training of his brothers in their ministry. Most significant about Jean-Baptiste de La Salle (1651-1719) was his inspiration to form a community of brothers, completely new for the time, since he was anxious to provide Christian education for the poor through improving the education of the teachers, young men who worked in a job that was not highly valued in the society of the time. He did not set out to form a religious congregation. He was principally concerned that the poor had the opportunity for a good education. What began as inviting these young teachers to dine with him, eventually ended by his resigning from the canonry of Rheims cathedral, giving away his wealth and inviting the young teachers to live with him. He trained one young brother to

341 Ibid. 342 Thomas Keating recognises that some issues can be psychological, but the divine therapist is at work, sometimes unnoticed, especially when a person is troubled by anxiety and depression; Keating, The Human Condition, 39. 343 Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 15. 344 Sulpician spirituality had a marked influence on Marcellin Champagnat, the founder of the Little Brothers of Mary, co-founder of the Society of Mary. The Sulpicians had been suppressed when he was at the seminary but his formators at the seminaries of Verrières and St Irènée in Lyon had been formed by a Sulpician spirituality. This spirituality in part had an influence on the Brothers he formed; see Romuald Gibson, “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality” (mimeographed copy, 1971), 57–58. 345 Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 25, 24, 27 To be ordained a cleric entitled one to a benefice 2.4; Vincent de Paul's assessment suggested that priests were the enemies of the church, 2.5; Madame Acarie insisted that vocations had to come from God, rather than by force or simple persuasion, 2.5; Olier thought it futile to preach a mission to a parish if its priests were less than motivated, 2.6. The challenge of reform is no less germane in the 21st century when clericalism has become a hindrance to the life of the Church, Helder Camara Lecture series 3, Cardinal John Dew, "Servant Leadership in the Spirit of Pope Francis," Newman College, Melbourne, 17 July 2019. 346 Deville, 137.

~ 71 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition succeed him, sending him to the Sorbonne to study for priesthood, but the brother died before ordination. Over time, with prayer and discernment, de La Salle saw that priesthood was not essential for the group that became the Brothers of the Christian Schools.347 This brought him ridicule from his clerical colleagues even to being deposed as leader, with false charges brought against him. Nevertheless, he worked tirelessly establishing schools from Rouen to Marseilles. Approaching sixty years of age, he convoked a chapter and the brothers elected his replacement. During the years that followed, until his death, he spent his time writing.

One of the last documents he wrote was Explanation of the Method of Interior Prayer,348 Though he was greatly influenced by the Bérullian stream, Francis de Sales and Teresa of Avila also figured in his spirituality. In this manual he sets out a method of forming the inner experience- in-faith for his brothers.

The purpose of his method, which first requires recollection, is to seek God. In being recollected, one discovers that the God one seeks is already present, and it is in that presence that one can know and understand one’s reason for existence.349 Placing oneself in the presence of God is done through a faith rooted in the Word of God in the Scriptures. The six ways he proposes do not create the presence of God; rather, one is able to recognise the presence already there, even before one is recollected. Reflecting on God’s presence is not an interior theological and speculative exercise, rather, one of appropriating and experiencing the presence of God.

The first way to place oneself in the presence of God is to first recognise that God is present everywhere; God is also present in those gathered in the Lord’s name. Secondly, God is present within the person by which one’s very existence simply is and continues; God within the person is present through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, God is present in a church when it is considered as the house of God; God is also present in the Church when one considers that the Lord is present in the Reserved Sacrament. The different ways of attending to the Presence of God

347 Paul Mariani, “How St. John Baptist de La Salle Brought Education to Millions of Poor Kids like Me,” America Magazine, last modified September 13, 2019, accessed November 19, 2019, https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/09/13/how-st-john-baptist-de-la-salle-brought-education- millions-poor-kids-me. 348 Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, Explanation of the Method of Interior Prayer, trans. Richard Arnandez, edited by Donald Mouton, (Landover, MD: Lasallian Publications, 1995), accessed November 19, 2019, http://www.lasallian.info/doc/Method-2007.PDF. 349 Ibid., 5:8.

~ 72 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 that de La Salle proposes are really designed to eventually move to simple attention350 without the distraction of reasoning which destroys faith.351

Since you are ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ in the work that you do, you must act as representing Jesus Christ himself. He wants your disciples to see him in you and receive your teaching as if he were teaching them. They must be convinced that the truth of Jesus Christ comes from your mouth, that it is only in his name that you teach … [The children] are a letter which Christ dictates to you which you write each day in their hearts, not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God. For the Spirit acts in you … enlightening them in the person of Jesus Christ.352 The Explanation presents a complex method of twenty-one acts and appears disconnected from the ministry of the brothers.353 Besides de La Salle’s meditations and prayers, are other writings in which he links their prayer directly with their obligations as teachers in which there is better integration of the spiritual life with their ministry. However, the Explanation does encourage an interior faith-experience based on the Scriptures, where faith is the constitutive element in all interior prayer;354 inner experience is anchored in a faith that is lived interiorly and practised externally in community within the Church.355 The immediate field of expression of such interiority is the community which is itself an expression of the union of the three divine Persons in the one God:

Since you are privileged to be called by God to live a community life, there is nothing you should pray for with greater insistence than union of heart and mind with your Brothers. Only by means of such harmony will you be able to maintain that peace which constitutes the whole happiness of your life. Ask therefore the Lord of all hearts to make yours one with those of your Brothers, and that of Jesus.356 In founding the Brothers of the Christian Schools, de la Salle elevated or rescued the laity from an overly hierarchical Church; he opened the way, albeit unwittingly, for a Church of equals which those before him had been doing in a variety of ways, though largely unrecognised. With education, however, many more people would call into question the predominantly hegemonic, European theology of the institutional structures of the Church. Challenging the clericalism of authority is all the more strident in this present era since the emerging financial and sexual scandals of the final decades of the 20th century. This, sometimes-silenced, movement of voices eventually gave birth to a spirituality closer to what Jesus had intended: a pilgrim Church, the People of God who are all called to a universal holiness, still to be realised several generations after Vatican II.

350 Ibid., 5:11, 51–56. 351 Ibid., 5:49. 352 Jean-Baptiste de La Salle quoted in Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 184. 353 de La Salle, Explanation of the Method of Interior Prayer, 5:6. 354 Ibid., 5:9. 355 Ibid., 5:80, 83, 114. 356 Jean-Baptiste de La Salle quoted in Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 187–88.

~ 73 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

Vatican II: all are called to the one holiness

If spirituality is a whole way of being that is born out of the inner experience of faith, then it needs to find concrete expression in the lives of the disciples of Jesus, but not without other necessarily concrete forms primarily, but not only, in text. When John XXIII opened the windows and doors of the Church to let in the wind of the Spirit, his notification of a Second Ecumenical Council came as a surprise and to some as a shock. However, the Spirit had been at work through internal reformers for some decades, some of whom, like Yves Congar or Karl Rahner, had a significant influence on the shape of the texts and documents of what is simply named, Vatican II. Both theologians had a major influence on the ecclesiology of the Church as ‘People of God,’ with Rahner as one who spoke of ‘everyday’ mysticism. Rahner exemplifies the kind of ‘ordinary’ mysticism that was as much a feature of the Patristic writers as well as Augustine or Bernard, Ignatius or Teresa, Francis de Sales or Marcellin Champagnat; despite the monastic enclosure of some, their lives were equally immersed in their particular contexts. Rahner was able to connect his experience with that of his founder, Ignatius, in situating the encounter with Christ as the foundation of inner experience-in-faith,357 to the point he could say that ‘the Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.’358

The two pivotal documents of Vatican II are Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, the first Latin words of the documents, which are two of the four major Constitutions of the Church: ‘Christ the light of the nations’ and the ‘joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the [people] of this age’ (LG §1; GS §1).359 Chapter 5 of Lumen Gentium contains text that is a paradigm shift in the popular imagination360 (not just in the mind of the laity, but of clerics also) in which holiness is not seen as the preserve of religious orders or clergy, but universally

in the Church, everyone … is called to holiness, according to the saying of the Apostle: ‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification.’ However, this holiness of the Church is … manifested, in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces … expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life, tend toward the perfection of charity[; … ]this (holiness) appears in the practice of the counsels, customarily called ‘evangelical.’ This practice of the counsels, under the impulsion of the Holy Spirit, undertaken by many Christians, either privately or in a Church-approved condition or

357 Karl Rahner and Annemarie S. Kidder, Ignatius of Loyola Speaks (South Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2013), 7–12; Karl Rahner, “Experiences of a Catholic Theologian,” Theological Studies 61, no. 1 (2000): 11. 358 Brian O’Leary, “Ignatian Mysticism and Contemporary Culture,” The Way 52, no. 4 (October 2013): 56. 359 The other two documents are Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation. 360 Ciorra and Higgins, Vatican II, 6-7/161, Introduction.

~ 74 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

state of life, gives and must give in the world an outstanding witness and example of this same holiness. (LG §39) This reflects an embodied theology in which all disciples are brothers and sisters, echoing the truth of the gospel in which Jesus speaks of the brotherly or sisterly relationship they have with him and, because of him, with one another, where each is at the service of the other (Mt 23:8-9). It reflects a theological spirituality, which is soundly based on Paul’s exhortation to the church in Corinth, to remember that ‘rank’ ought not to be in the vocabulary of a Christian community. Instead, there is a variety of gifts and (roles for) service in the building up of the whole Church (1 Cor 12:1-30; 13;4-10). The document is introduced with the mystical element pertaining to the Church as a whole: that it is the Bride of Christ, and as such is infused with the life of the Trinity through the living breath of the Spirit. Therefore, one cannot abrogate holiness and one’s share in it to any other person or group. In the past, holiness was presumed to be the forte of priests and religious in a pyramidal organizational structure, in the minds of laity and clergy alike.361 LG §40 adds emphasis by claiming that Jesus is both the author and exemplar of the holiness of life; his brothers and sisters are to love one another as he has loved them for

it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of … are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness …a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society … [by following] in His footsteps [conforming] themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father … [devoting] themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbour. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history. This paragraph links this Body of Christ with those members of the Church who are the present age’s ancestral disciples, and who illustrated by their lives that they had paid attention to their inner experience of faith, and now encounter Christ in ways only glimpsed at when they were living in time and history.

The other decisive Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, is the other half of aggiornamento that John XXIII intended for the Church, influenced as he was by the theology of Yves Congar.362

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the [people] of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of [people]. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for [everyone]. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with [humankind] and its history by the deepest of bonds. (GS §1)

361 Among religious also, contemplative monks and nuns were considered ‘holier’ than those sisters and brothers (note the different terminology) who ministered in the fields of education and health. 362 Matthew Levering, An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event, Sacra Doctrina Series Volume 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 81.

~ 75 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition

The article places the Church not above or apart from but very much in solidarity with all human beings in every aspect of their lives as individuals, communities, and societies. That they have ‘welcomed the news of salvation’ is to say that they have encountered the Christ of faith actually and really in their interior life, individually and communally. It is the marketplace of the mystical life by which the fruit of that inner experience-in-faith finds concrete missionary expression, through which disciples are united with, and in, Christ by the indwelling of the Trinity; by that same indwelling, they share in the Spirit’s work of bringing to birth the reign of God that Jesus proclaimed.

Sadly, the reception of a Council’s teachings is still not realised. However, it did lay stress on baptism as the defining mark of discipleship and the holiness to which all are called. That baptism is both sign and symbol of the conversion that is ongoing for each and every disciple who is exhorted to ‘experience personally what Christ Jesus had known within Himself’ (LG §42).363 This exhortation from the Council marks a hugely significant shift364 in the mind of the magisterium and certainly in the understanding of many who lived a pre-Vatican II Catholicism. Unfortunately, the honeymoon was over in the mid-1970s when a form of centralizing retrenchment crept in under the successors of Pope John Paul I.

However, since 2013, the spirit of Vatican II has begun a revival; a renewed aggiornamento is felt by many in which the fresh breath of the grace of Christ is revealed in the inner experience of encountering a loving God. It is felt and experienced personally, individually, and communally, and is not necessarily confined to the public worship of the institutional Church.365 This empowers Catholics to become more catholic, more universal, in an authentic Christocentric spirituality:

A catholicity that is closed upon itself and does not reach out to others in generous fraternity is less than catholic. Just as holiness must always be further purified (LG §8) … catholicity should be constantly self-enlarging. And this enlarging requires cultivating three qualities of ecclesial life, namely, unanimity of mind and heart, collegiality in action, subsidiarity in collaboration.366

363 my emphasis. 364 Timothy W. O’Brien, “‘If You Wish to Be Perfect’: Change and Continuity in Vatican II’s Call to Holiness: ‘If You Wish to Be Perfect,’” The Heythrop Journal 55, no. 2 (March 2014): 294. 365 Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering, eds., The Reception of Vatican II (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 117. 366 George H. Tavard, Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way, Marquette studies in theology no. 52 (Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette University Press, 2006), 45; see also Ruth Gledhill, “Pope Francis Warns against ‘Sick’, Closed-in Church,” The Tablet, accessed September 29, 2020, https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/13390/pope-francis-warns-against-sick-closed-in-church.

~ 76 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2

Such a vision allows for people to trust their own inner experience more than they did in the past. This trust is a feature of their living faith within a context that is increasingly different from the world of Vatican II, a context now requiring greater interiority

open to angels of secular humanism who inspire political commitment for justice, peace and freedom… [to] angels of science, technology and human reason … this emerging mysticism has much to learn from the world's classical theistic traditions with their insistence on a transcendent reality without which there would be neither world nor humanity … [there are also] angels of our Indigenous traditions … speaking …of a more integral experience of life in which place, time and history are…[both] earth-bound and earth-transcending realties pointing us to a more mystical- prophetic vision.367 The call of Vatican II to a radical interiority, like that of Jesus, is only so because it is the call of the Master to his disciples, individually and communally, to recognize the indwelling Trinity who sustains them; at the same time the Spirit propels them into the mission of God for their place and time and history. That invitation to the divine intimacy of the indwelling, transforming God, is not a ‘once only’ affair, but the interiority of everyday in the empowering presence of Mystery.

Conclusion

This chapter has proposed that an education in the mystical Tradition of the Church is essential for understanding Christian inner experience. It is the experience of encounter with the Risen Lord in the lived, inner experience in faith that enables human beings to be fully who they are created to be. The source of knowledge about that Risen Lord is the Bible, including both First and New Testament, the root source of that knowledge about, and of, the God Jesus proclaimed. That knowledge had its origins in the inner experiences of the first disciples who had known Jesus through personal encounter with him in whom they had also come to know themselves to be intimately connected with God who, by the power of the Spirit, was dwelling within hearts receptive to the grace of such Love. It is for this reason that going to the sources of the mystical Tradition (the ressourcement) is a vital and crucial part of any formation of the interior life of persons intent on drawing close to Christ.

This Tradition, referred to as Christian mystical theology, has developed through temporal and cultural contexts which emerge from the root stock of the New Testament, experiential encounters. Drawing on the Gospel of John and the letters of reported experience in Paul, Christian inner experience became the way to become so fully human that one could say that one was engaged in divinisation or deification, a theme in the Patristic theologians, East and West. This

367 Gerard Hall, “‘Are There Really Angels in Oceania? Forging a New Mysticism of Place, Time and History Through Dialogue Among Oceanic Peoples and Traditions,’” A Forum for Theology in the World 2, no. 2 (2015): 193.

~ 77 ~ Chapter 2 Tested by Tradition deification, however, unlike the psychological term ‘self-actualisation,’ is not the initiative of the human person, but rather the pure gift of faith. It is the nourishing soil of human-divine intimacy, the fruit of which is the full flowering of becoming human as Jesus was and is, to the glory of God, being one with God, as a raindrop becoming one with the Ocean.368

Common to the development of this mystical theology is that the exemplars pursued their search for God in the very concrete and embodied historical reality in which they lived. Each belonged to a context in which their experience was their own testimony to put forward something new and creative. In doing so, they faced conflict in some form or other. The writer of John had been accused of being Gnostic, and yet his was the last of the four gospels to be accepted into the canon. Paul faced opposition from his own community as he was impelled into missionary activity among the Gentiles. The conflictual situations of the Church Fathers enabled these mystical theologians to clarify the faith of their inner experiences, how they understood the meaning of the indwelling Trinity within the soul, and within the authentic community of disciples, the Church. Considered the last of the Patristic theologians, Bernard of Clairvaux lived and breathed the Scriptures, so that after Creation and the Bible, he could name ‘experience’ as the third book for Christians, to be authenticated by Scripture and the community (Church). That experience was constantly tested against the Scriptures, and the lived faith-experience of the mystics and saints who followed.

A Catholic revival was the response to protests at the corruption in the Church, triggered dramatically by Luther. Through their own inner experiences of faith, these mystical theologians and founders paved the way for a mysticism that was no longer confined to the monasteries. In their very real encounters with Mystery, they discovered the importance of the imagination and the cataphatic mysticism that complemented the apophatic dimension as expressions of the incarnational Christocentric spirituality upon which Christian mysticism is based. They can lay some claim to having brought mysticism from the monastery to the kitchen and available to all, no matter their vocational stance in the common call to discipleship in baptism. Each of these trailblazers had to face their own inner experiences in coming closer to the Mystery of the inaccessible grandeur of God coming close to them in love, for whom their only response was to love in return. For each, that love was energised by reading: principally the Scriptures and the wisdom of the Tradition. As exemplars of the mystical life, their Christocentric focus spilled out

368 This is a way of understanding Paul’s realisation that ‘it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me’ though it cannot be said that the Ocean becomes one with the raindrop; because the human being is created, the ineffable Uncreated cannot be absorbed by the created.

~ 78 ~ Tested by Tradition Chapter 2 into the community of believers; love of God expressed in love for people, made concrete also in specific friendships which contributed to sustaining their journeys toward becoming Christ, as outlined by Aelred of Rievaulx.369

In the 20th century, Thomas Merton’s search for Truth captivated him; through his years at Gethsemani, he deepened his knowledge of, and love for, the Christian mystical tradition, as illustrated through the selection of the exemplars above.370 For this thesis, bringing inner experience to the fore, Merton provides a solid, modern basis for developing a formation for interiority. Living at the cusp of Vatican II aggiornamento and ressourcement, Merton illustrates how to be actively cooperating with grace in the transformation of the self that awakens one to love: being loved by God and loving others as God-indwelling-in-one’s-heart loves others. Steeped in this mystical Tradition, Merton’s insights into his own inner experience enabled his transformation into his true-self-in-God. His insistence on inner experience-in-faith forming interiority is examined in the next chapter, placing him firmly in the great Tradition of Christian interiority on the one hand and, on the other, pointing to how a 21st century vision and formation of Marist religious life can benefit from his experiential knowledge.

369 Aelred of Rievaulx, Aelred of Rievaulx: Spiritual Friendship, ed. Marsha L. Dutton, trans. Lawrence C. Braceland, Cistercian fathers series no. 5 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2010); as Aelred defines friendship it has ramifications for brothers living in community, even more so today than in the past when cohorts of men joining the brothers were much larger. Many, if not most of today's new brothers begin formation when they are in their twenties or thirties where deeper friendships may exist also beyond the community they live in: the impact of such friendship on one's interiority while an important and even urgent subject for research is a topic beyond the scope of this thesis. 370 Alongside other exemplars of the Gospel, Merton continues to have an influence in the 21st century; see “Pope Francis Addresses Joint Session of Congress – FULL SPEECH (C-SPAN) - YouTube,” 11:00- 16:00, last modified September 24, 2015, accessed November 21, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBM7DIeMsP0.

~ 79 ~

Chapter 3

Thomas Merton: Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience

Introduction

The preceding chapter traced the currents of the mystical Tradition in broad brush strokes, though with specific highlights, but with the consistent, contemplative flow of Christocentric mysticism. It is not possible to consider any deepening of Champagnat Marist interiority by only taking account of its last two hundred years; although new at the time, through the grace Marcellin received, nothing is ever entirely original. That which came before has contributed to the formation of the differently new. This was why there was a need to examine the movements of grace, the work of the Spirit in history, that ground the spirituality of the differently new stream in the great river of Christian mystical spirituality. It is why Thomas Merton has much to offer in the development of a spirituality of inner experience for Marist Brothers.

The purpose, then, of this chapter is three-fold: firstly, to draw on Thomas Merton’s experience-based approach to formation, supported as it is by the mystical tradition of the Church and affirmed by his own reflective, contemplative and experiential methods. Secondly, the chapter outlines Merton’s theological spirituality based on the emergence of the true self, a spirituality soundly anthropological and psychological, and therefore a foundational approach to formation for authentic transformation. Thirdly, it is for this reason that Merton’s approach to inner experience offers a substantial contribution to formation for the vowed religious life of Marist Brothers. It is a particular path of Christian discipleship that depends upon the lived reality of one in whom the Risen Christ is alive and active by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Rom 8:2-12), through whom a person centres one’s inmost self on God (Rom 7:22): a relationship of encounter opening up the ‘eye of the heart’ in an expansive vision to become the loving Presence of God for the world.371

371 Thomas Merton, Love and Living, ed. Naomi Burton Stone and Patrick Hart (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 75; hereafter, L&L. ~ 80 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Merton as one for whom ‘only experience counts’

In a “Letter on the Contemplative Life”, written in August 1967, Thomas Merton emphasises the centrality of experience.372 By emphasising ‘experience’ in his apologetic, explanatory note in the letter to ‘modern man’373 Merton made no claim to be an expert in the spiritual and contemplative life.374 He was aware that experience in a contemplative monastery such as Gethsemani could be an anomaly to modern human beings. The experience of being a religious brother alongside colleagues who work in the same institutions or projects educating young people is no less a puzzle to 21st century human beings. Merton’s questions were the same as those of his contemporaries; he had more questions than answers, even if when he first became a monk, he was more certain of answers. With maturity in the monastic life and the wisdom of solitude he realised that the real questions challenging his self-awareness were a relatively recent discovery in his coming to know himself.375 He shares with his readers in their ‘joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties’ (GS §1), pitching his tent alongside on a level plane rather than above them, and suggesting that Christ was perhaps nearer to those who were not Christian than to those like himself. At the time of writing this letter, his faith had become more inclusive, acknowledging that God was at work in the world far beyond the confines of what he had formerly believed.376 Nonetheless, he does stake his claim for a certain authority to speak to his generation, and no less to the people of the 21st century also, a claim based on his own experience, education and deep reflection:

… perhaps in my solitude I have become as it were an explorer for you, a searcher in realms which you are not able to visit – except perhaps in the company of your psychiatrist. I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only experience counts, an arid, rocky, dark land of the soul, sometimes illuminated by strange fires which men fear and peopled by specters which men studiously avoid except in their nightmares.377 Merton addresses his own vocation to be an explorer of the soul: certainly, his own soul. It is, nonetheless, reasonable to question whether any one person can be for another the explorer of realms in which that other is unable to visit. Despite his protestations that monks ‘must not arrogate

372 Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns, ed. William H. Shannon (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985), 154–58; hereafter, HGL. [The letter from Dom Francis Decroix, abbot of Frattocchie originated in a request from Pope Paul VI.] 373 Merton was writing before inclusive language became the preferred and more just gender-inclusive academic practice. Instead of changing his language, this thesis presumes that for the most part Merton’s intention was to be inclusive, except when he specifically refers to monks. 374 Merton, HGL, 154. 375 Ibid., 156. 376 Ibid. 377 Ibid. ~ 81 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience to [themselves] the right to talk down to modern man,’378 one could wonder if this statement still lacks a certain humility. The ‘desert area of man’s heart’ Merton feels called to explore is his own ‘dark land of the soul.’379 It is the place where one must face one’s neuroses,380 inconsistencies, one’s hostilities and bitterness towards persons – memorized figments of the imagination – who may be parents, educators, mentors, institutions of one sort or another including family, church and society.381

A person’s experience is more complex than the external world with which one is engaged. For there is an internal world in which a person who seriously embarks on the journey of self- surrender, confronts the self only to discover that the void which replaces that self-understanding is disconcerting.382 Included in that inner void are the strange fires of fear and spectres of the sleeping imagination where there is ‘hidden some root of despair.’ Merton’s metaphors suggest, more powerfully than any academic explication of soul could do, that the emptiness of soul is where despair lies sleeping. As if in soil, it can be watered by ‘pride that springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity … because our own resources fail us, [being] all more or less subject to discouragement and to despair’.383 If this is so, there must be some solution to such a depressing and potentially suicidal ideation.384 Facing these issues is what Merton means by ‘only experience counts.’

The inner world is the entire source of life and love

However, to suggest that ‘only experience counts’ is insufficient food for the journey of transformation that is at the heart of every person’s yearning, whether or not they know it. What counts is the inner world of the self, one’s imagination, one’s fears and emotions, one’s fantasies and prejudices, and the various memories of one’s relationships to and with self, others, the world, and God. Delving into this inner world is a crucial dimension of one considering Marist brotherhood, especially in the early and mid-life stages of formation when childhood experiences and trauma are likely to surface in the midst of the existential questions (FG 6:388).

378 Ibid., 155. 379 Ibid., 156. 380 Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life, ed. Lawrence Cunningham (Pymble, NSW; New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007), 59–60. 381 Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters, ed. William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen (Oxford: Lion, 2009), 68, 74; hereafter A Life in Letters. 382 Merton, A Life in Letters, 69. 383 Merton, NSC, 180. 384 Merton, SSM, 170/507; Merton, SFS, 59–60.

~ 82 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Merton counters what could end in the darkest night of hopelessness by claiming that his journey is one of riding the storm to reveal a true self, but an authentic self whose context and end point is to be living ‘in Christ’ (Gal 3:26). In coming to know oneself – he speaks in the first person but claims to speak for every human being – a person is more than what logical reasoning and thought reveal, more than what is superficially reasonable. Instead, the true self lives in Christ hidden under the turbulent waters of the drowning, despairing ego-driven self.385 The experience Merton insists upon is experience-in-faith where a relationship with the Transcendent becomes one’s reality and pervades the whole of one’s life. This is what many consider to be ‘spirituality.’ However, such experience-in-faith and a growing awareness of one’s identity as self-in-God does not exempt one from the difficulties and challenges of life. Through such experience life gains meaning which becomes a map for the journey.

To appropriate that experience requires the co-requisite dimensions of silence and solitude, to which the Marist Brothers’ Formation Guide gives scant attention. In solitude a person can go to the depths of oneself, which is found in silence, and then to risk sharing what is discovered through trusting another who is also seeking God. It is then in the solitude and the sacred moments of a silence shared that one can ‘truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained.’386 Without explicit mention, Merton assumes that experience must be reflected upon if one is to move towards genuine spiritual freedom and the selflessness that accompanies self-surrendering love. To reflect upon experience demands ‘a certain movement of withdrawal.’387 His writing gave him the freedom to become more transparent and open to the God he had been seeking all his life.388 The foundation of Merton’s writing was his journal:

I have become very different from what I used to be. The man who began this journal is dead, just as the man who finished The Seven Storey Mountain when this journal began was also dead, and what is more the man who was the central figure in The Seven Storey Mountain was dead over and over … Last week I corrected the proofs of the French translation of the book and it seemed

385 Merton, A Life in Letters, 69, implied here is the temptation of what is traditionally referred to by spiritual writers as acedia, to succumb to the temptation to give up, to despair; Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 43. 386 Merton, HGL, 158. 387 Merton, IE, 24. 388 It is particularly in his published journals (Volumes 1-7) and his letters that Merton allows readers into his mind and heart, insofar as the written record of his experience permits, pointing to the benefit of journaling as an effective means for integrating inner experience in formation; see also the case study in Beverly Johnson-Miller, ‘The Complexity of Religious Transformation’, Journal of Adult Theological Education 2, no. 1 (17 March 2005): 31–49; accessed April 27, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1558/jate.2.1.31.65719. ~ 83 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience completely alien. I might as well have been a proof-reader working for a publisher and going over the galleys of somebody else’s book.389 Keeping a journal gets but one mention in the Formation Guide (5:330); the importance of journaling for greater awareness of the self will be covered in Chapter 5. Merton’s experiences were never isolated from his interpretation of them; they are, in fact, part of the experience itself. Those experiences are peopled by friends and mentors,390 by reading and by his outlook on the meaning of life, which were much influenced by faith, not so much as a set of dogmas – it did not take too many years in the monastery to grow past such neophyte Catholicism – but by the sincere search for his restless heart to find a home in God.

Merton: Master of attention to the world of ‘inner experience’

Merton uses ‘experience’ liberally in his writing, sometimes distinguishing between inner and external experience while not defining clearly what experience is. However, his intention is to focus on inner experience in which he situates the call to contemplation in the emergence of ‘the spiritual self, the dormant, mysterious, and hidden self that is always effaced by the activity of our exterior self.’391

Such impactful experiences cannot be measured empirically. Researchers and scholars have only the reports, either oral or written to trust in their study of ‘religious experience’ which is perhaps better expressed as ‘experiences considered spiritual.’392 Maggie Ross is emphatic about the interpretation that the word ‘experience’ implies, suggesting that the incident or encounter with Mystery happens in the ‘deep mind’ that, like the iceberg, is the larger part of the mind – and is more than the unconscious – to which people do not and cannot have direct access, but which can be influenced by intention or by the will, an operation of the self-aware, conscious mind; this demands ‘the work of silence.’ By the expression ‘the work of silence’ Ross means what Merton describes in his writing as ‘contemplation’ in which he insists that silence and solitude are both essential and vital for the healing, or the purification of the deep mind. The deep mind is not the unconscious, nor is it that ‘archetypal’ dimension linked to human cultures, though they reside in the deep mind as do dark and light, shadows and sunshine, smooth roads and winding paths, angels and demons as well as the Spirit of God not bound by the boundaries of the human soul.393

389 Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence Becoming a Monk & Writer, ed. Jonathan Montaldo (New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 1995), 458, hereafter ETS. 390 Merton, SSM, 225/507. 391 Merton, IE, 2. 392 Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered, 8–15; Ann Taves, “Experience as Site of Contested Meaning and Value: The Attributional Dog and Its Special Tail,” Religion 40, no. 4 (October 2010): 317–23. 393 Ross, Silence: A User’s Guide. Volume 1, 2014, 76; the metaphors are from St Macarius whom Ross quotes.

~ 84 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Contemplation involves awakening the inner self, according to Merton, for whom the inner experience is the territory where this mysterious inner self discovers its source and unity as ‘inmost-self-in-God.’394 This discovery awakens the person to the spiritual. Merton’s writing, both his spiritual reflections, his seven volumes of published journals, as well as his social and prophetic commentary,395 is framed in the spiritual language of the 20th century,396 still relevant in the contemporary context.397 Being ‘spiritual’ is a more basic human dimension than membership in a religious community or in a particular church or religion.398 Being spiritual and being religious are not equivalent terms. Those who claim to be spiritual rather than religious are certainly seekers for whom experience counts. Gemma Simmonds distinguishes between ‘experience’ and ‘encounter,’ suggesting that ‘if seekers are persistent in reaching out beyond the tradition it must to some extent be because they have not experienced within it an adequate conduit for life-giving encounters’ with the Transcendent.399 Pope Francis uses the word ‘encounter’ expressing its relational dimension as he hopes, through the encounters disciples have with others, that it may lead to those others experiencing an encounter with the Christ of faith.400

When Merton speaks about ‘encounter’ he means the same spiritual dimension of being and becoming human in its fullest expression (Jn 10:10). It was his attention to his own inner experience and the world of nature and people, the arts and culture, and national and world events that forged Merton’s approach to the formation of interiority in both novice and scholastic monks: encounter in faith with God, self, nature, others in community and the wider world.401

Questioning experience: Merton’s approach to forming interiority In the preface to his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Merton outlines his approach to the question in whatever field, but especially the existential question of which the most significant is the ‘why’ that leads to identity, meaning and purpose of human existence. In finding one’s answer to such questions

394 Merton, IE, 91. 395 See, for example, Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), hereafter F&V. 396 Merton, SJ, 57. 397 James Conner, “Thomas Merton: A Prophet for the 21st Century,” The Merton Seasonal 20, no. 3 (1995): 4–8. 398 Haight, Spiritual and Religious, 18. 399 Gemma Simmonds, ‘“Spiritual But Nor Religious” - Some Final Reflections’, New Blackfriars 97, no. 1068 (March 2016): 222, accessed August 8, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.12196; her emphases. 400 Pope Francis, LS, para. 217. 401 Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, Gethsemani studies in psychological and religious anthropology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1998), 216–17; hereafter, CWA. ~ 85 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience one unavoidably tells something of [oneself], for what a [person] truly is can be discovered only through … self-awareness in a living and actual world. But these pages are not a venture in self- revelation or self-discovery … They are an implicit dialogue with other minds, a dialogue in which questions are raised. But do not expect to find “my answers.” I do not have clear answers to current questions. I do have questions, and, as a matter of fact, I think a [person] is known better by [their] questions than by [their] answers. To make known one's questions is, no doubt, to come out in the open oneself.402 Merton indicates three important themes. First, that every person has to wrestle with their own questions and live with them without being hasty in finding answers; second, that he steps well away from being the ‘guru’ or ‘expert’ in finding answers – acknowledgement that each person is their own teacher; and third, to dialogue with others which opens one to being not only open, learning from others, but also to being vulnerable. In turn vulnerability leads to ‘love … in simplicity and thus [preserves] the climate in which the Holy Spirit unbinds the impossible and futile burdens’ in those one is called to care for.403

Novices under Merton’s care would be first asked why they were at the monastery. The simple questions he asked were ordinary questions in an engaging dialogical method to encourage his listeners to reflect deeply so as to realise that their coming to the monastery was to live ordinary life in all its rhythms as ordinary human beings, living life deeply.404 It is clear from his former novices that his approach to formation was open and engaging. Now in his eighties, the monk Paul Quenon claims that Merton’s style was mostly non-directive in which the novice had ‘space to breathe, to be [oneself], and to develop at [one’s] own pace.’405 Merton’s non-verbal communication was even better than his ability with the spoken and written word. If he offered correction, it was done in the gentlest of ways, not directly implicating the novice he was speaking to, but providing the novice with sufficient questions so that the novice alone could work out what aspects of life and behaviours had to be confronted as illusions.406 This was the kind of approach Marcellin Champagnat adopted, though he did not in fact adopt such a natural approach; like Merton, his approach to formation to religious life and a deep interior life flowed out of his own personality and commitment, his own prayer and spirituality.

402 Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York, NY: Image Books/Doubleday, 1966), 5; hereafter, CGB. Merton clarifies how different this book is to his edited journal in Sign of Jonas. By this stage he is aware that he has a following and he is at pains to point out that the issues he raises are questions he lives with rather than those that have ready answers which his readers can implement for themselves. 403 Ibid., 57. 404 James Finley, “Thomas Merton: Mystic Teacher for Our Age,” The Merton Annual 28 (2015): 181. 405 Paul Quenon, In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2018), 30. 406 Ibid, 32.

~ 86 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Merton had an ‘honest concern for the individual and his sheer joy made life at Gethsemani … one of growth and happiness.’407 The author Roland Merullo (once a novice with Thomas Merton) speaks of Merton’s personality as

outgoing, warm and full of humor. When you were speaking with him you felt as if you were the most important person in his life and that his honesty and good will sprang from the depths of his soul. His temperament was perfect for the cenobitic life. In that life getting along with others was perhaps the most important factor….408 Merullo’s observation that ‘getting along with others’ was not only a sign of genuine monastic life, but of authentic contemplative living; not hiding away in one’s cell or room, but by loving others and stepping out of one’s own world into the world of the other. Merton saw genuine love of others as the indicator of truly contemplative lives. Merton’s ability to laugh at himself and his playfulness, as Merullo recounts, made him an attractive figure for his young student monks. He had the freedom to be human and to occasionally ‘break the rules’ or the expectations of what had become an entrenched medieval monasticism no longer relevant for the 20th century.409 The genius of Thomas Merton as a formator of interiority was his simple questions such as one asking, ‘How’s it going?’ That question continues, suggests James Finley, when reading his works.410 Because he writes so honestly of his own experience, his story challenges the listener’s or the reader’s heart, giving one pause to listen to one’s own experience. Merton’s warm and personable relationship with his novices,411 as well as his relationship with his readers includes the necessity of the reader having to encounter oneself; that encounter with Merton means one becomes more qualitatively present to oneself, and therefore to God and to others.412 This is a key dimension to the formation of the interiority which is the inner spiritual life at ease in the presence of others. Champagnat also fostered this kind of inner life in his brothers, with whom he had warm relationships.

To become present to oneself, claims William Shannon, is to be free. This is the kind of freedom Merton strove for, becoming what Shannon called a ‘Witness to Freedom,’ particularly

407 Roland Merullo, “A Novice and His Master 6/26/2010 Part One,” Thomas Merton and the Quest, June 26, 2010, accessed December 5, 2019, https://mertonocso.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/a-novice-and-his- master-part-one-2/. 408 Ibid. 409 Ibid. 410 Finley, “Thomas Merton: Mystic Teacher for Our Age,” 182–83. 411 Roland Merullo, “A Novice and the Master 6/26/2010 Part Two,” Thomas Merton and the Quest, June 25, 2010, accessed December 5, 2019, https://mertonocso.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/part-two/; Patrick Hart ocso in Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings, ed. Lawrence Cunningham (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 1. 412 Finley, “Thomas Merton: Mystic Teacher for Our Age,” 183. ~ 87 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience through the removal of the blocks to freedom within himself.413 For the first half of his life his bohemian lifestyle was a way to be free of restraints that prevented him from doing what he wanted; it was license rather than freedom he sought. Merton was intent upon looking outwards to the external world to find that freedom, even while he paid attention to his internal world.

Different types of inner experience Several inner experiences recorded in his journals reveal that inner search, the intensity of which wake him to a new perception and interpretation of himself, at different stages so different to what he had previously thought and understood. These experiences deserve mentioning because in the contemporary context there is a much greater awareness of the psychological dimension of the self which makes sharing experience at this level less fearful, even though to do so requires the risk of courage and feelings of vulnerability.414

In the appearance of his father at night Prior to his conversion was the inner experience he had in his room that night at the pensione at which he had stayed.

I was in my room. It was night. The light was on. Suddenly it seemed to me that Father, who had now been dead more than a year, was there with me. The sense of his presence was as vivid and as real and as startling as if he had touched my arm or spoken to me. The whole thing passed in a flash.415 At the time of writing, Merton was remembering an internal event of more than ten years previously; a significant span of time for reflecting on what has brought him to the point of remembering and writing, with which he recalls:

but in that flash, instantly, I was overwhelmed with a sudden and profound insight into the misery and corruption of my own soul, and I was pierced deeply with a light that made me realize something of the condition I was in, and I was filled with horror at what I saw, and my whole being rose up in revolt against what was within me, and my soul desired escape and liberation and freedom from all this with an intensity and an urgency unlike anything I had ever known before.416 It may well have been that in the months since his father’s death he had never grieved the loss of the parent with whom he most identified.417 Even if his reflection on the experience is expressed with the maturity of a young adult monk rather than an adolescent, there emerges a sense of prayer

413 Thomas Merton, Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis, ed. William Henry Shannon (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995), viii. 414 Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, First ed. e-book (New York: Random House, 2017), 143/191, Chapter Six/Courage and the Collective. 415 Merton, SSM, 152. 416 Ibid. 417 Ibid., 153/507; Thomas Merton, The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction, ed. Patrick Hart, First eBook ed. (HarperCollinsCanada, 2011), 5.

~ 88 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 and an awareness of being imprisoned by the ‘thousand terrible things’ that held him captive, preventing any movement forward:

And now I think for the first time in my whole life I really began to pray – praying not with my lips and with my intellect and my imagination, but praying out of the very roots of my life and of my being, and praying to the God I had never known, to reach down towards me out of His darkness and to help me to get free of the thousand terrible things that held my will in their slavery.418 Merton was discovering an emerging self that previously he had not examined; a self ‘untouchable by charity’ and fortified ‘impregnably in [his] own impenetrable selfishness.’419 As a consequence of such awareness, he was more open to the unexpected. Through his friends at Columbia he met a Hindu monk, Bramachari,420 whose influence led him to read Augustine’s Confessions as well as The Imitation of Christ and other Catholic writers, all the while paying attention to what they triggered in his thinking and imagination.

Though this vision and the following recorded experiences may have been considered by Merton’s contemporaries as a completely private matter (even more so for the inspirational period of Marist origins), his audacity to examine and share such experiences, even in the public domain endear him to his student monks and novices (and his readers). It is the kind of courage that enables others to open up and risk being vulnerable, and therefore living more joyfully, more fully in the greater freedom of an authentic self. For men who shun the idea of being vulnerable in front of another, sharing this kind of experience requires courage and trust,421 opening up the possibility for a greater relational life and a more intimate relationship with the Divine.

In conscious prompts of an inner voice In the ever-increasing attention to his inner world, with its openness to the wisdom of others, in peers, professors and authors he was reading, he noticed an inner voice as he recalls:

All of a sudden, something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me. It was a movement that spoke like a voice. “What are you waiting for?” it said. “Why are you sitting here? Why do you still hesitate? You know what you ought to do? Why don’t you do it?” I stirred … tried to shut the voice up. “Don’t act on impulses,” I thought. “This is crazy. This is not rational. Read your book.” Hopkins was writing to Newman, at Birmingham, about his indecision.

418 Merton, SSM, 152. 419 Ibid., 165. 420 Ibid., 243–49, 252, 274, 288–90/507; Rice, The Man in the Sycamore Tree, 33; Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain the Story of a Vocation, ed. Patrick Hart (New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2007), 21/518 n.7; 34, n.13 hereafter, RTM. 421 Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness, 148-156/191, Chapter Seven. ~ 89 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience “What are you waiting for?” said the voice within me again. “Why are you sitting there? It is useless to hesitate any longer. Why don’t you get up and go?” 422 Merton describes this experience as a prompt, a movement, initially regarding it negatively as an impulse not to be acted upon. His conscious mind thought the ‘voice’ irrational. As the ‘inner voice’ became conscious, he began to consider it a movement from beyond his ordinary waking consciousness. As with dreams and other alternate moments of consciousness,423 the imagination can ‘cut and paste’ from experience too vast for one to be fully aware of every sensual, exterior moment, as well as of all the inner processing and interpretative activity of the mind.424 It is the ingenuity of the mind that turned Merton’s questioning search into a voice-like movement within, enabling him to hear and name his answer as a directive and to act upon it. After initial resistance to such an internal dialogue, he acted upon his interior ‘command’ and went immediately to the nearest rectory to inquire about becoming Catholic, returning shortly armed with three books. A more decisive Merton became Catholic several months later supported by his friends among whom was Edward Rice as Merton’s godfather at baptism.425

Merton’s account reveals the importance of paying attention to one’s experience, both the external experience of the senses as well as the inner world of the imagination, particularly that which is unbidden: that which is not consciously constructed in waking awareness. That experience needs to be informed by good relationships with trustworthy friends and mentors as well as what might be termed ‘bibliotherapy.’426 Encouraging reading and study of the Tradition became a concern for Merton as formator, for without the knowledge of the Tradition, there is also the loss of contemplation.427 Merton was determined to address this loss in the formation of scholastic monks and novices428 through devising a programme of reading and study to propel the initiate towards greater freedom to better enable the person to surrender oneself ‘in Christ’ in

422 Merton, SSM, 269/507. 423 Pilch, Flights of the Soul, xiii; ‘altered states of consciousness’ is the popular expression which suggests permanent change but this thesis proposes ‘alternate moment/s’ as closer to the reality people experience, where ‘moment’ – singular or plural – signifies the transient experience of an imprecise length of time. 424 Scott Barry Kaufman, ‘The-Real-Neuroscience-of-Creativity’, My Team’s Wings; accessed 25 November 2017, http://myteamswings.org/ Bibliographie/The-Real-Neuroscience-of-Creativity.pdf. 425 Rice, The Man in the Sycamore Tree, 32. 426 Merton, “who had a life-long love affair with words, could not possibly record every title or author he read” for, with his friends Lax and Rice, he “devoured” books in his search for ultimate meaning; see Gerald J Schiffhorst, “On the Threshold of Silence: Thomas Merton and the Act of Reading,” The Merton Seasonal 34, no. 3 (2009): 16–21. 427 Marist Brothers have been conscientious in their professional development as educators, they may have been less enthusiastic about their professional development as religious brothers. 428 Thomas Merton, Turning toward the World: The Pivotal Years, ed. Victor A Kramer (New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007), 99, hereafter TTW; Merton, ACCM, x–xiii; see Casey, The Art of Winning Souls, Stirring the possum, n.16 in which he quotes Merton.

~ 90 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 becoming an authentic self-in-God.429 Among the curricula he designed for novices and scholastics was the Christian Mystical Tradition: an essential part of formation for interiority, one informed and supported by the mystical theology East and West; mystical theology acknowledges that inner experience-in-faith can lead one to encounters with the utterly Unknowable, through Jesus the embodied Word of God.

In an encounter with the Transcendent In many ways, albeit unconsciously, it was reading the Tradition that prepared him for the unexpected encounter with Mystery. On a holiday visit to Havana, the neophyte Catholic visited the church of St Francis. Merton describes an experience of a ‘felt presence of God’ as he perceived it:

something went off inside me like a thunderclap and without seeing anything or apprehending anything extraordinary through any of my senses … I knew with the most … unquestionable certainty that before me… somewhere in the center of the church …or any other place because in no place…directly present to some apprehension or other of mine which was above that of the senses, … God in all His essence, all His power, God in the flesh and God in Himself and God surrounded by the radiant faces of the thousands million uncountable numbers of saints contemplating His Glory … the unshakeable certainty, the clear and immediate knowledge … struck me like a thunderbolt and went through me … seemed to lift me clean up off the earth.430 The description of the experience has a strong sense of immediacy; the paragraph is one long sentence which gives the impression that this ‘encounter’ in the church happened only some moments before. The vividness of his description is added to by his compunction to write as if in a rush to jot it all down before losing hold of the experience. He conveys the sense that, ‘like a thunderclap’ this experience came upon him suddenly and he was taken up into an alternate reality. Also striking is that while consciously awake throughout he is aware he is in church, but he has ‘apprehended’ another reality, convinced of the ‘unshakeable certainty,’ almost the tangibility of this new experience. He resorts to metaphor to express what cannot be readily translated.431

Merton attempts to explain this inner ‘experience of some kind of certainty… not just the apprehension of a reality, of a truth.’ For him it was an unbidden experience of delight and joy, ‘as much an experience of loving as of knowing something, and in it love and knowledge were completely inseparable.’ What he encountered was the sheer gift of a merciful God who had

429 This concern is echoed by Casey, The Art of Winning Souls, Ch. 9, Teaching the Tradition: Adult Learners. 430 Merton, RTM, 218. 431 Teresa of Avila, Works V.2, 396/543; Merton stands in line with the classical mystical tradition; cf. the following from Teresa: “God so places Himself in the interior of that soul that when it returns to itself it can in no way doubt that it was in God and God was in it. This truth remains with it so firmly that even though years go by without God’s granting that favor again, the soul can neither forget nor doubt that it was in God and God was in it.” ~ 91 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience revealed Godself to him through a choir of children’s voices. In recognising his unworthiness, he also claims that such an ineffable encounter is possible for every human being, for such movements of the Spirit stir the hearts of each person unless the doors of the heart are so firmly shut by a lack of humility and the complete focus on one’s selfish interests and addictions. Merton’s understanding of sinfulness at that time (‘selfishness, pride and lust’) echo a theology of personal salvation and ‘saving one’s soul,’ very much the spirituality of the pre-Vatican II era. Having received such an encounter by virtue of God’s initiative and grace alone, a person becomes aware of the ugliness of sin in contrast with ‘the beauty of the joy [one feels] for one instant of God’s Grace,’ (Ps 84:10).432

Nearly ten years later, Merton’s reflections are less spontaneous and more theological, reflecting his reading and monastic education since,433 as he describes the disarming of the senses and the imagination in the encounter, the fusion of knowledge and love.

But at the moment, another overwhelming thing about this awareness was that it disarmed all images, all metaphors, and cut through the whole skein of species and phantasms with which we naturally do our thinking. It ignored all sense experience in order to strike directly at the heart of truth, as if a sudden and immediate contact had been established between my intellect and the Truth Who was now physically really and substantially before me on the altar. But this contact was not something speculative and abstract: it was concrete and experimental and belonged to the order of knowledge, yes, but more still to the order of love.434 Though the encounter lasted only a moment, it was something he had never forgotten. Such an ecstatic inner experience makes a lasting impact in a person’s life and in faith Merton considered it as sheer gift, though lasting only a moment. For Merton that meant it ‘had to come from somewhere else, beyond and above [himself].’435 His difficulty in searching for the language to express the ineffable is equally a struggle for people of the 21st century who experience the overwhelming nature of such encounters.436 Unless they find a suitable guide, they are sometimes either too ready to discount or distrust their own experience or, mistakenly, they succumb to pride thinking themselves especially advanced in the mystical life and superior to others.

432 RTM, 218–19. 433 Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. A. H. C. Downes (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940), 26–27. 434 Merton, SSM, 346. 435 Ibid., 347/507. 436 Diane E. Goldstein, ‘The Language of Religious Experience and Its Implications for Fieldwork’, Western Folklore 42, no. 2 (1983): 105–13, accessed May 18, 2019, https://doi.org/10.2307/1499967. More recent research indicates that people who describe their religious experiences make use of metaphor and use more inclusive, and less religiously specific language, aware while what they describe is not the experience itself; David B. Yaden et al., ‘The Language of Ineffability: Linguistic Analysis of Mystical Experiences.’, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 8, no. 3 (2016): 244–52, accessed May 17, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1037/rel0000043.

~ 92 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

The monastery of Gethsemani became for Merton the fertile soil of the ‘dark land of the soul’437 in which the seed of faith would sprout and blossom. It marked what Shannon names as the second step towards freedom, an inner freedom Merton sought through external structures, the monastic rule, the decisions of superiors and mediated through ascetical practice and the discipline of the monastic schedule.438 This implies that certain external structures are a necessary scaffold in a formation for the interior life, especially in the early years of religious life.

Shannon described a third stage of Merton’s understanding of freedom; it was a drastic shift since it had become an inner reality, a freedom guided from within, rather than from without in external conditions and expectations. This is the deepest kind of freedom marked by experience- in-faith in which one encounters God.439 Ideally this is the freedom where one experiences one’s true identity because the illusions one has had about oneself are seen to be figments and fantasies of one’s imagined or false self. Attaining that freedom may take a lifetime and is not likely to be completed at the end of novitiate. To form interiority in others requires the opposite of an unyielding mindset, imprisoned in rigidity and indoctrination of the kind that formed the Nazi worldview,440 thereby damaging the grace which opens a person to the freedom of true being.

In sudden insights – ‘no program for this seeing. It is only given’441 Merton paid attention to the panoply of inner experience upon which he was continually reflecting, discerning the purification of his illusions to gradually reveal his true self. After fifteen years in Gethsemani he had also grown more critical of some values of the Order of Cistercians of Strict Observance, recognising that his vowed commitment was to Christ, within rather than to the Order. Part of his growing critique of the monastic culture is his initial recognition that solitude alone is not enough, even while he yearns for it. More significantly, he begins to realise that his vows do not mean he is more special than any other human being, an insight made abundantly clear in the previous day’s journal entry:

Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th. and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were or could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream – the dream of my separateness, of the “special” vocation to be different … I am still a member of the human race – and what more glorious destiny is there … since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race! Thank God! … I have the immense joy of being a man! As if the

437 Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: I Have Seen What I Was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings, ed. M. Basil Pennington (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005), 228. 438 Merton, WTF, viii–ix. 439 Ibid. 440 Merton, CGB, 287. 441 Ibid., 158. ~ 93 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience sorrows of our condition could really matter, once we begin to realize who and what we are – as if we could ever begin to realize it on earth.442 He wakes up to the joy of being human, while claiming also, that being human is also about being a man, for the very next comment in his March 19 entry, expresses the realisation that all women are beautiful, ‘inexhaustibly fruitful bringing the image of God into the world,’ and who become expressions of ‘Wisdom, Sophia, and Our Lady.’443 At a psychological level, this insight may have stirred awake a fuller sense of his sexuality,444 and a recognition of the creativity of the feminine as a part of himself; not just the spiritual relationship with the feminine projected on to the divine feminine in Sophia, or the nurturing mother of Jesus. It was later that he was to discover the meaning of sexual love in a most profound way at the time when extracts of Conjectures were published.445 The whole idea of ‘separateness’, so culturally pervasive of the monastic or religious vocation prior to Vatican II, becomes even clearer as an illusion in Merton’s deeper reflection on the event some seven years later:446

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, … that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the …whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation … or of my monastic life: but the conception of ‘separation from the world’ that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself … [as an] illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being…447 Merton recognises that this insight is a gift, not of his own making, even though through his study, his work with novices and his continuing reflection on the meaning of his vocation contributed at an unconscious level to the impact of this experiential insight in which illusions fall away.

To think … I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking. It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race though it … makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race … I have the immense joy of being … a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate … if only everybody could realize this!448

442 Ibid., 181–82. 443 Ibid., 182. 444 In his 1958 journal entry Merton exclaims the “immense joy of being a man,” which is followed by his immediately noticing the beauty of women, more than just physically, which is eventually “spiritualised” in his linking the insight to Sophia and Our Lady, Merton, SFS, 182; he does not mention women specifically in the edited version of the experience in Merton, CGB, 157–58,. 445 Thomas Merton, Learning to Love Exploring Solitude and Freedom, ed. Christine M. Bochen (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 37–126, 129–77, 303–48, hereafter LTL; Patricia Burton, “Merton Vade Mecum: A Quick-Reference Bibliographic Handbook” (The Thomas Merton Center, 2016), 111, http://merton.org/Research/Resources/Merton-Vade-Mecum-4th.pdf. 446 Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage, ed. Robert E Daggy (New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007), 297, hereafter DWL. 447 Merton, CGB, 156. 448 Ibid., 157.

~ 94 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

In becoming aware of his unity with all human beings, he is able to identify also with the God who was and is embodied (incarnate) in Christ and with whom, at least on this occasion, he can more readily identify. He is able to perceive the beauty of the inner depths of human beings in which their core reality resides, the self that God sees.449 This is the point at which he intuits, as by gift received, the essence of the inner self he names without being able to translate le point vierge.450 He expands this concept of the inner self more fully,451 going to the heart which is ‘to sink into a deep awareness of the ground of our identity before God and in God [where] our true self … is hidden in obscurity and “nothingness,” at the center where we are in direct dependence on God.’452 In this experience in Louisville, it is as if the breath of the Transcendent has blown away his previous perceptions enabling Merton to see reality as it truly is, by which he gains a glimpse into the True Self residing in all creation. This kind of realisation points to the need for a formation for interior life that is also well-balanced in which a person is able to be ‘at home’ with their sexuality, an essential aspect of one’s spirituality; the Marist Formation Guide treats human formation holistically, leaving details to local cultural and geographical regions.453

To discover that freedom of being, in which one finds one’s true self, is to encounter God. It is the point at which one finally takes responsibility for one’s life, making one’s own decisions of conscience, rather than following the rules, regulations and expectations of some external body or of one’s own construction.454 This desire to discover one’s true self and dwell in the silence of God is worth striving for throughout life. Merton wanted the same freedom for his novices as he reflects: ‘how difficult it is to help [the novices] without unconsciously adding much more useless baggage to the load they already carry, instead of relieving them of it (which is what I try to do).’455 His love for the novices was full of affection which, to a degree, was mutual, creating the natural or homely atmosphere for inner freedom to develop in each:

[Though] many of them may fail, may leave, or may have to look elsewhere to get the real meaning of their lives, yet the sign of love is on these novices and they are precious forever in God's eyes. Certainly, it has been a great gift of His Love to me, that I am their Novice Master. It is very good to have loved these people and been loved by them with such simplicity and sincerity, within our ordinary limitation, without nonsense.456

449 Ibid., 158. 450 Ibid., 151, 158. 451 Merton, IE, 91. 452 Merton, CP, 70. 453 Marist Brothers, FG 1:50–82, 6:371, 382, 397. 454 Merton, WTF, viii–ix. 455 Merton, CGB, 57. 456 Ibid., 214. ~ 95 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Merton recognises the mutual affection that arises in his very personable style which also meets his need for love and at the same time is the fruit of his love for God and those in his care.457 It is the seedbed of a genuine education in faith and formation for authentic interiority in himself and in his students, and which he reflected upon through his journals.

Journaling the question Merton provides the 21st century seeker with an insight into his own inner experience, limited as it is by its report or interpretation, particularly through his journals:

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal, you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.458 Merton’s questioning of himself leads to a deeper insight and interpretation of his experience. Mary Gordon suggests that Merton’s writing becomes most vividly alive in his journals in which she detects a greater sense of spiritual vitality than in his monographs more self-consciously ‘spiritual.’459 It is likely also, that in Merton’s journals he reveals himself more authentically and in doing so, gives himself first, and now his readers, an insight into his deepest self in all its complexity, but as a true self grounded in his faith in God. Chapter 5 will discuss the importance of journaling in a formation for greater, more honest interiority; the vulnerability expressed in such free writing can open one more deeply to the movements of the Spirit, a greater transparency and its concomitant openness to transformation.460

Merton’s unifying goal: freeing the inmost self-in-God

The world of external events and demands can ground a person in their faith context through the senses in the world of external experience. However, the internal world of the soul is Merton’s focus, even if that world keeps pace with the variety of external events; at the same time, the internal world also has its own rhythms which may not necessarily coincide with the ordinary flow of a liturgical year.461 It is the inner world ‘in the depth of a [person’s] soul’ that is life’s concern for Merton; the ground of that inner world is a life of faith, a conversion to Christ which is a radical

457 This experience of Merton’s relationship with his novices was of the same kind of affection and love with which Marcellin Champagnat was regarded by the brothers and as he regarded them. Champagnat applied that to the brothers in their care for children and young people: To educate children you must love them and love them all equally. 458 Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 204, hereafter SJ. 459 Mary Gordon, On Thomas Merton, e-book, (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2018), 51/91, Adobe PDF. 460 Merton, SFS, 392; see also “Journaling | The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society,” accessed December 26, 2019, http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/journaling. 461 Merton, SJ, 8.

~ 96 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 deliverance from the delusions and addictions by which both the individual and society are entrapped.462

Conversion to Christ with its ongoing, radical deliverance from delusion and addictive thoughts and behaviours mark Merton’s path since his conversion, a path made firmer by the Cistercian vow conversatio morum,463 which entails an ongoing conversation with Christ in living the monastic life with vitality and commitment. This vitality and commitment are no less so for Marist Brothers.464 The ‘Christian faith’ is shorthand for the community and its Tradition. The journey begins with contact with others who are ‘in Christ’ and unashamedly so. It is through that community, usually, that a person encounters the Christ of faith. That initial community may be friends or mentors, like the four who brought the paralytic to Jesus through the roof (Lk 5:17-26) or like Merton’s friends and professors who, by gradual steps, introduced the initiate to the community called Church at both the local and the universal level.

It is the ground of faith lived out in the monastery that provides Merton the necessary context for that ongoing conversation. It was the setting in which he could do the ‘inner work’465 of liberating ‘the illusory and superficial self’.466 That ground of faith expressed in a commitment to his monastic vows became, towards the end of his life a more authentic, prophetic protest, challenging the ‘delusions and obsessions’ of society in which he had a share, where he had faced his own illusions, his lack of humility, and a more realistic sense of his own sinfulness:

By my monastic life and vows I am saying NO to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and … seems geared for nothing but global destruction … I make monastic silence a protest against the lies … I speak it is to deny that my faith and my Church can ever seriously be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also, and perhaps against these most of all.467

462 Thomas Merton, Reflections on My Work, ed. Robert E Daggy (London: Fount, 1989), 72, hereafter, RMW. 463 There is much discussion about the meaning of the vow common to religious orders in the Benedictine tradition; it was formerly translated as ‘conversion of life,’ based on a mis-translation; Merton plays on this in Thomas Merton, A Vow of Conversation, ed. Naomi Burton Stone (Basingstoke, U.K.: Lamp Press, 1988); see also “Conversio or Conversatio? Fidelity to the Monastic Life,” accessed May 3, 2019, https://www.idahomonks.org/sect805.htm. 464 Marist Brothers, “Wherever You Go: Rule of Life of the Marist Brothers” (XXII General Chapter, October 7, 2019), §§ 37, 53, 64, 83, accessed October 10, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/bau/ EN_Regla_De_Vida.pdf, hereafter, RL. 465 Robert A Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 9–11. 466 Merton, IE, 41. 467 Merton, RMW, 74–75. ~ 97 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Merton makes it clear that his life makes no sense without faith. It is not just any fundamental belief and far more than mere assent to dogmatic truths. Rather, it is faith in Christ, which is more akin to trust and a trusting relationship with ‘Him who is All.’ It is in Merton’s lived faith that he has had to face within himself his own self-righteousness, evidenced in his autobiography and later repudiated;468 a faith which has challenged his own ‘lying forms of tyranny’, the subterfuge and the lies, the possessive wilfulness, the railing against his abbot or obscuring his relationships with the community while excusing himself from the necessary discipline of his vows in pursuing an inappropriate and unrealistic relationship with Margie Smith.469 Nevertheless, he discovered more realistically his own vulnerability, a dimension of the true inner self he wrote about, of the true self in love that propelled him further into the search or Love Itself in faith. It is this faith which contextualises Merton’s place in the world. From August 1965 his hermitage as well as his link to his community is the context in which he becomes ‘no-thing,’470 giving him true freedom to say a loud ‘NO’ to all that hinders the Truth by which and in which human beings come to the fullness of life. Merton’s ‘NO’ was more influential because he was unafraid, at this stage of his life to face his inner experience; it meant facing the elements of injustice, falsehood, self-righteousness, prejudice and destruction within himself. It is the attention to inner experience in Merton’s shifts in perspective which gave him a certain confidence and a prophetic edge, not only to the shifts in the perception of his inner self, but also to his changing perceptions of his immediate world of relationships: with his brother monks, his friends, those he loved and those with whom he corresponded, as well as the larger world of the nation and its politics.

Merton as one who dives beneath the surface of experience

Merton is not content with the surface of experience so often expressed as the search for happiness; instead that detachment from either happiness or contemplation (in the sense of wanting to be considered a ‘mystic’) becomes his goal. Detachment occurs in renouncing the illusionary ego’s search for happiness, fulfilment or ‘self-realization’ in contemplative exercises. The spiritual self lies dormant and hidden, mysteriously in the background of the noise and activity of the exterior self because, in contemplation, this inner self does not need to be noticed. Thus, the

468 Merton, A Life in Letters, 68–69. Merton's letter to Naomi Burton Stone is partly self-abnegation: ‘I shudder to think how many pages I have written beating people over the head for not being spiritual and which I now realize to have been just egotistical junk. In fact I am awfully aware of the shallowness and superficiality of most of the writing I did between 1945 and 1950 - and some of what I have written since then, too.’ 469 Merton, LTL, 105–107; The one who is M. in Merton’s journals is named in Coleman McCarthy, “When Thomas Merton Called Me ‘Utterly Stupid,’” National Catholic Reporter, last modified December 17, 2018, accessed November 25, 2019, https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/when-thomas-merton- called-me-utterly-stupid. 470 Merton IE, 2–3.

~ 98 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 contemplative self, its renunciation resting in the silence of God, finds contentment and quiet joy in simply being, for its roots are in God.471

To the inner self in simply being Such renunciation involves the work of looking at experience not from above, but rather through experience to the hidden self beneath. The emphasis on this renunciation is on being rather than doing, a challenge not only to the mid-twentieth century with the technology of television. In the contemporary world so besotted with busyness and fuelled by the rapidity of technological consumerism, Merton’s prophetic voice is even more of a challenge.472 What emerges here, in kernel, is Merton’s understanding of the self. The illusory or exterior self is contrasted with the contemplative, spiritual, dormant, mysterious and hidden self whose being is earthed in God. This hidden self just is,473 this dormant or sleeping self is the being-ness of the person, or more theologically, the I-AM-ness of the human being. This spiritual self has its home in being in which, through faith, it is no longer concerned with happiness or fulfilment or self-actualisation because this inner self abides in God.474

Human beings tend to compartmentalize aspects of their lives. To reintegrate one’s compartmentalized being, therefore, is to pull together memory, imagination, thoughts, emotions, dreams, education in all its aspects, including one’s experience of relationships remembered as well as those present, without distancing the strengths, flaws and foibles of one’s personality; in short, becoming simply an integrated human being. In doing so, it will mean that when one speaks the pronoun ‘I’ to another or to oneself, then she or he is really and fully present to that first-person pronoun.475 To bring back the fragments of distracted existence is an urgent task where the busyness of life has fractured so much of the truly religious and wisdom practice that supports the hidden and spontaneous development of the inner self. This interiority is born in the sort of environment that allows for wonder and mystery not simply at the individual level, but at a societal

471 Merton, IE, 2; Merton’s emphasis. 472 Phillip M. Thompson, Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton’s Wisdom for a Technological World (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2012), 35–54; Paul Dekar, Thomas Merton: Twentieth-Century Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century Living (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2012), 85–114. 473 Cf. Floyd Watson, ‘06.04 THE ISNESS OF GOD’, Blog: Stones of Fire, accessed May 14, 2019, http://www.sigler.org/ watson/new_page_13.htm. 474 Emphasised also by a recent Superior General, Emili Turu, “LaValla: The Lighthouse,” Letters of the Superior General, March 25, 2017, 10, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/ emili_turu/LetterEmili2017_EN_alta.pdf. 475 Merton, IE, 3–4. ~ 99 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience and cultural level. Such a milieu fosters the artistic, poetic, literary, musical and deeply symbolic elements that link one era with others,476 and the consequent awakening of the inner self.

The inner self and its accompanying exterior life, the exterior self through which information is fed to the mind, work together in forming one’s perceptions of reality, including one’s changing perceptions of the self. The integration of these inner and outer ‘selves’ leads, over time, to a simplicity and wholeness contained in the pronoun ‘I’.477 That ‘I’ becomes authentic when the one who utters it is sufficiently self-aware, self-reflective and open to transcendent experience encouraged by the practice and experience of awe and wonder – through the senses – throughout one’s life.

an ‘entire substantial reality’ The inner self is ‘as secret as God’ and, like God, it evades all attempts to be tied down to definition.478 It is not something one can have, nor is it only a part of one’s being. When awake, the inner self has an indefinable quality that is completely new and vibrant. It is the person’s ‘entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most existential level,’479 when one feels and is most alive. In fact, every deeply spiritual experience, whether in the visual arts, in music or poetry or literature, or in social action has, something of the presence of the interior self, something by which the experience has ultimate meaning. Hence Merton’s insistence that recovering the natural unity of the self is to come to life as a person of integrity. This is the point at which the different parts of one’s being form a simple whole. How to recover that natural unity is to understand the ‘I’ as both true and false self.

Merton as an experiential educator of the true self / false self Merton focuses on freeing the true self from the illusion of the false self. The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott is reputed to have first coined the true self/false self dyad in elucidating his theory of the self.480 His study of the mother-infant relationship in adult patients enabled him to put forward an argument for how the false self hinders the emergence of the true self.481 Healthy human development begins with a ‘good enough’ mother to respond to the infant’s

476 Ibid., 7. 477 Ibid., 4. 478 Ibid., 7. 479 Ibid., 6. 480 For the origin of the true self/false self as a psychological term see Lisa E. Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009), 94, n. 62. 481 Winnicott, The Maturational Processes, 140–52, there is no evidence of Merton having read Winnicott in his published journals, but as he was responsible for the formation of monks, and had dealings with ~ 100 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 moods and behaviours without succumbing to them or reacting against them. Winnicott spoke of the significance of a ‘holding environment’ which the ‘good enough’ mother provides.482 It could be argued that with Ruth Merton dying before the young Tom was six years old, he spent his adolescence and early adulthood looking for a holding environment which he found in the monastery at Gethsemani.483 It is only later in his life, after a visit by his New Zealand Aunt Kit, that he reassesses his relationship with his mother,484 and recognises what he has received from her, both in terms of his vocation and his creativity as a writer.485

The monastery allowed Merton the opportunity for a healthy ego development, a necessary dimension of the false self, that had been interrupted by the early deaths of his mother, and in mid- adolescence, his father.486 A healthy ego has a very necessary role in dealing with the external environment and therefore plays an important part in protecting or hiding the true self. The latter emerges when the sustaining and enfolding atmosphere allows the true self to ‘quickly develop complexity’ and so relate to the external world with spontaneity because the interactions one has with the external world match what has become the internal reality of the true self.487

A sustained, regular and meditative practice may also bring about a greater self-awareness and the consequent emerging of the true self.488 Whereas, the illusory false self is a product of the ego appearing to be real even when it has mistaken an awareness of itself to be an encounter with God.489 A person who has come to some degree of differentiation in their personal relationships, however, is aware of a personal boundary, having an inside and an outside, something Merton had to learn in a striking way in his relationship with Smith. Such a human being has thereby grown

psychiatrists Zilboorg and Wygal from the mid-1950s through to August 1965, it is likely he would have been familiar with the psychoanalytic term. 482 Stephen Parker and Edward Davis, “The False Self in Christian Contexts: A Winnicottian Perspective,” Journal of Psychology & Christianity 28, no. 4 (2009): 316; Winnicott, The Maturational Processes, 148. 483 Merton, SFS, 26; Sheila M. Hempstead Milton, “Shared Facts, Different Stories: The Mother of Thomas Merton,” The Merton Journal 7, no. 1 (2000): 46. 484 Merton, HGL, 508–09. 485 Merton, TTW, 177–78. 486 Winnicott, The Maturational Processes, 148, an effective holding environment, according to Winnicott, demands that the mother or primary caregiver is intensely devoted to responding to the expectations and needs of the infant. In fact, all her energy goes into meeting the needs of her baby, in what Winnicott calls a holding environment until the child feels secure and safe, loved, and nurtured. This holding, both figuratively and literally, allows for the gradual emergence of the true self, the dimension of the person marked by spontaneity and creativity. It is in this spontaneity and creativity that the person feels real: the true self. 487 Parker and Davis, “The False Self in Christian Contexts,” 317. 488 Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 151–52, accessed 31 January 2018http://site.ebrary.com/id/10338501. 489 Merton, IE, 5; Merton, CP, 5. ~ 101 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience in a way that there is an ‘inner reality’ to the individual: one has an inner world that is both conscious and unconscious.490 Besides this inner reality, there is another dimension to human being: experiencing, to which both inner reality and external life contribute.491 The ongoing ‘work’ of being human is to keep inner reality and outer world separate, yet interactive and connected.

Psychology, however, stops short of explicating the concept of the True Self, because it is only put forward as an absent ideal by way of contrast with the False Self usually far more present in one’s experience of self and others.492 It is Merton’s insistence on faith as the ground and atmosphere for the True Self to become one with God, being in Christ and yet distinct, without losing one’s uniqueness, that forms a firm basis for his spirituality of the True Self and its transformation. This way of being is indicative of a person’s true self at play and at ease: at play because the fullest expression of being one’s true self is ease at being spontaneous, playful and creative: unless you become like little children (Mt 18:2-4).

Faith: the formative environment for the inner life of the true self

Such ease and playfulness allow for the religious imagination, irrespective of the question of God’s existence. It is the same religious imagination that can contribute to the integration of the self through the interplay of the true and false self, leading to a life-affirming approach to the world and a more integrated interiority.493 Allowing the religious imagination exploration and expression happens best in an atmosphere of faith, where faith is the practice and praxis within a community of other selves; not faith as a set of beliefs or prescriptive rituals,494 even though beliefs and ritual may be part of the Christian environment. Instead, it is an atmosphere in which a person can trust and is trusted, where one can search for God knowing that one will discover one’s true self alongside others also on the search for God and their own true selves.

Experience-in-faith means engaging in love Merton wrote of the best setting for this discovery of the true self when the war in Vietnam demanded of believers a strong faith unafraid of the consequences; it is the kind of faith in Christ the Liberator which demands obedience to his command to love, showing itself by the way

490 Winnicott, Playing and Reality, 3. 491 Ibid. 492 Mohammed Masud R. Khan, The Privacy of the Self: Papers on Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, reprinted., Maresfield Library (London: Karnac, 1996), 303. 493 W. W. Meissner, ‘Winnicott’s Legacy: On Psychoanalyzing Religious Patients’, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 33, no. 1 (January 2013): 25, accessed 3 February 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2013.743801. 494 Merton, IE, 15.

~ 102 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 believers relate to others and to the world. They relate not as citizens of a particular nation but as those who belong to the Reign of God, who make visible by their actions the mercy, grace and favour of God’s winning love. In allowing the Spirit into one’s depths, ‘a continuous and progressive conversion’ is possible, leading to ongoing transformation. Love of God demands openness to the Spirit, to continual conversion not only personally in the action of the Spirit upon one’s inner self, but through the transformation in Christ that happens in the relationship with other inner selves.495

Merton links faith in Christ with love. The desire for God is not real unless it is linked with love for other selves, an obedient faith from whom no one is exempt. To be a ‘true citizens of the Kingdom’ identifies persons with the Gospel rather than one particular Christian community in contrast to other denominations, even if one esteems one’s own tradition (despite its institutional sins).496 Faith is more than a certain proprietary set of dogmas. It is the art, poetry, music, drama and the symbolism that that keep alive the Myth and Mystery of the Truth that Christ is the means of union with the Divine, the One in whom the true self lives. True worship, then, is expressed in

songs and prayers [which] surround the central act of sacrifice, itself usually deeply symbolic. Higher forms of religion embody the awakening and the union of the spirit with God in a “mystery” where the ritual enactment of a myth serves as “initiation” to a spiritual life or a consummation in union with the god. But only in the highest and most spiritual worship does the real connection between exterior rite and inner awakening remain definite and clear.497 Genuine liturgy contributes to the integration of the external acts and events with the inner awakening of the spirit, individually and communally, where resides the inner self. It is in the deeply symbolic forms of religion that make clear the connection between the awakening inner spirit of the self and God in ‘the ritual enactment of a myth’498 expressing the Mystery of one’s faith in union with God; the Eucharist is the unsurpassed place of encounter with this ultimate union.499 Merton warns against the lifelessness that can creep into worship where ritual has forgotten its purpose. For the routine dullness can stifle and hide the inner self.

As religion loses its fervor and becomes stereotyped, the worshiper lives and moves on a level where faith is too weak and too diffuse to lead to any inner awakening. Instead of appealing to the inmost

495 Merton, F&V, 16–17. At the domestic level of the period when conscientious objection was still frowned upon, Doyle tells of the faith stance and decisive action his family took; see Brian Doyle, Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2017), 79–81. 496 Merton, F&V, 47-68, 69-75, 284-86, within the Catholic tradition Merton presents short biographies of those who demonstrated the kind of faith he speaks of: Delp, Jägerstätter and de Chardin respectively, not without a critique of the hierarchy responsible for forming conscience, 69-75; included are others beyond his own tradition: Weil, 76-84, Bonhoeffer, 145-63 and Rainer Maria Rilke, 283-84. 497 Merton, IE, 27. 498 Ibid. 499 James Conner, “Thomas Merton and the Body of Christ,” The Merton Seasonal 32, no. 3 (2007): 15. ~ 103 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience self, religion that has thus grown tired is content to stir up the unconscious emotions of the exterior self. In this case there is no real inner awakening, and the reassurance conceived in ritual worship is no longer spiritual, personal, and free.500 The environment most conducive to feelings and attitudes of awe and reverence is, metaphorically, a garden manured by the psychological and intellectual, and watered by the theological so that the inner self grows confident in dealing with the illusion of the false self; the person is thereby empowered to live ‘in Christ’ because the Transcendent is the atmosphere of a community of other selves on the same quest.

With the ability to distinguish between interior and exterior self The exterior self is that which manipulates objects (where even other persons are objects) and the various elements of its external world. Other people and things and even one’s perception of ‘God’ are no more than extensions of an omnipotent and therefore only exterior self. This self may be able to link its ‘I’ with a name and by transference assume a persona that will meet the criteria of others with whom it wishes to connect. However, the danger from which this exterior self can suffer is the illusion of imagining that its experience of self is the experience of God.501 By contrast, what Merton begins to name as the ‘inner self’ is the ‘I’ who is aware of God as ‘Thou’ and

is precisely that self which cannot be tricked or manipulated by anyone … He is like a very shy wild animal that never appears at all whenever an alien presence is at hand, and comes out only when all is perfectly peaceful, in silence … He cannot be lured by anyone or anything, because he responds to no lure except that of the divine freedom.502 This is the self that cannot be tied down, categorised or empirically weighed and measured. It means, therefore, that metaphor and paradox are necessarily the means to go beyond the limits of their literal meaning in order to give at least some intelligible form to the ineffable quality of this inner self, which Merton compares to a ‘shy, wild animal.’503 For what is an authentic and deeply spiritual experience has something of the presence of this inner self within it, and so gives the experience depth and leaves the person convinced of its reality even if words or images, useful as they are, cannot sufficiently communicate that reality to another.504

500 Merton, IE, 27; Frazier O’Brien, “Thousands Join Campaign to Delay Changes to Missal,” National Catholic Reporter, last modified 4:00pm, accessed May 20, 2019, https://www.ncronline.org/news/ parish/thousands-join-campaign-delay-changes-missal. 501 Merton, IE, 53. 502 Ibid., 5. 503 Ibid., 53. 504 Ibid., 7.

~ 104 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Awakening to the inner self through detachment from the exterior The inner self can be thought of as one’s ‘inner center’ and one cannot find it and ‘know God at the same time one is continually preoccupied with appearances and absorption in the world of externals.’505 To go to the depths of one’s being is to detach from the exterior self and allow it to die; and thereby come to what Merton will eventually call the ‘True Self’, the ‘inmost self-in-God.’506 This requires being liberated from the ordinary flow of waking consciousness, its thoughts and behaviours, and especially from the unconscious drives that hinder the movement towards ongoing conversion. Being preoccupied with the ephemeral and superficial, the immediacy of sensual satisfaction without the discipline of delayed gratification; acting upon feelings as they surface (‘acting out’ in psychological terminology) without learning from the daily humiliations that lead to humility, patience, and generosity. If the lack of exercise in the daily disciplines of a living faith result in a person giving in to greed, vanity and the other vices, then one is barred from entry into ‘the inner sanctuary’ of one’s being.507

And to know the inner self of Christian experience-in-faith Merton contrasts the inner self of Zen with that of a Christian understanding. ‘In Christianity the inner self is simply a stepping stone to an awareness of God’ because of ‘an infinite metaphysical gulf between the being of God and the being of the soul, between the “I” of the Almighty’ and one’s inner self.508 Merton distinguishes between the experience of one’s own inner self and the awareness that God has revealed Godself in and through that very self. The mirror is distinct from the image reflected in it; the mirror is not the image. The difference rests on theological faith.509 In considering human beings to be the imago Dei Merton recognises that as a ‘mirror’ the inner self is not God, but rather, through faith, reflects the image of God. It is, therefore, this inner self that in ‘an experiential grasp of God as present’ one can sense that one is in union with God. To imagine God regarding the human being as a ‘mirror’, then when God looks at God’s image in the mirror, God sees Godself. It is only when the mirror ‘looks at’ God, not as object to be adored and admired, but as subject, that the mirror, the human being can glimpse even

505 Ibid., 53. 506 Ibid., 91; Shannon points out that the adjective 'inmost' is a 1968 revision of the 1959 manuscript: xvi. 507 Ibid., 15, 16. 508 Ibid., 11–12. 509 Ibid., 12. ~ 105 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience momentarily, Godself within the mirror; that is, one’s inner self as one is in God’s eyes.510 The mirror, like all analogies, is only that and pales in the face of Ultimate Reality.

But like the mirror in a steamy bathroom, the human being needs to ‘cleansed’ in order for the glimpse of a true self to be seen; in leaving behind the hindrances to the journey towards this inner sanctum, it is not enough to ‘experience the awakening of that inner self that is the dwelling of God.’511 To ‘wipe’ that mirror requires the work of inner experience, work Merton himself did not avoid. That work includes exercising discipline over one’s illusory selves, facilitated by respectful, affective relationships with others. Merton’s own novices attested to his popularity because his transparent naturalness and friendliness enabled them to see a reflection of the divine within themselves, and able to grow in confidence to allow their own true selves to emerge. As Marcellin Champagnat and the mature Gabriel Rivat before him were fully aware, Merton knew that there were necessary conditions to awakening the inner self.

To confront the illusory self by intentional self-awareness

One of the first conditions necessary for the inner self to emerge is an awareness of an illusory self, an awareness that is not a once and for all, but an awareness that becomes ever new. The constantly renewing awareness of the illusory self happens through an intentional journey through one’s inner experience towards the inner self that is in some way firstly a natural and psychological decontamination of our self-perceptions. A corequisite step is faith which recognises the inmost self as existing in God, in a sense beyond one’s understanding; that inmost self, at an intellectual level, knows God existing in one’s own inner essence, one’s ‘I-ness’.512 That inner journey of discovery is about contemplation, not in order to become contemplative, but rather to simply be, in an awareness that the true self is rooted in God.513 It is this path in which deconstructing ‘the illusory exterior self’ means renouncing the search for happiness, or the various forms of control a person presumes to have and for which futility and disappointment are the end results. Merton terms this illusory self, the false self.514 It is an ongoing journey through the experiential knowledge of God in an inexplicable darkness, though somehow luminous, which is the more perfect faith enlightening one’s inmost self.515 It is a process that is not a one-time

510 Merton, L&L, 9–10. 511 Merton, IE, 16. 512 Ibid., 12. 513 Ibid., 2. 514 Ibid.; Merton, NSC, 34. 515 Merton, IE, 54.

~ 106 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 event, but a praxis involving successive awakenings and the associated expansion and realignment of consciousness intrinsic to the transformational unfolding of the true self.516

In a global climate where communication and information are driven by corporate ideological (and political) models based on what sells and where ‘fake news’ twists facts or distorts truth, it may well be that describing the ‘illusory person’ as a ‘false self’ contributes to a an equally confusing understanding of the human person. Drawing on psychological as well as theological terminology Merton sums up the human condition:

My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love – outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.517 The holding environment for Merton, therefore, presumes faith and relationship with God where the experience of God’s love is a daily reality in the context of faith; that is, the community with its rhythms of prayer, work and life, a necessary holding environment to nurture that faith relationship. That community, be it a religious community, a parish or a diocese can also be subject to illusion, blinded by loyalty to nostalgic traditions, to church or societal structures.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves – the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.518 Merton’s theological language considers the ‘cult of this shadow’ a hindrance, because of its unreality, to the emergence of one’s authentic self, one’s true identity which can be found in the love and mercy of God.519 That identity residing in the love and mercy of God is as much the identity of the community as of the individual, a factor which stresses the need not only for a suitable community for formation but that each member is also deeply committed to the journey of continuing to awaken and grow the inner self.

However, there are positive qualities to the false self: it has a role preserving the true self even if in the recesses of the unconscious. This false self in an actual and necessary sense is ‘constructed’, allowing the person to survive in disruptive situations that are either addictive or traumatic.520 Even so, at an ordinary healthy level, this ‘false’ self enables a person to function

516 Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation, 68, 207. 517 Merton, NSC, 34. 518 Ibid. 519 Ibid., 35. 520 Merton uses 'false self' and 'illusory self' interchangeably, while Daniel Horan introduces the term 'digital self'; Carl McColman speaks of the 'survival self' and the 'playful self', terms sometimes used in psychotherapeutic settings. To suggest that the self is 'constructed' implies that on the journey to becoming one with and in Christ there must be an ongoing dismantling of the construction or, in educational terms, the ~ 107 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience appropriately in social situations respecting the culture’s manners and customs,521 even if the true self remains hidden by routine and conformity with little opportunity for play and creativity.522

The false self shapes the memory of one’s identity. If one has been bullied or abused, or suffered the disconnection with family or community, the memory of that forms part of the interpretation of one’s experience and so, through narrative, creates the story of continuity – or discontinuity as Merton’s early journals indicate, especially in those experiences where he is confronted with an awareness of his own failings as part of the process towards his initial conversion. One’s identity may be shaped by various survival techniques. These survival mechanisms, though, do not necessarily lead to greater self-awareness or self-knowledge, much less to the transcendence of the self, unless they are faced. This may mean, therefore, that the terms ‘constructed self’ or ‘survivor self’ are preferable and less confusing terms to describe the self that Merton names as false.523 The path to genuine integrity of the self lies in allowing those survival tactics to fall away, permitting the flowering of the authentic self which is found in Christ. Merton gained a wide appeal as writer, as spiritual director, as artist, as social activist and prophet because he walked the path of both discovering and becoming his true self in Christ, where he could finally begin to recognise aspects of his identity that were dimensions of a genuine self, grown in solitude.

In solitude and its accompanying silence A second condition for allowing the inner self to emerge is solitude. It is true that a certain withdrawal from the world of the exterior and constructed self is necessary because it is in that solitude that one can see things in proper perspective. It entails an ability to be present to the present moment, without prejudice or judgement or imagining possibilities, either positive or negative.524 The inner self is not something left once the self-constructed ‘I’ is dismantled. Rather, for the Christian intent upon waking up the inner self, others must be included in the self-awareness in which the ‘I’ is ‘confronted with a “Thou” who completes and fulfils his own being’. Merton puts this awakened inner self into its Christian context:

necessary and ongoing 'unlearning'; for this reason a 21st century technological expression for the false self could be to speak of a 'virtual self' which is no more than ethereal reality having no 'real-time' materiality. See Daniel P. Horan, ‘Striving toward Authenticity: Merton’s True Self and the Millennial Generation’s Search for Identity’, The Merton Annual 23 (2010): 80–89; Carl McColman, ‘I’m Uncomfortable with the Notion of the “False Self.” Here’s Why.’, Carl McColman (blog), May 6, 2019, accessed 2 May 2019, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/ carlmccolman/ 2019/05/ im-uncomfortable-with-the-language-of-the-false- self-heres-why. 521 Parker & Davis, “The False Self in Christian Contexts: A Winnicottian Perspective,” 318. 522 Courtney T. Goto, The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Learning into God’s New Creation, Horizons in religious education (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 31–37. 523 Merton, LTL, 200. 524 Merton, IE, 20.

~ 108 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

[it] sees the other not as a limitation upon itself, but as its complement, its ‘other self’, and is even in a certain sense identified with that other, so that the two ‘are one’. This unity in love is one of the most characteristic works of the inner self, so that paradoxically the inner ‘I’ is not only isolated but at the same time united with others on a higher plane, which is in fact the plane of spiritual solitude… [a] spiritual awareness which is the work of love … one of the most characteristic features of Christian contemplative awareness.525 The solitude Merton has in mind is an interior solitude. It is a kind of aloneness rather than an isolation. Solitude for its own sake descends into mere pseudo-religiosity and withdrawal into the realm of a false inner self which is taken up with the illusion of perfection and holiness: nothing more than the projection of ‘distended fears, lusts, and appetites for power.’526 The kind of solitude Merton proposes means renouncing distraction and diversion in order to face oneself in all one’s incompleteness.

To embark on the journey to awaken the inner self is the most daring choice possible because of its total counter-cultural stance; it is a refusal to believe that truth is diversion and distraction to be found in crowd-thinking and fashionable ideologies. To awaken the inner self is to renounce the illusion of ideological belief systems which, if absorbed, absolve one from the responsibility of being true to one’s deepest self.527 Distracting oneself from life’s existential questions is to avoid facing that inmost truth that, at depth, human beings are made in the image of God (Gn 1:26- 27). Though Merton wrote over sixty years ago, his mention of diversion, distraction and self- deception is even more pertinent for the contemporary age with the Internet and its glut of information and misinformation that an ever-expanding choice of technological tools provides. While Merton was critical of the younger, post-war generation who appeared to be besotted with the technology of television, the addiction to technology in the present 21st century is an affliction of both old and young alike. To resist such distraction can reveal an emptiness discovered in solitude and silence which, in turn, can lead to humility and simplicity.528

By metaphor Merton connects his inner space with the exterior world of his hermitage:

All this is the geographical unconscious of my hermitage. Out in front the “conscious mind,” the ordered fields, the wide valley, tame woods. Behind, the “unconscious” – this lush tangle of life and death, full of danger, yet where beautiful beings move, the deer, and where there is a spring of sweet, pure water – buried!529

525 Ibid., 22. 526 Ibid., 25. 527 Thomas Merton, Disputed Questions, (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), 183; hereafter DQ. 528 Ibid., 189; Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1997), 83; hereafter TIS. 529 Merton, DWL, 224. ~ 109 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Merton compares the front porch view from the hermitage with the ‘conscious mind’ of his false self: the personas of being the ideal monk, the famous writer, the eminent hermit. The overgrown and ‘lush tangle of life and death’ of the hollow behind the hermitage he compares to his unconscious from which can emerge the beautiful and true, and where may be dug up and reached the pure spring of true self. In such a metaphorical depiction of his inner life, Merton illustrates the tensions between the real and illusory, the inner and the outer, and of the complexity of cutting a path through to the transformation of the self.530

Some nine months later, Merton wrote that his being called into solitude was ‘in order to be healed and purified’ of the deep wounds that would cause him despair to see them all at once. Solitude of the kind he lived allowed him to view those wounds gradually and retrospectively.531 His dreams of the feminine figure ‘Proverb’ had gone some way to answer the need to be healed,532 and were unconscious indications of what became a real source of healing, fraught as it was with challenges to his whole way of being human, let alone being monk and priest, in his relationship with Smith. Nevertheless, it was a relationship that healed the wounds of his other relationships with women.533

Merton observes that most people are averse to being alone, preferring to ply themselves with all sorts of distractions or diversions that leave them unearthed, without the humus or the earthiness of simplicity. Systematic distraction anesthetizes people as individuals so that they drown in the stupor of the masses who need to be entertained twenty-four hours a day.534 It is not only the wider society that can numb one from ever getting to know the inner self and, therefore, from approaching the Transcendent. Even the groups, the communities, the cultures, or the movements to which people belong, in which solitude is subsumed by the slogans of this or that group, Catholic, Christian, or otherwise, can distract from the focus on the search for the inner self. Such religious static can leave little room for the real solitude necessary not only for critical thinking, but for that solitude and its accompanying inner silence that enable one to relinquish what appears to be the advantage of holding dear so much that is, in fact, illusory.535

530 Belden C. Lane, “Merton’s Hermitage: Bachelard, Domestic Space, and Spiritual Transformation” 4, no. 2 (October 8, 2004): 126, accessed 26 February 2018, https://doi.org/10.1353/scs.2004.0028. 531 LTL, 358 (e-371/461). 532 Merton, SSM, 176; Merton, DWL, 167; See also Robert G. Waldron, “Merton’s Dreams: A Jungian Analysis,” The Merton Seasonal 16, no. 4 (1991): 11–23. 533 Douglas Burton-Christie, “The Work of Loneliness: Solitude, Emptiness, and Compassion,” Anglican Theological Review 88, no. 1 (2006): 40, n.27. 534 Merton, DQ, 178; IE, 51–52. 535 Merton, DQ, 182–83.

~ 110 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

Solitude and the silence that accompanies it are essential requirements in awakening the unfolding inner self.536 Neither are they about simple withdrawal.537 A certain withdrawal is necessary to gain the perspective that solitude alone can give. Nevertheless, this separation is in the interests of a deeper union in which one’s solitude is not lost but perfected through the kind of freedom that leads into the service of love. 538 It is love which gives both solitude and silence their proper context, as Merton points out by suggesting that solitude and silence clear away the confusion of language inserted between the mind and the simple reality of things. For

[in] solitude we remain face to face with the naked being of things. And yet we find that the nakedness of reality which we have feared … It is clothed in the friendly communion of silence, and this silence is related to love. The world our words have attempted to classify, to control and even to despise (because they could not contain it) comes close to us, for silence teaches us to know reality by respecting it … When we have really met and know the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from [others], nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.539 Indirectly, Merton posits that silence is another kind of language, one that surpasses the many words everyday language creates to categorize and compartmentalize human experience. Such classification can act as a delimiter of experience preventing the human spirit from encounter with love, and with the divine. The proof of authentic solitude and true silence in awakening this inner self is in how they find expression in the outer world; authentic love of God finds its expression in the world of others, one’s Christian community and beyond to the natural world. This is similarly the message in the mystics of the previous chapter. In fact, the inner self cannot be separated from Christ because, for the Christian, to be alone with the Alone, to be one with Christ, is to be one in the Body of Christ: that is to say, to be one with all other ‘inner selves’ in Christ.

True solitude cannot be self-absorbed. Instead, real solitude involves the death of the self, a forgetfulness of the self a person has spent a lifetime constructing.540 Merton defines this self as that which disappears in the emptiness of true solitude. It is the virtual self that fades, the superficial mask which changes according to the social situation; it is actually an image one cultivates, full of prejudice and bias, opinionated and apparently dedicated insofar as fits in with one’s particular group.541

536 Merton, TIS, 83. 537 Merton, DQ, 182. 538 Merton, IE, 24. 539 Merton, TIS, 84. 540 Merton, DQ, 206. 541 Ibid. ~ 111 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience In certain situations, people speak of the ‘hats’ they wear. There are times when a person may wear the ‘hat’ of a teacher, a counsellor, a principal, a musician, a janitor, the board member, an artist and so on; none of these are necessarily ‘false’ but are different ‘hats’ for this or that occasion or situation as required. These selves are in contrast to ‘another self, a true self’, who emerges in emptiness and solitude; it can appear in a truly creative, selfless and genuine, communal setting which allows for and presumes authentic commitment through which this true self matures in faith.542 This maturing in Christ through solitude and silence entails a certain loneliness (that pervaded Merton’s life),543 which becomes the arena for the battle between the exterior or virtual self and the interior or inner self. In a certain sense this arena of a person’s inner world is battle- scarred with the ‘wounds’ of becoming authentic with ‘the likeness of God in [one’s] soul’.544

Toward the gradual emergence of an authentic inner self Among those wounds is loneliness which the exterior self dreads, not realising that emptiness and darkness the inner self must face is only apparent,545 though emotionally, the felt experience of loneliness is very tangible. The tragedy of sustained distraction is its flight from that which is most real and most genuine in oneself. Undertaking the intentional and determined journey to transformation of this inner self includes the Passion of loneliness, something that has to be directly and seriously faced.546 The lessons of increasingly committed love, Merton realised in a letter to John Eudes Bamberger, that he simply had to face this loneliness, though it was alleviated somewhat by his immersion into the natural world beyond his hermitage.547 Nonetheless, the ‘work of loneliness’ was not something the younger Merton had seriously faced until it had become a regular happening, perhaps abruptly triggered by his falling in love with Smith. When living permanently in the hermitage, Merton noted after his first month:

I am beginning to feel the lightness, the strangeness, the desertedness of being really alone. It was far different when the ties had not been cut and when the hermitage was only part of my life. Now that everything is here, the work of loneliness really begins, and I feel it … This is not something lightly to be chosen, and unless I were convinced God had chosen it for me, I would not stay in it.548 Being stripped of the support and presence of others provides one with an opportunity to gain an inner psychic strength and a certain contentedness in being. Without that presence and support of others Merton was aware that while he gloried in living alone, he also feared becoming ‘innerly

542 Ibid. 543 Merton, OSM, 12. 544 Merton, IE, 92. 545 Ibid., 53. 546 Merton, DWL, 201, 211. 547 Merton, LTL, 106. 548 Merton, DWL, 286.

~ 112 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 wasted,’549 which was something he knew he had to bear. Facing that inner loneliness, however, dismantles the pride that a fear-filled self constructs. There is no love where fear dominates (1 Jn 4:18), which thereby impedes the emergence of the inner self. That emergence begins with humility and a welcoming acceptance of all that one has previously been inclined to reject or ignore in oneself.550 This opens the way for the sacred, with accompanying attitudes of reverence and silent awe at the mystery that awakens within when one becomes aware of the inner self open to the kind of quiet faith that has a deep and fundamental respect for the real, whatever shape it takes.551 It is such emptiness and its consequent loneliness that allows for the discovery of the God who is hidden deep within that inner self, the very One who connects with the True Self of which poets and lyricists sing.552

Armed with courage amid the emptiness of loneliness To face such loneliness implies a third requirement to reveal the inner self in all its nakedness: courage. It is a work demanding ‘great courage and spiritual energy’.553 It is a courage needing determination,554 even when nothing appears to be happening and the temptation to give up comes to the surface.555 It is at this point that the work of facilitating the emergence of the True Self is boosted by ‘the positive and urgent movement of love’, for it is by love that Christians come to know God, through whom they come to sense the likeness of Christ in the soul which is the inmost self.556

It is this urgent movement of love by which Christian disciples grow in Christic consciousness,557 which is more than simply being Christ-like or even, traditionally, imitating Christ. Invariably, it means that the emptiness requires the disciple to cross thresholds at ever deepening levels. The first involves avoiding ‘the comfort of pseudo-wholeness’: facing and then dismantling the ‘disedifying pieces’ of the false self which, at a largely conscious level, one thinks

549 Ibid. 550 Merton, IE, 54. 551 Ibid., 54-55. 552 See ‘Josh Groban - You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up) Lyrics’, accessed 27 October 2015, http://www.songlyrics.com/josh-groban/you-are-loved-don-t-give-up-lyrics/ accessed 27 October, 2015; Dave Dobbyn - A Long Way Across Town, in album Anotherland (Auckland, NZ: 49 Murdoch St, 2017), accessed 19 June 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8hOzAvhAk4; the experience is expressed in the lyrics: When the dark clouds bring down your ceiling / and you’re feeling like you’re underground / I am closer to your broken hope / in a shrunken world I’ll be found. 553 Merton, IE, 53. 554 Ibid., 83. 555 Ibid., 97–98. 556 Ibid., 83–84. 557 Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self: The Sacred Journey of Transformation, 69. ~ 113 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience one is.558 Merton likens it to the ‘dark night of sense’ in the apophatic tradition of John of the Cross. The exterior self needs first to die, and this death is accompanied by a fear of losing all and losing one’s very identity.

To allow this exterior self to fade is to recognise that a sense of sin, both personally and structurally, hinders the emergence of authentic integration, the true self. The false self does not die once and for all, for dismantling the illusory self is a life’s work. The reality of sin not so much as moral failure but as something far deeper and more urgent than the lustful thoughts and feelings which the overly pious have trained themselves to confront with prayers and gestures performed with exacting fidelity that they think puts them right again with God and people.559 A realistic rather than a pietistic sense of sin is to notice as well how such people can accept the most terrible of crimes, such as racism, because they are collective, therefore absolving them from any responsibility.560 The massive production of weapons, climate change, the modern slave trade of human trafficking, abuse of and violence towards the powerless, and multinational greed are just some of the issues Laudato Si raises; clear indication that humanity is full of sin, a collective infection which demands a collective responsibility more than any private salvation of one’s soul.

In religious communities there can exist the superficiality of a rule-bound approach to living the life of a vowed community instead of commitment to one’s true self in contemplative living, which is far more than relishing liturgical rites and niceties, or even prayerfulness.561 Living contemplatively in the mystical tradition of the Church is certainly not ecstasy, trance, nor emotional fire and energy, nor prophecy. Neither is it free from conflict, anguish or doubt.562 Conflict, doubt, and widely different worldviews are the milieu in which one journeys towards deeper contemplative living to find that true self in God. Merton’s major work on contemplation was completed just before he left for Asia.563 At the time, the United States was in the throes of a war in Vietnam that it could not win. In many ways Merton’s non-violent stance was supporting the protests, while, domestically, he was supporting Martin Luther King in opposing the racism still dominant in the United States (as elsewhere) today. Merton knew that an authentic contemplative had to ‘return to the marketplace’ and by word and deed take up the prophetic responsibility to remind the world of its real priorities.564 This poses a challenge, that chapters

558 Merton, LTL, 106. 559 Merton, IE, 119–20. 560 Ibid. 561 Merton, A Life in Letters, 35. 562 Merton, NSC, 7–9. 563 Merton, IE, x; though he had been working on it since the 1950s. 564 Ibid., 120, 121.

~ 114 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 local and general of the Marist Brothers have reiterated repeatedly, but without a solid mystical life, there can be nothing truly prophetic in any ministry to anyone.

And with audacity through ‘the dark night of spirit’ The soul’s essential form is to be seen in a maturing personal identity gained by an audacious, authentic search for the self, not without the definite loss of other ‘selves’ that have to be left behind. This essential self is found only by continuing to find and search. If one is able to say that one has found oneself, it is likely that what has been found is only another mask to be discarded. Learning to be oneself, the goal of an authentic search, is an educative and formative process of dying, in order to live. To truly be oneself, is to uncover in the ground of one’s being an essential ‘self’ which cannot be destroyed, for it survives the disappearance and destruction of all other superficial selves; at the same time, finding its identity affirmed and clarified by their destruction.565 Discarding those superficial and exterior selves is an ongoing process in one’s journey to greater personal integrity in which one’s true identity is this authentic and creative inner self; this self is the goal of a life-long search, for it is the answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ at various times repeated in the course of one’s life journey.566

The first self to be discarded, as an answer to that question, is the one of ordinary everyday psychological awareness. It is the sort of list with which people introduce themselves to others: name, address, family members, relatives, neighbourhood, and village. In the question the emphasis is on the pronoun ‘Who.’ It is also the ‘I’ of a curriculum vitae (CV) in which one promotes and advertises oneself for a job interview, or a place to apply for some scholarship or opportunity.

Second, and more in-depth, is the level of ego, the virtual self. However, this exterior self is a necessary self, albeit illusory, though generally a dimension of the first half of life.567 Furthermore, the dismantling of this construct continues throughout the life cycle, if a person is courageous enough to face the various crisis points that are potentially transformative.568 This emphasis answers the question ‘Who AM I?’ beyond what others see; more than one’s talents,

565 Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: Selected Essays, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2013), 434–35, hereafter, Selected Essays. 566 What follows draws on Merton’s fellow Cistercian, Thomas Keating, who until his death early in 2019 was a regular contributor to the newsletter: ‘The Four You’s’, Contemplative Outreach News 23, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–2, accessed December 6, 2016. 567 James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (New York: Gotham Books, 2005), 37–64, esp. 44; See also Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy, 1st paperback ed., (Boston: Shambhala, 2000), 105. 568 Kegan, The Evolving Self, 240. ~ 115 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience temperament, successes and failures. In terms of relating to others, it marks the beginning of real friendship where people learn to relate to others in a way that draws more from themselves so that they begin to wonder if there is more to who they are than that with which they have become familiar.

The third level of ‘I’ awareness, begins to address the last word in the question: Who am I? This is the ‘I’ a person discovers when relating to those whom one knows one is loved by them, no matter one’s mistakes or flaws. And their love enables a person to accept what is incomplete or unlikeable in one’s personality. This is the inmost self as naked, and therefore to be shared only with those one trusts. This is the kind of setting in which one begins to seriously consider that God loves one just as one is; for this is also how God loves others similarly. This threshold marks the beginning of what Merton names as ‘spiritual nakedness … where life and death are equal, and this is what nobody likes to look at. But it is where freedom really begins…’569 This is the freedom of ‘a more intimate ‘I–Thou’ relationship, in which ‘God’s plan is the transformation of consciousness of the various versions of “you” into the “thou” of union, and into the deeper oneness of unity that opens us to all that exists – God, other people, the universe, and ourselves’.570 To cross this threshold requires a great deal of courage and not simply daring: the exterior self falls away leaving one’s inner self completely exposed. It is what John of the Cross explains as ‘the dark night of the spirit’.571 The inner self ‘dies and rises so completely united to God that the two are one and there remains no division between them except the metaphysical distinction of natures’.572

The end of experience

The end, the true goal of experience begins with awakening the inner self, which begins the journey towards becoming authentic, of integrating the experiences of one’s outer world and those of one’s inner world where, rooted in faith, the inner self becomes aware of its movement towards God. Once awakened, the inner self becomes increasingly self-aware, knowing that the true self is loved in such a way that its awareness of any illusory self is readily forgiven in the light of God’s love in which one knows one’s inmost self is in God. It is not possible to love God without also loving others (1 Jn 4:20), not generally but through love for specific individuals. For

the awakening of the inner self is purely the work of love, and there can be no love where there is not “another” to love. Furthermore, one does not awaken his inmost “I” merely by loving God alone,

569 Merton, Selected Essays, 435. 570 Keating, “CON,” 2. 571 John of the Cross, The Collected Works, 311. 572 Merton, IE, 93.

~ 116 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3

but by loving other [people]. Yet here again … the necessary movement of transcendence must come and lift the spirit “above flesh and blood.” 573 Genuine love transcends the self, going outwards towards others in sensitivity, care, reverence, and respect, together with the responsibility to do good to and for them. When one respects the dignity of another, it is impossible to wish them harm, even if it means one suffers to see them make choices that keep their inner selves, asleep, unable to awaken, or hindered by addictions, intemperance and distraction from awakening. To embrace one’s inner experience teaches the person how to love, which is the quintessence of the Christian life.

To wake up to the inner self in love on a daily basis, requires significant retrospective reflection on one’s inner experience. The contemplative journey is not necessarily an experience of joy, or happiness, nor is it necessarily gratifying rest; rather, it involves the ‘transcendent experience of reality and truth in the act of a supreme and liberated spiritual love’ that blossoms into greater awareness, liveliness, creativity and true freedom.574 It was the reality of love in his relationship with Smith that brought him to know the wonder, the joy, and the anxiety and pain of love so that he could see the smallness of his ‘vulnerable self with its illusions of autonomy’ while anticipating that he would ‘find new depths and a new consciousness higher than [his] own and [his] anxieties … healed in love and transcendence – in which there are no ideals – only the reality of what is greater than any “I” and incomprehensible to it.’575 In fact, Merton’s relationship with Margie Smith was a ‘great insurmountable way of liberation’ that went beyond their affection for one another and its expression since both had commitments they wished to preserve.576

With the maturity of his later years, Merton notices the shortfalls in his growth as disciple and monk,577 which is reflected in his later writing, published posthumously. The journey to self- transcendence is summed up in his notion of love:

Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life. We do not live merely in order to take part in the routines of work and amusement that go on around us. … [Life] is not a straight horizontal line between two points, birth and death. Life curves upward to a peak of intensity, a high point of value and meaning, at which all its latent creative possibilities go into action and the person transcends himself or herself in encounter, response, and communion with another. It is for this that we came into the world – this communion and self-transcendence.578

573 Ibid., 24. 574 Ibid., 33. 575 Merton, LTL, 78, (e-book, 94/461). 576 Ibid.; see also M. Basil Pennington, Thomas Merton, Brother Monk: The Quest for True Freedom (New York: Continuum, 1997), 123–24. 577 Merton, TTW, 323; Merton, DWL, 79. 578 Merton, L&L, 27. ~ 117 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience The intensification of life is another way of saying that love is the goal of one’s life. That ‘aliveness’ echoes Irenaeus of Lyon who claims that God’s glory is the living human being in awe of and beholding God,579 which is the shift from experience to encounter.580 Merton’s movement from experience to engagement and encounter with the Transcendent confirms his role as a guide, since he lived the discipline that presumes a daily conversatio mores (a daily faithfulness to one’s vocational commitment), one of the Cistercian vows, if not the principal undertaking of any disciple who takes seriously the journey to self-transcendence (Lk 9:23). Merton’s journals reveal that he did, in fact, pay close attention to his inner experience, and through reflection he moved towards the transformation he sought and the greater self-awareness that led to the self- transcendence of love in its generous and out-pouring creativity:

We do not become fully human until we give ourselves to each other in love … it embraces everything in the human person – the capacity for self-giving, for sharing, for creativity, for mutual care, for spiritual concern.581

Conclusion

This chapter elucidated the ways in which Thomas Merton was thoroughly grounded in the deep mystical Tradition; mystical theology was foundational to his wisdom, honed by reflection on his own experience as he journeyed into the transformation of the self, undertaken through daily contemplative practice in the necessary atmosphere of community prayer, liturgy and study (even when living as a hermit). Making no claim to possessing expertise over his listeners, readers, or student monks, Merton insists upon the value of listening to one’s own experience, as his own writing makes abundantly clear. His writing, suggests Elena Malits, ‘is the act of the true teacher and authentic guide: in showing [his readers] himself,’ he reveals those readers to themselves.582

Experience in and of itself is insufficient. The exercise of writing enabled Merton to reflect upon his experience which is fundamentally an experience-in-faith, much of it retrospectively reflective. To delve into that experience demands a necessary solitude with its concomitant silence. In the context of experimental faith, its rhythms and rituals, solitude and silence enable one to journey into the unknown territory of the self. The solitude and silence are essential means to

579 Merton, IE, 38; Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, 490, Bk IV, 20:7. 580 Cf. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald G Smith, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 6–9; see also Michael Zank and Zachary Braiterman, ‘Martin Buber’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2014 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2014), accessed 4 June 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2014/entries/buber/. 581 Merton, L&L, 27. 582 Elena Malits, The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton’s Transforming Journey, 1st ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 19.

~ 118 ~

Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience Chapter 3 discover that inner self; a solitude without distractions, for which technology can pose one of the greatest threats. Distractions in different forms prevent one from making the discovery of an inner self whose emergence is threatened by an exterior self. Merton spoke of the illusory self, even when it thinks itself as knowing God, as completely delusional; he more frequently spoke of it as the false self which is entirely constructed and may be better expressed, in 21st century terminology, as the ‘virtual self,’ something not at all real or earthed. A person living in this century would be greatly helped by paying attention, as did Merton, to the current psychological insights on which today’s spiritual directors draw in accompanying those who take their spirituality seriously. Those insights provide them with vocabulary from Jung such as the ‘shadow’ or the use of the kataphatic approach in his ‘active imagination.’ Through noticing all types of inner experience in one’s daily life, both conscious and alternately conscious, solitude and silence enable one to distinguish the false, ego-driven self and, in the humility of self-emptying, come to know one’s authentic self-in-God who is Love embodied in the Christ within.

The solitude and silence of experience-in-faith leads one into deep reflection on who one is before God and in relationship to others and the world. A person is led to trust in God through once’s relationship with Christ in the Christian tradition; that trust entails vulnerability which the virtual self tends to avoid at all costs. When a person dares to trust, vulnerability can open one to the embrace of God, with the discovery of one’s true self, which is the inner self in its depths, better named as the ‘inmost self-in-God.’ This is the self at home with the experiences of childhood, family and growing up through the wild adolescent years and a sometimes-dissolute life.583 In his search for the self, Merton focused on differentiating the true self from the false self. In the necessary solitude and silence that accompanies such a search, Merton uncovered the series of masks of the false self, personas that need to fall away for the inner self to be liberated as one’s inmost self in God. As the inner self emerges through the detritus of illusory masks, Merton discovered in the fruit of silence and solitude that all his experience counted, including the unconscious and the imagined; this allows for better knowing the wiles of the false self so that in coming to the true self, one can also know Love: being loved and loving.584

Such an interiority reinforced his natural sociability and led to Merton’s openness and exchange with others across denominational and religious divisions was a spontaneous outpouring

583 Merton, RTM, 370. 584 Merton, WTF, 131. In a letter to Naomi Burton Stone, dated 3 March 1956, he writes, ‘The bitterness in me comes from the fact that I have at last opened up the area in which it is impossible not to notice that in all this solitude business and in my other outbursts of idealism I have been reliving all the brat experiences of my childhood, magnified and adorned.’ ~ 119 ~

Chapter 3 Formator of Incarnational Inner Experience of his contemplative search. Such open welcome to learning from nature and from others made him available to others in a way he was at ease with and truly present to them.585 Those interactions with others included the many authors and writers he read and corresponded with throughout his life, where he had found a ‘home’ in Gethsemani586 – even from his hermitage587 – which was stable enough for his true self to emerge into greater freedom, no longer bound by his own idealistic expectations nor by the expectations of others.

Merton grew in the realisation that his true self was in Christ. That realisation led him to a deeper study of the sources of the Christian Tradition, not only in the Scriptures, but in the continuing mystical Tradition of the Church, so much so that, as Master of Scholastics and Master of Novices, he was concerned about a much better formation for aspiring young monks.588 In such a lived experience-in-faith, experience becomes an encounter in which one’s true self engages with the living God, so that a person can say with St Paul: It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Ga 2:20). Even so, Merton was always ‘on the way’ in an ongoing formation to an ever-deeper knowledge of himself, a greater awareness of his foibles, flaws and sinfulness, while at the same time becoming increasingly one with, and in Christ.

For this reason, Merton is an appropriate guide for this study in addressing formation for greater interiority in Marist religious life. Merton has addressed what the guides before him have spoken of as the ‘indwelling of God’ through identification with the Christ of faith and the resurrected humanity of Jesus. It is the movement to greater love in the journey towards the ‘I- Thou’ of union with God which Merton expresses as the ‘inmost-self-in-God.’ The challenge for what Sandra Schneiders names as ‘ministerial religious life’589 is to deal with the tension between the contemplative dimension of the call to this type of vowed commitment and what must be its integral ministerial dimension of mission. The next chapter examines the contemplative focus of this challenge in the formation for Marist interiority in the brothers.

585 Paul M. Pearson, “A Dedication to Prayer and a Dedication to Humanity: An Interview about Thomas Merton with James Conner, OCSO,” Merton Annual 23 (2010): 213. 586 Merton, OSM, 282. 587 Merton, RMW, 139; Merton wrote and sent a mimeographed copy to Saigon in 1967 for publication in Vietnamese of No Man is an Island. His concluding paragraph indicates that even the hermit needs to be wary of the illusory self: ‘When a man attempts to live by and for himself alone, he becomes a little “island” of hate, greed, suspicion, fear, desire. Then his whole outlook on life is falsified. All his judgments are affected by this untruth.’. 588 Merton, ACCM, 1. 589 Sandra M. Schneiders, “Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?” in Cassian J. Yuhaus, ed., Religious Life: The Challenge of Tomorrow (Mahwah, N.J: Paulist Press, 1994), 15.

~ 120 ~

~ 121 ~

Chapter 4

Formation for Marist Interiority: Inspiration and Adjustment

Introduction

Chapter Three investigated Thomas Merton as an exemplar who noticed his inner experience and regarded it as the ground from which his interior life would grow towards God and self- transcendent love. As formator, Merton provided his novices (and his readers) with a pathway to discover for themselves the kind of interiority that allowed them to engage their inner experience of daily life leading to encounter with the Transcendent as true selves and, insofar as possible for human beings as imago Dei, being one with God. His life was no less busy in many respects than those that have traditionally been regarded as ‘apostolic’ or active religious, as brothers among the Cistercians had been regarded prior to changes ushered in through 1958.590 For this reason Merton’s criteria for the formation of interiority offer a fitting programme to augment the current Formation Guide of the Little Brothers of Mary (Marist Brothers).591

What began as Marcellin Champagnat’s founding plea, ‘We must have brothers’,592 developed its mystical beginnings in the way of life and identity as ‘Brothers of Mary.’ The inspirational period (1817 to 1881) of formation for interiority came from the founder Marcellin

590 Merton, SFS, 155, 158, for all his pushing at the edge of religious boundaries, Merton was conflicted about the proposed liturgical changes. 591 When Marcellin Champagnat founded his group, initially within the embryonic Society of Mary, he gave them this name, though also referred to them simply as ‘Brothers of Mary;’ see Marcellin Champagnat, Letters of Marcellin J. B. Champagnat 1789-1840: Founder of the Institute of the Marist Brothers, ed. Paul Sester, trans. Leonard Voegtle, vol. 1 (Rome: Casa Generealizia Dei Fratelli Maristi, 1991), 592, the numbers refer to the letters; hereafter, Letters. Once recognised by Rome in 1863 they were given the name Fratres Maristae a Scholis (Marist Brothers of the Schools) but are presently more commonly known as Marist Brothers. 592 Jean-Baptiste Furet, Life of Blessed Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat 1789-1840: Marist Priest, Founder of the Congregation of the Little Brothers of Mary, trans. Ludovic Burke, Bicentennary. (Rome: General House, 1989), 51, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2711; Seán Sammon, A Heart That Knew No Bounds: Saint Marcellin Champagnat - The Life and Mission (Rome: General House, 1999), 22–23; André Lanfrey, History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: From Marlhes to the World (1789- 1907), trans. Anthony Hunt, vol. 1, FMS Studia No.3 (Rome: General House, 2015), 434, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History1_EN.pdf. ~ 121 ~

Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Champagnat and his successor, Brother François (Gabriel Rivat).593 The institutionalization of the Congregation,594 the concern for uniformity in the rapidly expanding project595 and the codification of the Rule and Constitutions in accord with the canonical and condescendingly bureaucratic demands of the Roman dicastery596 set in concrete this form of lay religious life for a century. A formation for interiority continued nonetheless drawing on the circulars of Br François and the teaching of the Founder. But under the immediate successors of Br François, formation for interiority focused on the Rule, becoming more uniform, centred on piety and regularity, with brotherly relationships taking a more hierarchical form.597

However, with the call of Vatican Council II that all the baptised are called to holiness, no matter the particular vocational expression of their baptismal call (LG §§ 40-42),598 the call to holiness is no longer the preserve of priests and religious (if it ever was in fact), it is now the broader context of the gospel call to every Christian to live the Christ-life. Religious congregations were challenged to return to their roots, to renew and adapt their life and mission for the present era. Within the Institute, there has been a growing focus on the early origins, especially in terms of the mystical and prophetic spirituality for God’s mission entrusted to the Institute, for which Champagnat and François provide a firm basis.599 This is the specific context for this chapter’s focus on the formation of inner experience of the Marist Brother; the chapter necessarily engages in a brief examination of the beginnings and how Marist Spirituality has developed, and continues to do so, as the founder had intended.600

593 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:118. 594 Throughout this study, ‘congregation’ and ‘order’ are used interchangeably; Marist Brothers also use the word ‘Institute’; from the canonical perspective see Juan Miguel Anaya Torres, “We Have New Wine; Do We Need New Wineskins?,” Marist Notebooks 28 (May 2010): 5–29. 595 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:247–48. 596 Ibid., 1:241–42. 597 Ibid., 1:188. 598 Br Jean-Baptiste recounts a retort of Marcellin Champagnat to one of his Brothers who had pointed out another soutane-clad person approaching at a distance being “only a Brother.” Vatican II changed that, though only by documents; to recognise baptism as the one only ontological change conferred on all equally will take more than a church document; see Furet, Life, 465. 599 Lanfrey, 1:248–49; André Lanfrey remarks that of the three brothers elected to lead the Congregation in 1839, Louis-Marie contributed most to reshaping the Congregation, Jean-Baptiste the archivist and recorder of the origins and teachings. But François who out-lived them, seemingly ignored after he resigned, must have continued to have a significant influence as the content of his spiritual notebooks reveal. His Cause for canonization was introduced in 1910, and not that the other two. Lanfrey suspects that Jean- Baptiste’s work was most influenced by François. 600 Ibid., 1:18; the term “Marist Spirituality” would have been unfamiliar to the early generations of brothers; they would refer to devotion or describe someone as “devout”, or as Br François explained in his four-part circular, “The Spirit of Faith” over the course of five years; the term “spirituality” has only been used more consistently since the 1970s with Br Basilio’s definition in Rueda Guzman, “Spirit of the Institute,” Circulars of the Superior General, (FMS Archives, NZ), December, 1975; Charles Howard’s circular of 1992 begins to define the term for a congregation (like many founded in the 1800s) only ~ 122 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

A charism inspired by a need

Marcellin Champagnat, in his last student years at the seminary, joined a group of seminarians intent on forming a Society of Mary.601 Champagnat had joined the group so long as his vision to found a group of Brothers for the rural areas was part of the project,602 a vision based on his own less-than-satisfactory experience of primary education.603 After their ordination, the group of aspiring Marists committed to the formation of a Marian society to revive Christianity in France after the Revolution.604 Although Champagnat’s ecclesiology differed from that of his confrères, he could not see a Marist project as complete without Brothers.605 What Champagnat did share with his aspiring Marist confrères, was the conviction that their Society was Mary’s work. He had composed a prayer when the twelve newly ordained men made their Act of Consecration to the Blessed Virgin at the shrine of Fourvière:

“… It is under your auspices that I wish to work for the salvation of souls. I can do nothing, O Mother of Mercy! I can do nothing, I feel it; but you can do everything by your prayers; Holy Virgin, I place all my trust in you. I offer to you, give to you and consecrate to you my person, my labours and all the actions of my life.” 606 The prayer reflects Champagnat’s desire to give himself wholly to God. It also indicates the beginning of a developing mysticism through the lens of the Mother of God, an inner life firmly established by his home setting and his seminary formation.607

recognised as religious life in the first decade of the 20th century, Charles Howard, “Marist Apostolic Spirituality,” (Marist Brothers, March 25, 1992), FMS Archives, NZ). 601 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:41–42, the Society of Mary was founded on a dream inspired by the vision of fellow seminarian Jean-Claude Courveille, who shared his vision with several friends. A trend in French seminaries of the time was the formation of small groups, known collectively as Assemblée des amis; the aspiring Marists were one such group; André Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” Marist Notebooks 19, no. June (2003): 30–31. 602 Justin Taylor, “Fourvière, July 23, 1816,” Marist Notebooks 34, no. May (2016): 8; it seems clear that in the beginning Champagnat’s concept of the Society of Mary was based on his experience at the Hermitage; see Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 30–31. 603 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:32; Marcellin Champagnat, Letters, 89. 604 Taylor, “Fourviere, July 23, 1816”; see also Gibson, “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality,” 42–48. 605 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:44; the author points out the lay character of the Brother’s vocation, and of Champagnat’s intention which the aspiring Society of Mary did not consider, being all priests modelled on the Jesuits; they could not conceive of the brother apart from being assistants to the priests, or cooks or occupied with maintenance. Letters of complaint to France by Brothers Claude-Marie, Michel and Florentin respectively, see Edward Clisby, Far Distant Shores: The Marist Brothers of the Schools in New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Kiribati 1838-2013 (Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Marist Brothers Trust Board, 2017), 33; 21–22; 20 & 42; see Florentin’s letter in Gabriel Michel, “Marcellin Champagnat’s Pathway of Obedience,” Marist Notebooks 14 (November 1998): 84–85. 606 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:45. 607 Ibid., 1:45, n.80. ~ 123 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Appointed to the parish of LaValla on 12th August 1816,608 Champagnat quickly set about forming a group of young men into a community with a mission to educate, evangelise and catechise children in the parish and eventually in the villages beyond. Champagnat’s hagiographer writes glowingly of Marcellin’s respect for and obedience to the parish priest,609 his attractive catechism lessons to children and teenagers,610 and his aimable approach to parishioners who thought well of his down-to-earth homilies.611 Being practical rather than given to theorizing, Champagnat saw the need, began to address the issues, and immediately set about making the Marist dream a reality sooner than he himself had expected.612

In beginnings similar to those of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle in a previous century,613 Champagnat began with the simple step of inviting young men to live together, work, pray and study together and learning the basics of teaching so as to catechize the poor children of the parish.614 Champagnat’s encounter with a dying boy a few years later confirmed the young priest’s initiative in 1817 of having brought together first two and then several young men of varying ages to form them into catechists and teachers. This encounter has become a founding myth of the Institute’s mission. The lad was given the name of ‘Jean-Baptist Montagne.’615 It is a myth like the foundational myths explaining the creation of the world in the Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia; of the Kiribati Nareau tapping his tail on the spherical te Bomatemaki, opening it up to form the world; or of Maui fishing up Te Ika a Maui (the North Island of New Zealand) from Te Waka a Maui (his canoe, the South Island).616 While myths are not scientifically true,617 they are

608 Ibid., 1:67; I am indebted to the work of Marist scholars working in the Patrimony Commission for much of the background to this chapter. 609 Furet, Life, 38–39. 610 Ibid., 41. 611 Ibid., 39, 43–46. 612 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:67. 613 Carl Koch, Praying with John Baptist de La Salle, Companions for the journey (Winona, MN: Saint Mary’s Press, 1990), 15–18; de La Salle began by inviting young teachers to meals, which eventuated in their living with him.. 614 Alexandre Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” Marist Notebooks, no. 3 (May 1992): 28. 615 An assistant General gave him the name in 1932 and later one of the first post-Vatican II researchers into the Marist origins, Br Gabriel Michel promoted it after 1966; (Michael Green, private communication). 616 Te Waka a Maui (Maui's canoe) is a name for what has been known as the South Island, but the official name is Te Wai Pounamu (the waters of greenstone); “Maori Names for North and South Islands Approved,” RNZ, last modified October 10, 2013, accessed March 9, 2020, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/224273/maori-names-for-north-and-south-islands-approved; while proper nouns are capitalized in Māori, but being an official language of New Zealand, the language (Te Reo) is not italicised as a 'foreign' language. 617 Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth (Edinburgh; New York: Canongate, 2008), Ch.1: “What is a myth?,” accessed October 24, 2019, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=572320. ~ 124 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 a way of understanding and grounding a specific group or culture, contributing significantly in shaping their identity.618 It is the return to such foundational myths that enable a group, in this case, Champagnat Marists,619 to reaffirm the charism they have received through Champagnat and the early brothers, in new fields of mission according to their era and circumstances.620

Not requiring authorization at this stage, Champagnat simply saw the need and acted immediately to address the issue. He did not reject the necessity for institutional structure, but such organization follows lived experience, rather than anticipating it, for he was a practically minded pastor and not a theological academic.621

A spirituality formed by the inner experience of faith

The first school of any way of living the gospel is the family. Then comes the locale, the wider family and church and the social setting of the time, one’s education both formal and informal, together with all the cultural mores and expectations attached to each of those areas; a foundation for building a spirituality. In Champagnat’s case, because of place and era, that spirituality was largely devotional as taught by his mother and aunt. On the other hand, his father, who acted as a kind of mayor for the hamlet of Le Rozet, saw elements of the Revolution that would benefit society, especially the poor.622 It is not unreasonable to suppose that the catch-cry of the Revolution, ‘Freedom, equality and brotherhood’ was absorbed subconsciously by Marcellin as a boy, becoming part of his own inner experience; that revolutionary slogan, representing in some way the values he esteemed in his father, became his inheritance to the early brothers, not in any formal way, but by the manner of his relationships with them.623

618 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning, Repr., Routledge classics (London: Routledge, 2002), 7–9; see also Fatih Mehmet Berk, “The Role of Mythology as a Cultural Identity and a Cultural Heritage: The Case of Phrygian Mythology,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 225 (July 14, 2016): 67–73. 619 Since the 22nd General Chapter of the Institute of the Marist Brothers (September through October 2017), the congregation is frequently spoken of as the Marists of Champagnat, recognising the growing number of the laity who identify with Champagnat’s charism. The expression is a translation of three of the four official languages of the Institute: French, Spanish and Portuguese. It is not rendered so well in English, the fourth official language. When New Zealand was a province before 2013 (and now as the District of the Pacific including Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa) a calendar was produced (from 2008) where the term ‘Champagnat Marist,’ in better English, appeared for the first time in print. 620 In fact, Jean-Baptiste Montagne did exist as his birth and death certificates confirm, but he was not the “dying child” of the story; see Michael C. Green, “The Montagne Myth: An Archetype of Marist Ministry,” Marist Notebooks 35 (May 2017): 5–25. 621 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 29. 622 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:31–32; Gibson, “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality,” 48–53. 623 Ibid., 1:69, 128; see also Justin Taylor, Jean-Claude Colin: Reluctant Founder (Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2018), 350. The philosophical underpinning of the spirituality of the Brothers of Mary might well have been the source of conflict between the brothers and the priests’ branch of what Champagnat presumed ~ 125 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

The other major influence on Champagnat was the formation he received at the hands of his Sulpician formators at both seminaries, at Verrières and St Irenaeus in Lyon.624 That influence can be seen in his early prayers and resolutions at the seminary. His resolution of 1812 indicates a growing awareness of himself before the majesty and love of God and the saints:

My Lord and my God, I promise to never offend you again, to make acts of faith, hope and similar others every time I think of it; not to return to the tavern without necessity; to avoid bad company, and in a word, not to do anything which is against your service; on the contrary, to give good example, lead others to practice virtue if it depends on me; instruct others as to your divine precepts; to teach catechism to the poor as well as the rich. Ensure, Divine Saviour that I faithfully fulfil all these resolutions I am taking.625 The language reflects the period in which devotions were the primary means of expressing spirituality, together with its list of resolutions which ensured faithfulness to ‘divine precepts,’ the mark of a good Christian. The prayer at the beginning of his resolutions also reflects the Bérullian influence on French spirituality:

I admit, Lord, that I do not yet know myself; that I still have many great faults, but I hope that, having had the grace of knowing them, you will also give me the grace of overcoming them by fighting them with courage. This is what I ask of you in the deepest self-abasement of my heart.626 Evident in this prayer is Champagnat’s self-awareness and his desire to be more self-aware so that he can play his part in the work of grace. The ‘self-abasement’ reflects in a milder way the ‘annihilation’ of the self, associated with Bérulle, and is further reflected in a prayer some years later in 1815, with its obvious Marial dimension, initially so much a part of the Sulpician spirituality of the aspiring Marist group:

Holy Virgin, you know that I am your slave. In truth, I am unworthy of so great a favour, but it is in this very unworthiness that your tenderness towards me will break forth. Amen.627 While Bérulle afterwards changed the italicised word to ‘servant’, the idea of being a ‘slave’ was supposed to express the total abandonment of the self to God, through Mary.628 This metaphor is unlikely to be the language of the present era; it may be less metaphorical to use a phrase such as ‘total self-surrender’ which retains a modicum of metaphor, but it is more intentional and apt at a

to be the Society of Mary. It was first evident in Champagnat’s difference of opinion with Jean-Claude Colin, the first Superior of the canonically recognised Society of Mary.. 624 Gibson, “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality,” 57–60. 625 Juan Moral, “A 200 Year-Old Champagnat Document: Marcellin’s First Resolutions,” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 23. 626 Ibid., 26. 627 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:45, emphasis mine; See also n.80 which gives the context of such a striking metaphor. St Louis de Montfort made “slavery to Jesus and Mary” a significant feature of his 17th century spirituality; see Raja Rao, Thelagathoti J., “The Mystical Experience of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort,” Studies in Spirituality, no. 0 (2007): 183. 628 André Lanfrey, “Research on the Origin of the Most Important Marist Mottos (1815-1852),” Marist Notebooks 35 (May 2017): 76–81. ~ 126 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 time when human trafficking is the new form of slavery, which is about injustice and displacement rather than abandonment to God in freedom. Nonetheless, this expression of Champagnat’s inner experience marked the beginning of his priestly ministry, in which he felt emboldened by the other Marists to take up their intention of forming a society ‘under the auspices of Mary’ for the ‘sole glory of God and in honour of Mary the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ,’629 even if they were not particularly interested in what Champagnat saw to be a vital part of this new society of Mary.

Unlike the prolific writing of Thomas Merton’s inner world, insight into Champagnat’s inner experience of faith can only be gleaned from his prayers and is chiefly evident in his letters to the brothers; it is that spirituality which shapes how he sees the formation of the Brothers. ‘Under the auspices of Mary’ and ‘in honour of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ is not the language of Marists today. Instead, since Vatican II a better theology of Mary’s place in the Church (LG §§52-69; SC §103) has emerged at the level of the Magisterium630 and of theologians,631 where Mary is seen as a young Jewish woman,632 the first disciple (MC §35),633 a widow and mentor to the bourgeoning Church. A theology of Mary for the present era requires the perspective of feminist theologians.634 That knowledge is reflected in the spirituality of Champagnat Marists for this millennium:

Since Marcellin’s time the Church has deepened its appreciation of Mary as First Disciple. Marists therefore have a growing relationship with Mary as our Sister in Faith, a woman with dust on her feet, a woman who was disturbed and puzzled by God, who was challenged to trust and give without knowing all the answers, whose faith life was a journey.635

629 Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 23–26. 630 Pope Paul VI, “Marialis Cultus,” (1974), hereafter MC; Pope John Paul II, “Redemptoris Mater,” (1987), hereafter, RM; Pope Benedict XVI, “Deus Caritas Est,” §§41–42, 2005, hereafter DCE; “Spe Salvi,” (2007), §§49–50; Pope Francis, LS, §§241–42; “Lumen Fidei,” (2013), §§58–60; “Evangelii Gaudium : Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” (2013), §§284–88, hereafter, EG; Amoris Laetitia The Joy of Love: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on Love in the Family (Strathfield, N.S.W: St. Pauls Publications, 2016), §§ 30, 65, 171, 182; hereafter, AL. 631 Brother Emili takes up the mariology of Hans Urs von Balthasar by saying that we are called to be the “Marian face of the Church”; Emili Turu, “He Gave Us the Name of Mary” (FMS General House, Rome, January 2, 2012), 32, accessed November 10, 2018, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/32_1_EN.pdf; Edward T. Oakes and David Moss, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 63–69. 632 Mary Christine Athans, In Quest of the Jewish Mary: The Mother of Jesus in History, Theology and Spirituality e-book ed., (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013), 74-96/179, Adobe PDF. 633 Patrick J. Bearsley, “Mary the Perfect Disciple: A Paradigm for Mariology,” Theological Studies 41, no. 3 (1980): 461–504. 634 Throughout his fifth circular Br Seán draws on the work of Elizabeth Johnson; Seán Sammon, “In Her Arms and In Her Heart: Mary Our Good Mother, Mary Our Source of Renewal” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, May 31, 2009), accessed September 17, 2019, http://champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/31_5_EN.pdf; see also Elizabeth A. Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 2003). 635 Marist Brothers, Water from the Rock: Marist Spirituality Flowing in the Tradition of Marcellin Champagnat (General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2007), 29, accessed April 4, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/documenti_maristi/AcquaRoccia_EN.pdf, hereafter, WfR. ~ 127 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Seeing the Mother of God in this way can present a real difficulty for several of the global Church’s ecclesial cultures, largely because of the infection of clericalism, aided by the attitudes and presumptions of colonialism, that has afflicted many for centuries. The challenge of adopting such a spiritual outlook of relating to Mary as ‘truly our sister’ is further complicated by certain societal structures in some cultures that are chiefly, or where exaggerated respect for elders (usually men) creates a hierarchical structure. Provided their structures are not weighed down by bureaucracy, a congregation of brothers who choose not to be ordained, has a prophetic task to not only challenge the institutional Church reminding it of Jesus’ dictum (Mt 23:8), but also to stand alongside women, frequently the most vocal and effective agents of change.

A fundamental approach in the formation of interiority Among Champagnat’s priestly duties was the project, initially his alone, but now as an aspiring member of the embryonic Society of Mary, to begin the establishment of a society of Brothers. Entrusting himself and the project to Mary, he began with ‘unrefined material’,636 many of whom lacked any consistent, basic education,637 a number of them not yet twenty years of age;638 nevertheless, they had what Marcellin’s successor, François Rivat (Brother François) named as a ‘spirit of faith.’ What made Champagnat such an attractive character to his younger disciples was his relationship with them. It was his ‘fatherly’ affection for them which was foundational to his approach.639 Champagnat did not leave a systematic programme of formation, neither did he commit to writing such a document, because at the start, there were such needs for brothers to answer the growing number of requests he received from villages beyond LaValla.

An intuitive knowledge of the dispositions necessary in a candidate640 In one seeking to join the fledgling congregation Champagnat required good health, ‘good will and a sincere desire to please God.’641 These were the only conditions, not excluding some

636 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 27. 637 Jean-Felix Tamet, The Memoirs of Little Brother Sylvestre: An Edited Compilation of the Recollections and Reflections of Brother Sylvestre (Jean-Felix Tamet), One of the First of St Marcellin Champagnat’s Little Brothers of Mary, ed. Michael C. Green, trans. Douglas Welsh (Sydney, NSW: Marist Publishing, 2008), 10; hereafter, Memoirs of Sylvestre. 638 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:138–39. 639 Christopher Maney, “Une Tendre Affection: A Question about Interpretation, Inspiration and Motivation,” Marist Notebooks 27 (October 2009): 144. 640 When Marcellin Champagnat founded his group, initially within the embryonic Society of Mary, he gave them the name, ‘Brothers of Mary.’ Once recognised by Rome in 1863 they were given the name Fratres Maristae a Scholis – hence the suffix, FMS, to a brother's name (Marist Brothers of the Schools), but they are presently more commonly known as Marist Brothers; Champagnat, Letters, 1:592. 641 Letters, 1:64, Doc.23. ~ 128 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 basic material dimensions.642 That ‘sincere desire’ is the language of Marcellin in discerning a vocational call is significant. Thomas Merton also sought an answer to the same question of desire in his direct question about why a postulant or novice had come to the monastery. For Marcellin, the question of desire was key to any commitment to being a Brother of Mary. He could excuse brothers from following the rule to the letter; Champagnat was more interested in their desire to grow in intimacy with Jesus. He was not expecting from them anything less than what he demanded of himself. The desire to align his desire with the desire of God, in deepening his friendship with Christ, was the foundation of his own vocational choice, as he grew into his identity (and not simply his role) of being priest and founder.643 Marcellin’s growing conviction that he was indeed founder of the Brothers of Mary was confirmed in their choice of him as superior over Courveille, when Marcellin was first very ill and recuperating.644

Desire was insufficient by itself. It had to be the desire of the heart that could put up with trials and offences or humiliation, not for their own sakes, but in order to align himself more closely to God’s desire. The heart’s desire is more than mere wanting. Marcellin’s tests of Br Sylvestre, not completed before Champagnat’s death, bear out how seriously he considered the authenticity of such desire for God, in the choice of a life vocation. One sign of authentic desire was ‘good will,’ a simplicity of heart which disposed a young man to a readiness for religious life for which genuineness is key to openness of heart. The sincerity of an open-hearted approach to life indicates a certain fervour and readiness to grow in faith, where authentic desire is ‘tested,’ according to Brother Sylvestre.645 It can be assumed that such sincerity is an indication that the candidate takes faith seriously, though light-heartedly. It is openness of heart and mind that readies a person for cooperation with grace and encounter with God.646 True desire of the heart leads to humility which was expressed at a critical point in Marcellin’s life by his obedience to renounce his position as founding superior of the brothers when Colin became Superior of the Society of Mary.647 His humility indicated his readiness to give way in ‘holy indifference’ to conform to God’s desires rather than his own; he was prepared to let go of his own will, aware that possibly it was not the will of God. Such a readiness to truly seek God’s will means he was ready to ‘embrace [his] own

642 Ibid., 1:124-127, Doc.55; but his letter to Jean-Claude Colin lists a series of questions and statements that require information about any candidate applying to the Brothers of Mary, information a formator needs to know. 643 Communication with Marist historian, Michael Green, (November 3, 2019). 644 Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 62. 645 Ibid., 123. 646 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 29–30. 647 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:133. ~ 129 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment frailty and vulnerable humanity’ submitting humbly to the awe and reverence for the mysterious incomprehensibility of God’s will.648

The formator as one who engenders affective, authentic friendship

Authenticity makes a significant impact on candidates and engenders respect and admiration. The genuinely authentic guide does not seek affection from those for whom he is responsible. Because Marcellin’s basic attitudes were of ‘fatherly’ concern and understanding, friendship and love expressed in making himself all things to each and every one (1 Cor 9:22), the brothers’ regard for him was not simply one of admiration but also of affection.649 Champagnat’s affection for the brothers was evident in his letters,650 but also in the confidence he placed in certain of the brothers especially those who had been with him from the beginning.651 A letter to a Br Barthélemy suffices to illustrate Marcellin’s solicitude and care:

You should have no doubt that that, because of the beautiful name of father which you give me, I consider you all as my dear children in Jesus and Mary and carry you all with affection in my heart. I am very well aware of all the problems … Take good care of yourself, so that you can carry out your difficult duties well … How much good you can do, dear friend! I have many other things to tell you; I hope I will be able to tell them to you in person very shortly. I leave…you in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.652 They are such good places! I have the honour to be your devoted father in Jesus and…653 Any real authority formators have comes not from their appointment, but from their simple relationships with people, especially with those they care for. This is the kind of authentic authority that engenders affection.654 The tenderness Champagnat showed towards others was also more than words and expressed in practical action and thoughtfulness.655 Marcellin’s affection for his brothers as well as for family, friends and parishioners was genuinely encouraging.656 He expected

648 Micheál Loughnane, “Fashioning a Dialogical Vision for Catholic Education through Analysis, Critique and Contemporisation of Paulo Freire’s Education as the Practice of Freedom” (Melbourne College of Divinity, 2008), 32. 649 Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 86. 650 Furet, Life, 426; André Lanfrey, “The Affective Life of Marcellin Champagnat,” Marist Notebooks 6 (December 1994): 75. 651 François Rivat, Jean-Baptiste Furet and Louis-Marie Labrosse formed the first leadership team after the death of Champagnat, while Louis Audras and Bonaventure Pascal were appointed novice masters for ten and sixteen years consecutively; see Jean-Baptiste Furet and Alain Delorme, Our First Brothers: Marvellous Companions of Marcellin (General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2009), 49–65, 89–109, 176–92, 18-30, 149–62, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/livros_recebidos/PremierFreres_EN.pdf. 652 If using these expressions today, it would be more correct to speak of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 653 Champagnat, Letters, 1:55–56, Doc. 19. 654 Furet, Life, 426, n.2. 655 Ibid., 428–29. 656 Lanfrey, “The Affective Life of Marcellin Champagnat,” 74–76. ~ 130 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 that community leaders (Brothers Director) in the different establishments to be equally encouraging. However, such affection and tenderness in the school communities was not always what younger men remembered, not then, nor in the second half of the 20th century.657 What makes authenticity all the more important, as Champagnat reminded his brothers who were Directors,658 is that one who is truly authentic begets authenticity in others, in attitude and action.659

Evident also in this letter is Champagnat’s understanding of the relationship Mary has with Jesus. In the Sulpician tradition that formed him the relationship he has with Jesus and Mary is one of trust and affection that overflows to the brothers in a practical and compassionate way: ‘Take care of yourself’, reflecting the common sense of Francis de Sales, with a note of positive encouragement.660 Marcellin considered encouragement to be the most important element in the formation of the young brother (and the children they in turn would teach), and consequently its impact on the brother’s interiority in the faith that knows God is love.661

The brothers knew that Champagnat loved them; they did not have to prove themselves worthy. Marcellin was intent on nurturing them into full adulthood as brothers of Mary who were awake to their inner experiences in faith and could learn by reflecting on those experiences. The kind of love a son has for a good father is such that the son ‘fears’ the father; this is the sort of affection and esteem Brother Sylvestre has for the founder. He knew well he was loved by Champagnat and his ‘fear’ was his own fear of disappointing the one who loved and esteemed him.662

Br François as one whose interior life is expressed outwardly Champagnat’s successor was no less an encourager nurturing the brothers, as ‘father and mother’663 to them and who, despite being favoured by Marcellin to lead the brothers, was no clone of the Founder. Champagnat had no intention of forming brothers modelled on himself, ‘other Champagnats’ as it were, which is testimony to the quality of the formator when one can foster the growth and development of those in one’s care to be the best that only they can be. Br François

657 See n.744 below. 658 ‘Director’ at least up until the 1970s included the roles of ‘Superior’ of the community and principal or headmaster of the school. The ministry a brother exercises is distinct from his role in the community. 659 Furet, ALS, 34–35. 660 In Champagnat’s library were de Sales’ Introduction à la vie dévote and Jean-Pierre Camus’s Esprit de St François de Sales, see Gibson, Appendix 3, 138. 661 Furet, ALS, 188-200. 662 Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 90. 663 Gabriel Rivat, “To a Brother Director of a Novitiate,” January 7, 1857, Doc. 1627, Archives of the Marist Brothers (hereafter, AFM). ~ 131 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment similarly encouraged those men who were chosen as formators. In a letter to a Master of Novices, François assures him that God will give the grace and strength to take up the task he has accepted in obedience. He writes:

A master of novices must be a man of God and a man of prayer. … Place lovingly before God your needs and all the needs of those under your charge; expect everything from God and do what you can. He will help you do what you cannot. Begin by winning the hearts of the novices in showing interest and dedication to them; … Have a special care for them … with an attentive and considerate charity. … Always begin by showing kindness and putting it into practice. Rough methods should be avoided … Warnings tempered by kindness inspire gratitude towards the person who offers them and fosters an efficacious desire to improve.664 In suggesting that one can expect everything from a loving God, there is an echo of a saying attributed to Ignatius Loyola, which suggests François was familiar with the text.665 The compassion required in ‘winning the hearts’ is nonetheless flavoured with common sense as he adds:

But kindness by itself does not suffice; it needs to be accompanied by a wise firmness. It is loving the patient rather than causing pain which effects his cure. God, the best of fathers, often employs the harshest sanctions for those he loves and wishes to save. Begin again, seek out, urge, awaken the cowardly and the refractory … Act always with the prudence that speaks to the heart.666 In giving some practical advice on how to form young men as brothers, François is also contributing to the formator’s interior life, planting the seed of a more authentic interiority immersed in faith that spills out into genuine love – speaking to the heart – for those in the formator’s care. In a letter addressed to yet another Master of novices, he lists the attitudinal dispositions required of a brother given this task of forming younger brothers. François introduces the list by reminding the formator that God uses the ‘weakest of instruments to perform great works.’ The first of these dispositions is humility. He subtitles the virtue as ‘mistrust of oneself’ as he explains:

You should acknowledge before God your poverty, your weakness, your incapacity; you must admit your failings, the virtues you lack, to keep you at all times in a state of humility which attracts God’s grace and avoid vanity and presumption which drives away grace. For God rejects the proud and grants his grace to the humble.667

664 Rivat, “Letter to a Master of Novices” (General House, Rome, n.d.), Doc. 1042, AFM. 665 Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2019), para. 2834. 666 Rivat, Doc. 1042, AFM. 667 Rivat, “Letter to Another Master of Novices” (General House, Rome, n.d.), Doc. 1449, AFM. ~ 132 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

It is possible that François was surer of himself than some of his commentators suggest.668 It is conceivable that, like Champagnat, he had to battle pride, which explains his mistrust of himself and his emphasis on humility as being the foundation stone of all other characteristics, because it turns pride into total loving trust in God, keeping at bay the hindrance of any self-glorification (1 Cor 1:27-29), what Merton would refer to as the false self.

The second disposition is the other side of humility: to ‘be imbued with a great trust in God’ which is a total and absolute surrender to God’s will; such an attitude leads to a better grasp of reality. Thirdly, it goes hand in hand with ‘continual recourse to God’ in a spirit of prayer which involves one confiding to God all one’s needs and those of the novices. Fourth, ‘a great love of Our Lord’ finds expression in meditating on Christ’s life and passion so that one becomes filled with Christ’s spirit, imitating Jesus, relishing his Presence in the Eucharist, filled the yearning to make Jesus known and loved.669

A fifth attitude that should be found in a formator is to have ‘a tender and filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin’ which, by his own example, would inspire those in his care as he entrusts them ceaselessly to the Mother of God.670 That same tenderness is part of the sixth disposition of affection, ‘kindness, a paternal and maternal solicitude for all the novices’ entrusted to the formator. That responsibility requires one ‘to be sympathetic to their weakness, to feel their pain and anxiety … without ever being repulsed by the faults and imperfections which [one] observes’ in those for whom one cares. François then sums up his list by adding as the seventh, ‘a great spirit

668 Juan Miguel Anaya Torres, “A Re-Examination of the Unity of the Leadership of Brothers François, Louis-Marie & Jean-Baptiste,” Marist Notebooks 36 (May 2018): 60–71. The author traces the reasons for Br François’ resignation. Even late in the 20th century, regard among the brothers for François was muted. The author disputes the dismissive criticisms of Br Avit or Jean-Baptiste’s relegation of François to the hidden life (68) or of Louis-Marie's praise of Jean-Baptiste (who had just died) as 'second founder' (67) with no mention of François (who was still alive). François was concerned about the health of the Institute, interpreted by his critics as his own health; in fact, he outlived both Louis-Marie and Jean-Baptiste. He was concerned, suggests André Lanfrey, by the internal problems among which was the formation of the brothers because too many were insufficiently motivated (61); when Louis-Marie took charge, first as vicar with all the authority of a superior general and, contrary to the thinking of both François and Jean-Baptiste, he promoted boarding schools to the neglect of the spiritual formation of the brothers. François was concerned with all these tensions and aware that their administration model was insufficient to deal with the issues arising; he wished to change the model of governance, creating a better way to administer a rapidly expanding Institute. His resignation made possible an increase in the number of councillors (72). His actions, perhaps, suggest a man so imbued with humility and trust in God that he could creatively think beyond the status quo and focus in his remaining years on forming the interiority of the brothers (71). 669 Rivat, “Doc. 1449,” AFM. 670 Both François and Marcellin had a strong bond with their mothers, which undoubtedly influenced their inner experiences of faith, with a mysticism through the mirror of the 'Good Mother' ; François was consecrated to the Blessed Virgin by his mother; Marcellin’s mother showed him a special affection, supporting him by a pilgrimage to La Louvesc after his first troubled year at the seminary, Furet, Life, 64–65; Sammon, A Heart That Knew No Bounds, 16. ~ 133 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment of joy which allows you to see everything as part of God’s plan in the light of faith,’ which reflects Col 3:14. If these are the inner dispositions of a brother entrusted with the formation of new brothers, then the formator’s inner life will be reflected in the way he exemplifies by word and example the rich interiority such a formator acquires in faith.671

The formator as one who lives interiority in all its phases

Champagnat’s very natural and affective way with others was heart centred. To notice the movements of one’s heart is to name, rather than to ignore, one’s feelings, while keeping heart and mind connected. On one level, Champagnat’s friendly, welcoming and encouraging approach promoted a ‘family’ atmosphere among the brothers in community,672 (priests included in this early stage of Champagnat’s vision),673 and at the same time how they were to be brother to the young people in their care.674 The inner joy of knowing that a project was going well did not mean that his inner life was untroubled or that his inner self was not tested: the grief of failure when his brother-in-law doubted that priesthood was his calling;675 his near dismissal from the seminary;676 the death of his best friend Duplay, at the seminary,677 and the lack of confidence some of his clerical contemporaries had in him as a founder.678 There was the vocation crisis in 1822; the Courveille affair in 1826;679 when he was abandoned by the two priests who had been assisting him and throughout the venture but who had had little regard for his vision of the Society of Mary.

671 Rivat, “Doc. 1449,” AFM. 672 Marist Brothers, WfR, 30–33. 673 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:121, 128. This did not last for long however, when a Fr Séon wanted to align himself with the Society of Mary as priests, which marked the re-launch of the priests’ branch. However, Frs Matricon and Besson, who arrived in the mid-1830s stayed serving the Brothers as chaplains for over thirty years; see Lanfrey, “A New Document,” 75–76, 80. 674 International Marist Education Commission, “In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat: A Vision for Marist Education Today” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, August 15, 1998), §107, accessed September 17, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/missaoEducativaMarista_EN.pdf. 675 Furet, Life, 11; Sammon, A Heart That Knew No Bounds, 15. 676 Sammon, A Heart That Knew No Bounds, 17. 677 Ibid., 18. 678 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 23; Alain Delorme has combined two different works of Br Jean-Baptiste’s to compile this collection: the Life published in 1856 and Bibliographies des Quelques Frères (BQF) published in 1868. The brief biographies represent the concerns of leadership at the time about the lack of motivation among not a few brothers as well as departures from the Congregation. At a time of extraordinary growth there was a danger of present and future brothers losing 'the fervour of the first disciples of Marcellin' (26). The 1868 publication provided insights into the spiritual lives of the first companions of Marcellin, among whom were François, Louis, and Bonaventure, distinguished by their spirit of prayer and union with Christ. 679 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:112–14. ~ 134 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

Champagnat’s ‘tearful letter’680 to the Vicar-General of the archdiocese of Lyon reveals his state of mind, interpreting the event in his experience of struggling in faith:

Finally, God in his mercy, and perhaps in his justice, restored me to health. I reassured my children; I told them not to be afraid, that I would share all their misfortunes and share the last piece of bread with them … I could see that neither one nor the other had any fatherly feelings towards my young men. On the other hand, I have absolutely no complaints against the parish priest of Notre-Dame,681 whose behavior in our house was always edifying. Though I found myself alone after the withdrawal of Fr Courveille and the departure of Fr Terraillon, Mary did not abandon us.682 We are gradually paying our debts, and other confrères have replaced the first ones… Mary is helping us and that is enough.683 Champagnat’s use of ‘fatherly’ is in contrast to the kind of priest who made ‘plenty of rules.’684 This letter reveals two dimensions of what Champagnat considers to be ‘family spirit.’ Firstly, it expresses a ‘fatherly’ affection for the brothers, for children and young people. Voiced this way, it means a kind of ‘soft’ leadership also expressed in his first circular to the brothers for 1836:

Our heart loves to remember you each day and to present you all to the Lord at the holy altar; but today we cannot resist the pleasant satisfaction of expressing to you our affectionate feelings, and of showing you our fatherly affection. Cherished and well-beloved, you are constantly the object of our loving concern.685 Champagnat’s own experience of the presence of God was as strong as his presence and concern to be there for the brothers. The second dimension evident in Champagnat’s ‘crisis’ letter is the motherly care of Mary whose help is sufficient because she is so closely united with her Son. In the same circular, Champagnat gives voice to his own inner experiential theology in a way that reflects the mysticism of the ordinary:

All our desires and all our wishes are for your happiness … this happiness is not the kind the world looks for and which it thinks it can find in material possessions. We wish and desire for you goods which are more solid and real. To serve God with fervour … to work every day to detach our heart from creatures in order to give it to Jesus and Mary, to open it to all the movements of grace. That is what is really desirable… Yes, our very dear brothers, religious and children of Mary, your glory should be to imitate and follow Jesus Christ…686

680 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 32. 681 This post was occupied by Terraillon; Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:114, n.249. 682 Ibid., 1:114; Courveille was dismissed by Champagnat due to scandal and Terraillon went to the diocese of Belley to join Jean-Claude Colin where the Society of Mary, yet unofficial, had its base. 683 Champagnat, Letters, 1:76. 684 Lanfrey, “A New Document,” 81; the same priest (Pompallier) later as vicar apostolic of New Zealand, insisted the brother with him lay aside his habit (soutane, rabat and crucifix) to ensure the people were not confused about the 'greater' status of the cleric; see Clisby, Far Distant Shores, 42–43. 685 Champagnat, Letters, 1:144. 686 Champagnat, Letters, 1:144; cf. St Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, trans. Henry B. Mackey, e-book. (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2012), Bk VII: 9; see also the translator’s Introduction: “a loving detachment and liberty of spirit, with a readiness to follow every slightest indication of God’s will.” ~ 135 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Essential to family spirit is a detachment that focuses on an openness to grace, personalized in the relationship between Jesus and Mary, that was drawn from the Scriptures, Tradition, and the devotional means of the time. Brothers similarly were to have that detached, yet intimate relationship with both Jesus and Mary, as well as with one another. If Jesus Christ is the ‘divine model’ for each brother, Champagnat wishes each to likewise have a deep affection for children, as he himself did, so that as teachers brothers become formators of faith, filled with ‘holy zeal,’ feeding them ‘the spiritual bread of religion’ at the level of the heart as much as the intellect.

It is Champagnat’s own relationship with his men that reflects his inner experience of being ‘seized’ by God’s love for him (C&S §2). Champagnat enjoyed spending time with people and was a good listener;687 his letters to the brothers are full of affection, wanting the best for them.688 If this was his manner with those he loved, it is likely that his own faith relationship with the persons of Jesus and Mary came from an encounter he remembered, that he re-membered or relived on a daily basis in his prayer and meditation.689 It is not enough, however, to imitate the ‘divine model’ or even to follow him. Rather, to be ‘seized’ by the love of God, is to begin to know what it is to be ‘Christified’, to become Christ or to be divinized; such a way of ‘being’ engenders a passion for God and for others who, in a Paul-like soul (Gal 2:20), are seen as other Christs. Authentic enthusiasm (rather than ‘zeal’ which has the ring of fanaticism) becomes characteristic of a truly integrated Christian through a daily fidelity690 that keeps the ‘exact observance of the rule.’691 This latter phrase implied a list of precepts and prohibitions, like the fear- and anxiety- producing rules and rubrics of pre-Vatican II Catholicism which led some brothers to scrupulosity and lack of mental well-being; a result in no way redolent of the interiority originating from the Founder, and neither intended by nor radiating from François.

To speak of a religious community as ‘family’ in the 21st century is not without difficulty. Sociologically, there is a momentous shift in understanding the concept of family, especially in so-called ‘Western’ or post-modern cultures; what has hitherto been considered as the two- or occasionally three-generational ‘nuclear’ family continues to undergo changes in perception. However, a religious community is not one of parents to children, but one of adults, in which the vow of obedience is about mutual listening for the voice of God through the particular

687 Sammon, “In Her Arms and Heart,” 29. 688 Christopher Maney, “Une Tendre Affection: A Question about Interpretation, Inspiration and Motivation,” 140–45. 689 Champagnat, Letters, 1:350. 690 Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, 123, Pt 3: XXXV. 691 Champagnat, Letters, 1:145. ~ 136 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 community’s charism and in union with the Church. For Marist Brothers, ‘family spirit’ is an idealised term connoting the simplicity, humility and ordinariness of life in a united group.692 In his Spiritual Testament, Champagnat later draws on the example of the first Christians as the model for brothers living as one, being of one mind and heart.693

While the New Year circular of January 1836 is framed in a 19th century spirituality, its focal point is centred on the intimate union between Jesus and Mary, no longer as theocentric as the Sulpician approach: not the creature before the grandeur of a demanding God, or even more gently, that of a servant to a benevolent master.694 Essentially this early Marist spirituality is one that is Christological, steeped in the Gospel of John. Like the very practical, yet metaphorical spirituality of de Sales, the spirituality of the early Brothers of Mary was profoundly Marial and apostolic: apostolic, because Champagnat was forming young men who quickly engaged in ministry among the surrounding communes to which he entrusted them. It meant his relying on the Brother Directors (occasionally not much older than their young recruits), to continue the formation of the younger men with affection and encouragement in a spirituality for mission. Embedded in Champagnat’s circular is the germ of a Trinitarian theology which is the origin, together with the family of Nazareth as exemplars, for their community life in ministry. That Trinitarian ground is more fully developed in the in the 1986 Constitutions.695

as one who encourages fervour and devotion Because Champagnat was so firmly planted in the authenticity of life, he expected the same kind of commitment to their developing self-awareness in his candidates through attention to their own inner experience-in-faith. He encouraged them to not only to grow in the spiritual life but in the demands of community life and mission, in whatever ministry in which they were engaged.696

Encouragement, however, is insufficient as a means of forming a person for interiority in religious life or, for that matter, for any life of love and ministry. Champagnat was skilled in the art of correction, backed as it was by the affection he had for the young men,697 and while the younger ones tried the patience of some of the older brothers,698 Champagnat was ever ready to

692 Marist Brothers, WfR, §§30–32. 693 Marist Brothers, C&S, 163–68. 694 Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 36; ibid., 32. 695 Marist Brothers, C&S, §47. 696 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 34. 697 Ibid., 34–35. 698 Michael Green notes in his introduction to Sylvestre’s memoirs that “old” brothers were at most in their thirties when Champagnat was alive; see Memoirs of Sylvestre, 13. ~ 137 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment excuse, though not without correction or testing the young recruits.699 In Brother Sylvestre’s account of Marcellin’s patience with him, it is clear that one of the skills in the art of correction was not only to provide the brother with an opportunity to correct a fault, but to do so with humour, even if it meant also putting the offender on trial, or with certain conditions. Sylvestre’s tests lasted for some years; he did not make perpetual profession until after Champagnat had died.700 Even so, there were times when Champagnat had to be unequivocal in cases of scandal, either among the young men or in one of his colleagues.701

as one who is a future-focused encourager Champagnat had an eye for the future, not just of the burgeoning Institute, but of each individual Brother. The foundation of any formation for interiority, any enrichment of inner experience was the relationship that the founder established with each and every brother. However, although Champagnat was founder and chief formator, it was also the dynamic of the group that contributed to the formation for interiority. Marcellin’s relationship with them was the basis of their developing interiority in faith; there was a certain equality to the mentoring relationship, which fostered the inner life of the younger men and their own spirit of faith, their ways of prayer and devotion, as well as all other aspects of their lives. By his careful selection of brothers to lead projects and communities, he wanted the younger men to grow in ‘the religious spirit,’702 particularly in their first years of active ministry, a decisive stage in the person’s insertion into a Marist apostolic spirituality.

Champagnat was particular about his choice of novice masters; he chose men of prayer who could impart gospel values and especially to lead young people to a love for Jesus and Mary, men thoroughly imbued with what his successor called the ‘spirit of faith.’ It was that ‘spirit of faith’ that enriched the inner life of brothers; those whose life was directed by such interiority were best suited as novice masters. Marcellin asked Br Louis Audras, one of the first young men to enter the house at LaValla, to become novice master, a position he held for ten years. At a time when the first brothers were making and signing a promise of fidelity, Louis held back, despite the encouragement of his contemporaries as well as that of Champagnat.703 However, Champagnat’s intuition that he would later sign, proved to be right because the young Louis was ‘obedient and

699 Ibid., 101–03; Furet, ALS, 26–37. 700 Ibid., 12, see also n.4. 701 Furet, Life, 146. 702 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 39. 703 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 22. ~ 138 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

… imbued with religious spirit’ and therefore considered most fitting ‘to direct the Novitiate House and to instil into the young Brothers, the spirit of the Institute.’704 As novice master he loved his work and his education of the novices was down-to-earth in a way that was readily seen in the peace and harmony of the novitiate community by those who visited.705

Champagnat as the ‘textual’ source of interiority

If the spirituality of founders are the principal source or ‘text’ from which they form their disciples, then Champagnat’s spirituality and teaching can be centred around three axes: (1) an almost tangible sense of the presence of God and his absolute confidence and trust in a loving God; (2) a devotion to the Eucharist,706 principally in its celebration and as the source of love, hope and unifying communion;707 and (3) a filial devotion to Mary, considered as the Institute’s first Superior, the Good Mother who was their protection. It would be more accurate to speak of his relationship with Mary, rather than his ‘devotion’ even if there were prayers he introduced to the brothers. That relationship was to be ‘a sharing in Mary’s work of bringing Christ-life to birth and being with the Church as it came to be born.’708 The relationship Marcellin intended for his men two hundred years ago is expressed in the third millennium as

… our vision of God is also enriched by a feminine point of view. We realize that God’s life-giving power is maternal as well as paternal, and understand that what is boundlessly powerful is God’s love, nothing can stop God from loving us. Similarly, like a mother, God’s presence everywhere is full of care and tenderness. The richness of this new perspective is becoming more apparent in the Church itself: the call to promote its Marian face is more and more present.709 What links these three axes is humility for whom Miriam of Nazareth is reference and model for brothers who strive to become ‘little prophets who live with simplicity’710 and not without constant reference to ‘that noble Virgin and of her hidden life.’711

704 Furet, Life, 91; The phrase “spirit of the Institute” is similar in meaning to what Br François intended by “the spirit of faith” and carries the same meaning, beyond any particular devotional practice, as “Marist Spirituality” is intended today in the footsteps of Marcellin and his early brother companions. 705 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 24. 706 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 55. 707 Champagnat, Letters, 1:449–50, Doc. 249. 708 Marist Brothers, WfR, 25, §§11, 26. 709 Marist Brothers, “RL,” §39. 710 Johann Baptist Metz, quoted in Turu, “He Gave Us the Name of Mary,” 75. 711 Furet, Life, xiv; humility, simplicity and modesty are associated with the image of three violets; see also Sammon, “In Her Arms and Heart,” 14, 54, in the 1837 Rule, Champagnat included a special prayer to the Mother of God in which petitioners entrusted themselves to her completely, leaving behind their own fears and anxieties. ~ 139 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Instead of the annihilation of the self in the Bérullian tradition, where the Sulpician beauty and grandeur of God almost nullified the human being, Champagnat’s sense of himself in relationship with Jesus and Mary, is of one who is well aware of his limitations. His self-awareness leads him to distrust what, much later, Merton would call the ‘false self.’ Marcellin held that humility among the virtues was like gold among the metals, and so the most basic of the virtues.712 It is probable that Marcellin gave humility such emphasis because he was aware that pride was his greatest flaw.713 It was not that he sought to negate himself, but to ensure that he was moving closer to God’s dream for him and for the world, becoming one with God in love. After the ordeal of 1826, the mounting debt and the Courveille affair, his trust in God was severely tested. It is after this dark night of the soul that he relies more on God: verses of Ps 127 – unless the Lord builds the house – and phrases, ‘You know, Lord’ appear in the margins of his notebooks.

The Institute documents of the last twenty years refer to humility and simplicity, with less explication of ‘modesty,’ perhaps because of its limited association with appropriate relationships in terms of dress and decorum. However, ‘humility, simplicity and modesty,’ traditionally linked with the image of violets,714 do reflect how a Marist spirituality is lived out in relationships: humility as a profound respect for others; transparent honesty and genuineness as simplicity; and the desire to allow those with whom and for whom one lives and works, to express themselves and their talents, which is modesty, putting others forward while stepping back.715 Incarnating these attitudes and the ‘little virtues’716 that accompany them, mark Champagnat’s shift pastorally and spiritually and, consequently, a feature of early Marist spirituality. It is, therefore, a practical spirituality with more affinity to the approach of Francis de Sales, a down-to-earth spirituality which honours the holiness of the ordinary.717 In the various drafts of the first Rule, Champagnat borrows from both Ignatius of Loyola718 and Introduction to the Devout Life,719 which points to

712 Furet, Life, 401; Part 2, Ch.12 is titled “The humility of Father Champagnat,” 395-404. 713 Ibid., 396–97. 714 Sophie Johnson, “Meaning of Violet Flowers | Garden Guides,” article, Flowers, last modified September 21, 2017, accessed September 20, 2019, https://www.gardenguides.com/82340-meaning-violet- flowers.html. 715 Marist Brothers, “Marist News,” Weekly Newsletter, August 28, 2018, accessed September 18, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/NM/pdf/539_EN.pdf. 716 Furet, ALS, 234–42; 21st century expressions are listed as: attentive listening, enlightening dialogue, will service, availability without counting the cost, gentleness, tolerance, courtesy, mutual support, silence, prayer and meditation; see Marist Brothers, WfR, 108. 717 Paul Creevey, “Forged in the Furnace of God’s Love: The Influence of St Francis de Sales on the Spirituality of St Marcellin Champagnat,” Marist Notebooks 37 (May 2019): 14. 718 Furet, Life, 191, n.33; the letter which accompanied the Rule had also a letter of St Ignatius on obedience; Champagnat, Letters, 1:187–88. 719 Manuel Mesonero Sanchez, “How a Founder Is Forged? (Part 2): The Formation of Marcellin the in the Major Seminary,” Marist Notebooks 37 (May 2019): 31, n.46. ~ 140 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 the growing mystical dimension of Champagnat’s inner experience, an interiority grounded in love.720

An interiority grounded in love Br Jean-Baptiste illustrates the interior movement toward love of God in a conversational episode between Marcellin and Br Louis:

One day [Louis] asked Father Champagnat if he could recommend a book about the love of God. ‘Here’s an excellent one,’ Father Champagnat replied, taking from his bookcase the Treatise on the Love of God by Saint Francis de Sales. ‘Take it,’ he added, ‘read and reflect well on this work. It will teach you to love God.’ Sometime after, Brother Louis expressed his enthusiasm to the good Father and his desire to make the book known and read by all Christians. The Founder declared to him that God had given simple believers three books which preached His love better than could the saintly bishop of Geneva. “You see, Brother Louis, the first three preachers of the love of God are the Blessed Virgin, the Crucifix and the church bell. Yet are not these three before our eyes to recall the mysteries of the Incarnation, of the Redemption and of the Eucharist, the three great marks of the love of God?” Brother Jean-Baptiste describes in more detail the conversation of the Father with his spiritual son and concludes with the following statement. “This teaching of the venerated Father was extremely useful to Brother Louis” (BQF p. 21). By natural inclination, he was drawn to the love of Jesus.721 There are two things to note in this exchange: that Louis loved his work of formation very probably meant he enjoyed its rewards and challenges; that he asked Champagnat for something on the love of God indicates the level of trust he placed in the Founder. It is likely that in his work as novice master, he himself was deepening his inner life of faith, developing an interiority that would take him beyond the requirements of the Rule.722

Secondly, Marcellin’s shift from the very first ‘preachers’ of God’s love – the Mother of God, the Crucifix and the church bell – to the more theological mysteries of the Incarnation, the Redemption and the Eucharist illustrate his own inner life of faith, a faith that became more and more centred on Christ. Those three foci became a constant part of the tradition of the Brothers of Mary and are included in the Constitutions over a century later expressed as ‘the Crib, the Cross, and the Altar.723 These were the hinges of the interiority of Champagnat and these early brothers, and in documents since, they continue to be so because Christ is at the centre of each of the mysteries.724 Prior to Vatican II, Catholics were not encouraged to be familiar with the Scriptures,

720 Manuel Mesonero Sanchez, “From Asceticism to Mysticism: The Life of Marcellin Champagnat,” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 15–20. 721 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 24–25. 722 Ibid., 28. 723 Furet, ALS, 58–61; Marist Brothers, C&S, §7. 724 Marist Brothers, WfR, §§20–24. ~ 141 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment and many exercised a spirituality that was very devotional. However, the very first Scriptures, of which Champagnat and his men had an intuitive sense in how they constructed buildings, grew gardens and orchards, are the Scriptures of the Earth. Pope Francis has made the world acutely aware of this dimension of a spirituality of interiority in the present century, ‘whereby the effects of [Christians’] encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience’ (LS §217). The first three places act as a kind of home base of faith in the new Rule for Marist Brothers approved by the 22nd General Chapter (RL §24),725 with further emphases on embracing the Marist heritage (§25), embodying the Word (§29) in the holiness of the ordinary (§30), living the mystical life as Mary did (§§27-28), and sharing that prophetic life with others at local and global levels (§§31- 33).726

Champagnat returned time and again to the theme of prayer and the inner life of the brothers. As illustrated in the exchange above, Marcellin by then in his mid-thirties had moved towards a gentler spirituality taking inspiration from Francis de Sales and would recommend frequently the practice of the presence of God.727 It is a practice Marcellin enjoins upon the brothers, a ‘desire with all [his] soul,’ in his spiritual testament.728 Champagnat’s insistent mention of the practice is supported by Brother Jean-Baptiste’s rigorist recall of the exhortation in which bringing to mind the thought that ‘God sees me’ would banish any temptation.729 At that time when France was still recovering from the extremes of Jansenism, and even still in the present century, that brief sentence, ‘God sees me,’ could have had the ring of judgment from an image of God seen to be a demanding accountant, giving rise in one to feelings of guilt, shame or fear.730 Yet, the expression can be considered otherwise, since there are different ways of ‘seeing,’ well understood by the mystics: that God looks or gazes with love upon a person as a parent looks upon their sleeping child, evokes a different response on the part of the subject intent on responding to such love. Brother Jean-Baptiste draws on the wisdom of the saints: to have God before one’s eyes (Ezk 9:9), is a way to avoid sin; More dramatically, Teresa of Avila says that to believe God is remote is to

725 Marist Brothers, “RL.” 726 The need for an interiority includes a global vision, much as it did when Champagnat proclaimed the Marist mission ‘to all the dioceses of the world,’ Champagnat, Letters, 1:193, Doc. 93. 727 Furet, Life, 316; cf. de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, 39–42, Pt 2: I & II. 728 Marist Brothers, C&S, 167. 729 Furet, Life, 316–17; Creevey, “Forged in the Furnace of God’s Love: The Influence of St Francis de Sales on the Spirituality of St Marcellin Champagnat,” 14. 730 A pre-Vatican II spirituality with its overemphasis on sin, with fear of hell the consequence, is still noticeable in the islands of Oceania where Catholicism has become part of the culture. ~ 142 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 be a lost soul; remembering the presence of God is a most effective remedy against all kinds of sin. Champagnat suggests to a certain brother that striving to be more recollected and to recall the presence of God keeps the soul from harm.731 ‘Seeing’ could also be interpreted as ‘understanding’ as in John’s Gospel; to imagine and to believe that ‘God understands me’ suggests a much more intimate, and potentially a transfigured love relationship.732

Marcellin may not have been a theological academic,733 but he was, nevertheless, a reader as were Brothers François and Jean-Baptiste. In the circulars of François and the publications of the very cultured Jean-Baptiste,734 their themes are such that they indicate a common source: Champagnat. In his conferences to the brothers during the holiday periods, Champagnat himself drew on sources apart from the Bible, such as The Imitation of Christ,735 and Augustine.736 His conferences also included instructions from the documents of the Brothers of the Christian Schools,737 and his oft-mentioned lessons from the Jesuit Alonso Rodriguez,738 as well as lessons from The Spiritual Combat and The Golden Book (both of which each brother was permitted to have a copy). 739 To these, Champagnat’s first disciples, François and Jean-Baptiste, drew on a broader and current range of mystics and educators in their writings, especially after the death of the founder, during the period 1840 through to 1856. Brother François’s circular on the ‘Spirit of Faith’ is a significant part of that early heritage, which will be put into the context of the present- day situation in the next chapter.

In a previously unpublished reference, Marcellin’s intention for Marist Brothers is clear; Brother Jean-Baptiste puts it into context:

“Teaching class must not be for a Brother just some extra thing he does; teaching catechism, forming children to virtue, having them avoid sin, in a word making them into Christians, these constitute his

731 Furet, Life, 317. 732 Darrell Wayne Estes, “Physical and Ontological Transformation: Metamorphosis and Transfiguration in Old French and Occitan Texts (11th–15th Centuries)” (PhD, Ohio State University, 2017), 3-24; the author argues for the difference between transformation and transfiguration; the former whose Greek origin is metamorphosis (the Latin transformatio) is a series of physical changes in the maturing process or the change of form or nature, either naturally or supernaturally, into something completely different. Transfiguration (Latin transfiguratus) signifies a higher form of transformation indicating a physical change into something better and more beautiful. Transformation indicates a change that cannot be undone, but the latter term is the kind of change that happened for Jesus on Mt Tabor and is associated with Light and purity, dispelling darkness and bringing clarity and beauty. 733 Furet, Life, 285. 734 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:223. 735 Paul Sester, “Champagnat’s Notebooks,” Marist Notebooks 8 (January 1996): 86–87. 736 Ibid., 130. 737 Especially Jean-Baptiste de la Salle’s Conduite des Écoles Chrétiennes; see Danilo L. Farneda, “‘The Teacher’s Guide’: An Historico-Critical Study,” Marist Notebooks 5 (May 1994): 50–51, n.5. 738 Furet, Life, 486, n.32. 739 Ibid., 396, n.7. ~ 143 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

principal and essential function. This is what caused the holy Founder to say about the congregation when a parish did not want the Brothers to take the children for catechism or teach them to pray: “If they don’t want that, then they won’t be getting any Brothers. I would rather see this congregation collapse; it was only set up in order to teach children their religion. This entire community was only established for that and exists only for that; all the rest is just the bait we use to get the children to come” 740 In Marcellin’s mind, the vocation of brother is whole and complete; his ministry is an integral dimension of his spirituality.741 It is clear, then, he did not intend the spirituality of traditionally canonical contemplative orders to be that of the Brothers of Mary. Instead, his brothers were to have a spirituality that was missionary, Marial and apostolic:742 a spirituality that required a trustworthy professionalism as educators743 but firstly an authentic and constant, contemplative search for God in a closely bonded community and communion of shared faith. The delicate balance, nevertheless, has been a challenge for leadership since the brothers first went teaching.

‘You yourselves give them what you have’ (Mk 6:36) The Latin saying of uncertain origin, Nemo dat quod non habet, is apt for Champagnat and for anyone involved in the delicate task of contributing to the formation of interiority in others. ‘No one can give what he or she does not have.’ If a formator lacks the depth of an interior life, if those responsible for contributing to the awakening of the inner self have insufficient knowledge and awareness of their own inner life, then what they give will be at best superficial.

Champagnat and later leadership drew their inspiration from the methods of the Lasallian Christian Brothers of the Schools,744 and the Jesuits but for the rural, poorer villages and towns.745 It is this missionary and apostolic dimension of the spirituality of Marcellin himself and of the Brothers of Mary, that Champagnat saw as an essential aspect and exterior expression of what the inner experience of a brother should be.746 A letter to Brother Barthélemy illustrates several features of Champagnat’s formative technique, which was not so much a technique as the expression of his own lived spirituality encapsulated in the letter:

740 Quoted in Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:223. 741 Furet, Life, 465. 742 Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 40; See also Lanfrey, “Editorial,” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 3–5. 743 ‘Educator’ is a more inclusive word than ‘teacher’ and allows for other ministries related to the field of education and the world of the most at risk children and young people. 744 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:220–21. 745 Ibid., 1:43–44, 54. 746 Ibid., 1:216–17; Champagnat took his inspiration for the kind of brother he wanted from the first chapter of The Practice of Christian Perfection by Alphonse Rodriguez SJ, for priests. Rodriguez saw no distinction between brothers and priests of the Society of Jesus; similarly, Champagnat saw the apostolic ministry and vowed religious life the same way for the Brothers of Mary. ~ 144 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

I was very glad to hear from you and to know that you are in good health. I also know that you have many children in your school; you will consequently have many copies of your virtues, because the children will model themselves on you, and will certainly follow your example. What a wonderful and sublime occupation you have! You are constantly among the very people with whom Jesus Christ was so delighted to be since he expressly forbade his disciples to prevent children from coming to him. And you, dear friend, far from preventing them, are making every effort to lead them to him. What a reception you will have in your turn, from this divine and generous master… Tell your children that Jesus and Mary love them all very much: those who are good because they resemble Jesus Christ, who is infinitely good; those who are not yet good, because they will become so. Tell them that the Blessed Virgin also loves them, because she is mother of all the children…747 By way of exemplifying the Latin dictum Champagnat simply draws on his own spirituality, first paying attention to the human well-being of the brother and his community. That is reinforced by his encouragement and recognition that the brother is of solid virtue and therefore an excellent example to the children he is teaching. It was an encouragement aimed at helping them to be their best selves, instead of some idealized ‘holy religious,’ modelled on some hagiographical saint. The content of Br Barthélemy’s letter is not known, but whatever issue he raised, Champagnat’s response and words of encouragement affirm the brother and remind him of his potential.748

Secondly, Champagnat reminds his reader that his vocation is both ‘wonderful and sublime’ and therefore to be valued because it provides him with the opportunity to be like Jesus; in being close to children he is imitating Jesus and, contrary to the apostles (Lk 18:15), he is drawing them closer to Jesus. It seems to be Champagnat’s gentle and also, subtle way of reminding the brother of his own primary commitment and the childlike trust in God that his own vocation requires. Lastly, and in union with Jesus, Mary has a special place in the evangelization of the brothers, not only as they live that Gospel in community, but in giving the Church a ‘Marian face’749 in their ministry to be father and mother to children and young people, at the same time remembering they are not the parents of the children and young people. More significantly, they are the ‘older brothers’ accompanying children, at the same time developing their own interiority as adults.

Champagnat’s choice of novice masters is a clear indication of how much he wished the brothers to have a rich inner experience-in-faith: a profound interiority. Br Bonaventure (Antoine Pascal) followed Br Louis and was responsible for the education and formation of novices for

747 Champagnat, Letters, 1:48. 748 The editor of the Letters notes the fact that the Institute does not have Barthélemy’s letter to Champagnat. 749 Turu, “He Gave Us the Name of Mary,” 26, 32–39; Br Emili points out that a Church with a 'Marian face' is not the expression the founding brothers used, but, not being part of the hierarchical structure of the Church, the expression does emphasize the prophetic and mystical dimension of the Church in contradistinction, rather than in contradiction, to the equally necessary Petrine model (33-34); the expression nonetheless sums up the original intention of those early Marists committed to renewing the Church. ~ 145 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment nearly twenty years. Like his Founder, Bonaventure placed a high priority on encouragement and affection in the formation of the inner life of his novices:

Do not hesitate to ask me for what you need and to come to me with your worries and troubles. The sweetest of consolations for me is to encourage you, to be of service to you and to help you bear your small crosses. If ever I learn that you have suffered, that you have wanted for something without telling me, that would grieve me deeply.750 From what his biographer writes of him, it can be assumed that Bonaventure paid close attention to his inner experience, noticing and capturing what he heard and saw and deeply reflecting upon it. Not long after his appointment as formator, as Bonaventure was helping a worker making plaster statues of the Virgin, Champagnat suggested that, ‘as is the mould, so is the statue. Well, remember that you are the mould of the brothers, the mould of the entire Congregation, because the brothers will be as you make them, and you will make them as you are.’751 The image remained in Bonaventure’s mind, and was further refined when, in speaking to novices on a customary visit, Champagnat suggested that their novice master was like a gardener tending his plants; being a ‘spiritual gardener’ became for Bonaventure a powerful metaphor that stayed with him.752 He was open to the wisdom he picked up from others also; he was struck by the words of a Jesuit giving a retreat to the brothers. On learning that Bonaventure was novice master, the priest suggested that paying attention to the spirit, the heart, the conscience and the character of novices was important and the four were ‘essential qualities to make a holy religious,’ qualities that Bonaventure reflected upon in his daily examen.753 Those qualities translated for him into ‘attachment to one’s vocation, filial spirit, devotion to one’s Institute, fervour and the spirit of charity towards one’s neighbour.’754 This pre-Vatican II language would hardly ‘win the hearts’ of millennials, and may be better expressed as loving service to one’s ‘family’ of brothers and others, prayerfulness, passionate commitment to living as a Marist (brother or lay) with a willing and listening heart open to all. What Bonaventure remarks about himself a year before his death tells of a person who has come to a point where he is at home with himself, knowing that his inmost self is truly in God, with the heart of a mystic like Francis of Assisi:

“I enjoy journeys because, alone on the roads, I can pray to God aloud and give full reign to the feelings of my soul. I am sometimes so carried away by joy and love that I stop to look at the sky to

750 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 156. 751 Ibid., 153. 752 Ibid., 154. 753 This exercise used to be referred to as “Examination of Conscience,” an ancient Christian practice popularised by Ignatius Loyola and an essential dimension of his Spiritual Exercises which the Marist Brothers' Rule of Life names as 'Review of the Day' thereby losing the tone of an inventory or shopping list of sins, "RL" 30. 754 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 155. ~ 146 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

my heart’s content or to sing the Te Deum, the Magnificat, or the Laudate, to invite all the animals to bless and praise God who is so good, so loving.” If Bonaventure could be said to be a ‘product’ of the kind of formation for interiority that was Champagnat’s approach, then he is a good example of how Marcellin was the kind of formator who wished his men to be their own person. He wished them to have that love for Jesus that marks one out, not only to be in love with God, but eager for the whole world to know God’s love personally and for all creation. Champagnat himself was impressed. Overhearing Bonaventure give a short teaching to his novices, Marcellin was struck by what he heard, expressing his delight and amazement to his council as Jean-Baptiste relates Champagnat’s words:

“Listening to him, one feels that his heart is aflame with the love of God. It is impossible for me to continue my preparation when he speaks. Unwittingly, I catch myself listening to him. I don’t know where he finds the beautiful things which he says to his novices, but I think that those young people are very happy to have such teachings … one is convinced that he says only what he feels and does.”755 That Champagnat could speak so well of one he has mentored, says as much about Champagnat’s sense of reverential awe and wonder for another, as well as his own heart ‘aflame with the love of God.’ The art of the educator/formator, then, is to first notice one’s own inner experience of, and in, faith, and in the ordinary experience of relating to self, others, the world (the sky, the animals) and God.

Educating for interiority

The Latin roots of ‘education’ – educere and educare – have two different meanings which can be complementary, the one meaning to bring forth or lead out, while the other can mean to nourish, nurture or train.756 The delicate task of accompanying which is the main task of a formator, involves providing ‘food’ and a map, enabling a candidate to anticipate the journey ahead; it also means providing support, a compass, so the candidate can begin to take more responsibility for bringing forth, in ever greater self-awareness, their inner self. It therefore meant that Champagnat’s formative approach included essential interpersonal, relational values.

The uniqueness of the person The uniqueness of each person was a feature of Champagnat’s formative style which included a respect for their freedom, even when addressing the brothers as a group.757 His own

755 Ibid., 157. 756 Randall V. Bass and J. W. Good, “Educare and Educere: Is a Balance Possible in the Educational System?,” Educational Forum, The 68, no. 2 (2004): 161–168. 757 Champagnat, Letters, 1:248. ~ 147 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment spirituality and the unity he found in the mutual love of Jesus and Mary seeps through much of his correspondence, especially that addressed to brothers. He considered one of his most important tasks to be the pastoral care of each and every brother; his letters to individual brothers reveal his sensitivity to each. There was something of the divine in Champagnat’s affection and love for the brothers; that is, he loved them all equally, but differently as Brother Sylvestre attests.758 If he taught his brothers that ‘to educate children was to love them and to love them all equally,’ then it could be supposed that this was also how he regarded all Brothers of Mary. One who can do this passes on an image of God as ‘Father’ or ‘Mother,’ without necessarily being either directly conscious of doing so or being intentionally explicit.

Prayer and practice Champagnat urged his brothers to ‘be constantly faithful’ for ‘the devout practice of the presence of God is the soul of prayer, of meditation and of all the virtues.’759 His letters to brothers are replete with phrases such as ‘My dear children in Jesus and Mary’ and he would frequently end them with ‘your very devoted father in Jesus and Mary.’760 Were a founder to use such language today in a world where there is a much better level of education in many, if not most, countries and a greater sense of the equality of all women and men, the followers of such a founder would be few. Leaders who express patronizing and colonial attitudes towards those to whom and for whom they exercise authority only create division and disunity. Given the period in which the Brothers of Mary were founded, the length of time Champagnat had living and working with his first recruits and the magnanimity with which he related to his men, there was nothing false about these forms of address,761 even when men like Brother Sylvestre disagreed with some of the stricter aspects of Champagnat’s approach.762

Marcellin’s letters sometimes reveal a fuller expression of his own mysticism,763 his own spirituality and its underlying spiritual theology:

You are all well aware, or at least you should be, that I love you all very dearly; I wish, I ardently desire, that we love one another as children of the same father, who is God and of the same mother,

758 Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 104. 759 Marist Brothers, C&S, 167. 760 Champagnat, Letters, 1:26, 28. 761 This regard for Champagnat became clear when Courveille tried to exert his authority, Furet, Life, 137–41; and later when Colin suggested a difference between brothers who were teachers and those who did manual work Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:127-28. 762 Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 115; in writing of Champagnat’s regard for reverence in the chapel and for the objects related to it, one has the sense that Sylvestre regarded Champagnat’s attitude as exaggerated. 763 Lanfrey uses the French “mystique” when “mysticism” makes his meaning clearer in English, Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 33. ~ 148 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

who is Holy Church. And lastly, to say it all in one word, Mary is our common Mother; could she look on unconcernedly while we harboured something in our heart against one of those who Mary love, perhaps more than us? Adieu, dear Brother Denis, adieu to all of you in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.764 The familial relationship he had with Mary, often spoken of as ‘Good Mother,’765 led him to complete self-surrender, a letting go of the pride of which he was so conscious in his early resolutions. The humility which he chose to be the distinctive characteristic of the Institute,766 had only meaning in relationship to and with Mary, and therefore in the embodiment of the Word (the Incarnation). She was the one who epitomized what it meant to love Jesus. The sort of love this mother had for her Son meant he could place all his confidence in her. An example of his filial and intimate relationship with Mary is in his prayer of 1822 addressing her directly, when there were few candidates to the infant congregation:

[This community] is your work… It is you who have brought us together, in spite of the opposition of the world, to procure the glory of your divine Son; unless you come to our aid, we shall perish and like a lamp without oil become extinguished. But, if this work perishes, it is not our work that fails; it is yours, since you have done everything for us. We therefore rely on your powerful protection and we shall count on it always.767 Marcellin’s relationship with Mary appears scandalous, telling her if there are no new recruits, that it is her work that has failed, rather than the community’s, because she is the one who has initiated and maintained this venture for the glory of God. This filial, and yet familiar, relationship Champagnat has with Mary, he passes on to his brothers, not without a sense of humour: ‘Get [Mary] on your side; tell her that after you have done all you can, it’s just too bad for her if her affairs don’t go well.’768 To be dismissive of such an approach may well betray a lack of trust in the love of God, or in the personal interest the Mother of God may have in those who bear her name. In a current world-view that pays scant attention to the world of the spirit, or to the communion of saints, a world-view with which indigenous peoples are easily familiar,769 the

764 Champagnat, Letters, 1:311. 765 Ibid., 1:64. 766 Furet, Life, 395–96; Seán Sammon, “In Her Arms and In Her Heart,” 13. 767 Furet, Life, 93. 768 Champagnat, Letters, 1:58. 769 By contrast Indigenous Peoples of the world stand easily in the spirit world in which they see the creative Spirit intimately involved in all that is created, see Four Arrows and Darcia Narvaez, “Reclaiming Our Indigenous Worldview: A More Authentic Baseline for Social/Ecological Justice Work in Education,” n.d., accessed October 28, 2019, https://www3.nd.edu/~dnarvaez/documents/ FourArrowsDarciaNarvaezsubmittedAuthenticbaseline.pdf; see also Henare Tate, He Puna Iti i Te Ao Marama: A Little Spring in the World of Light., Illustrated. (NZ: Libro International, 2014). ~ 149 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment mystical prophetic nature of Brothers of Mary and Lay Marists can challenge such a materialist outlook so swayed by scientism.770

Community as instrument in the formation for interiority A novitiate in that early period of the 1830s was a formation for young men, who were used to working, even if they had left formal education in their teenage years;771 Sylvestre was not yet thirteen when he entered.772 André Lanfrey refers to an integrated programme in which school, novitiate and ongoing formation all came together. In those early years, the novice master formed young men more by his example than by his lessons.773

Formation for a developing interiority of faith that leads to commitment, becomes a challenge for formators, when the desire to please is operative in young recruits. Then, and even decades later, forming sufficient candidates to staff the expanding number of schools led to a necessarily heavy emphasis on training teachers, so that the spirituality of being a Brother of Mary took second place for many. Acquiring professional qualifications were (and still can be) in danger of supplanting spiritual formation,774 thus creating an uneasy balance between the professional demands and the spirituality necessary for the formation of self-transcendence and the journey towards union with God. This was as much a concern for Champagnat then775 as for the brothers who took up his mantle of leadership; it is also no less a concern for those in the service of authority since Vatican II.776

Community, presumed in the expression ‘family spirit,’ is a more than significant factor in a Marist formation of inner experience.777 ‘Devotedness,’ a term common to the era, or

770 Turu, “He Gave Us the Name of Mary”; Sammon, “In Her Arms and Heart.” 771 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:156. 772 By contrast, Pierre Labrosse (who followed Br François, becoming second Superior General) was twenty two, having completed the minor seminary and two years at the major seminary of St Irenaeus before entering the Hermitage in October 1831; Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 176–77. 773 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:156. 774 Ibid., 1:157. 775 Ibid., 1:159. 776 Ibid., 1:271; Superiors from Br Basilio Rueda to Brother Emili Túru shared the same concern for a sound human formation and a deeper spirituality evident in their writings. 777 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 47; Tamet, Memoirs of Sylvestre, 104–05; Lanfrey, History of the Institute, vol. 1:234; Seán Sammon, “A Revolution of the Heart: Marcellin’s Spirituality and a Contemporary Identity for His Little Brothers of Mary” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, June 2003), accessed September 8, 2019, http://champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/31_1_EN.pdf Brother Bernard Blewman (RIP, aged 88, 2016) spoke of seriously considering leaving the congregation in his first two years of life in a community whose ministry was a primary school. He was disgusted with the way he was treated as a young brother, (conversation on Tarawa, Kiribati, 12 September 1998); a kind of jealous or competitive bullying was a feature of community life from some brothers towards younger men when this ~ 150 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 commitment to the community in all its activities was the virtue Champagnat and the early brothers considered as the cornerstone of a Marist religious community. Champagnat’s practical openness, good will and his self-surrender to God, enabled young men to blossom and grow in stature, as many did.778 Such welcoming and respect for all the members of the community enables that growth in mutual openness and kindness. Any disruption to that sense of family spirit happens when brothers take their own talents too seriously, thereby lacking the necessary humility for a firm relationship with God.779

Dimensions of interiority for religious life It was clear in Champagnat’s mind that he intended, from the beginning, a group of men who would be brothers to young people, those most in need. They were not only catechists or teachers, but religious. Champagnat’s intention was definite, as is clear in the work of the austere Br Jean-Baptiste’s Listen to the Words of your Father.780 Of its forty-one chapters, only the last eight concern the ministry of the brothers. The brothers were to provide young people with Christian education; to do that successfully meant they had to pass on what they themselves possessed in faith. Just as Champagnat shared and lived his own spirituality with his trainees, so they had to do the same for their children. This was the sort of religious life he wished for his brothers. It would demand a life balancing both contemplative and active aspects of spirituality suited to such ministry, where one’s professional competence was as much a part of one’s inner experience, as were the contemplative moments and liturgical rhythms of the community and of the local church. This is no less the present-day reality: achieving a balance between these active and contemplative dimensions are a challenge to a developing and integrated Marist apostolic spirituality.

Specific aspects of formation for interiority Prayer, study, and work became the pattern of formation at the Hermitage, in which novices learned the rudiments of the kind of religious life Champagnat intended. Solitude and ‘meditation on the great truths’ were essential to ‘maintain the religious spirit.’781 If ora et labora was the

writer first joined the congregation nearly fifty years ago. These same difficulties were equally Champagnat’s concern for the fledgling Brothers of Mary. 778 Illustrated in the brief biographies of early brothers, Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers; Alain Delorme and Jean-Baptiste Furet, Marvellous Companions of Marcellin Champagnat (General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2011), accessed 11 September 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/ livros_recebidos /FMSMeravilloscompaneros_EN.pdf; hereafter, Marvellous Companions. 779 Furet, ALS, 56–57. 780 It is more frequently known by its French title: Avis, Leçons, Sentences (ALS). 781 Furet, ALS, 306–08. ~ 151 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Trappist dictum of a contemplative monastery, the Brothers of Mary were to be equally men of prayer and work. The Hermitage established this well, including the essential ministry of a Christian education of the poor, work that involved an apostolic and ministerial spirituality.782 However, in the various establishments it was the work that dominated. Initiation into religious life demanded study and continuing education, not only for the catechetical task in which Champagnat offered constant encouragement and holiday courses,783 but, as appears in the 1837 Rule, continuing study to better prepare the brothers as catechists and teachers, though, Marcellin was careful to distinguish between prayer and catechetical study.784

The experience of, and education in, prayer in its various forms are essential components of not only a religious life, but of the kind of education brothers were to offer their young people. At that time the pervasive spirituality and approach to education in faith amounted to knowing the catechism by heart, learning prayers in French and Latin and learning from Marcellin himself the art of teaching religious education in a way that drew the children to faith in Jesus, and honouring Mary. A schooling in prayer in this manner is less than adequate in the third millennium. There are, among millennials, a number who express interest in the possibility of mission overseas, or in religious life, or becoming more active in their faith community. Lacking identification with Church, many millennials and Generation Z know little of their faith. To awaken their inner experience and grow in interiority, those accompanying them need to hold to values they hold dear: integrity, transparency, honesty, grace, and truth. This calls for Champagnat Marists, and brothers among them, to be better educated theologically, in a way that has a sound, anthropologically based spirituality.

That spirituality was first expressed in the observance of obedience to the ‘Rule’ of the house. It was a ‘Rule’ based on the formation Champagnat had had in the seminaries. He had not had a novitiate, nor had he studied religious life in any formal way. It was only in 1836 that he took vows as a priest of the Society of Mary, a religious congregation of priests, and brothers whodid not have the same status as the Brothers of Mary formed by Champagnat. Nonetheless, Champagnat knew the hearts of his men and he had plumbed the depths of his own inner

782 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 52. 783 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:158. 784 A distinction that even in the early 1970s brothers could not make. When brothers from the then Provinces of Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand had religious education courses, named Cat(echetics) I and Cat II, conversation was such that certain of the brothers could only take advantage of these courses insofar as they were useful for teaching in the classroom (conversation with Julian Casey, 7 September 2019). To see the content as pertinent to their own living of religious life and practice did not appear to be part of the equation in their minds. ~ 152 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 experience; he himself was the ‘text’ and ‘formation guide’ for a truly spiritual life lived in community, a community with a mission to poor young people.785 Those who were professed brothers in the first two decades took the vow of chastity which, no less than in any other era, required sacrifice and struggle, aided by daily reminders of their consecration to God, and reliance on Mary to keep one ‘chaste as an angel.’786 Other means for living chastity were to think about the passion and death of Jesus, to keep busy, to obey wholeheartedly.787 Those injunctions are directly linked to relationship with Jesus and Mary. However, by themselves those means are both insufficient and inadequate for a robust, present-day, adult spirituality that requires an education and formation in psycho-sexual development and growth into maturity, content to which the early Marist formators had no access. The Formation Guide addresses this lack, especially with its stress on accompaniment. Nevertheless, the need to live more deeply the mystical reality of union with God is all the more urgent for an interior life that leads to authentic faith and transcendence of the self.

Another way to foster the growth of more rounded personalities is through deep and firm friendships, which in previous generations was enabled through larger cohorts joining the brotherhood. But as one late 20th century religious explained,788 developing friendships with the couples and families of the children they serve, helps ensure a more healthy approach to living consecrated celibacy; a pre-Vatican II formation did produce some saints, but without the balance of a psychologically informed understanding of human sexuality. The work of Freud and Jung and others have made possible a more holistic approach to sexuality for candidates in the present era, which raises the question about the age of entry into religious life.789 However, that does not negate

785 Despite the fresh initiative in the 1680s of Jean-Baptiste de La Salle who founded a religious congregation that did not include priests, Champagnat’s initiative with the Brothers of Mary some 130 years later was among those early religious congregations of brothers who were still not recognised as religious living consecrated life till early in the 20th century. 786 Ibid., 1:461; Champagnat was perhaps unreasonable when he summarily dismissed a postulant who had transgressed. Given that the Hermitage was full of young men where relationships with girls and women were discouraged, certain behaviours while contrary to Champagnat’s intentions for such a community, were understandable in some younger men less confident of their identities; see Gibson, “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality,” 130; But in 1826 Jean-Claude Courveille had to leave abruptly from the Hermitage for sexually abusing a postulant, see Sammon, A Heart that Knew No Bounds, 56; though the matter was dealt with swiftly - Courveille was not to return - Champagnat was forgiving if not excusing; as far as is known, little if anything was done for the postulant and little is known of the psychological and emotional impact that abuse and betrayal of trust had on the young man. 787 Champagnat, Letters, 1:461. 788 Kevin P. Dobbyn, “I aoni kawaira: Towards an Inculturation of Marist Spirituality in Kiribati as Received in the Charism of Marcellin Champagnat” (M. Theol, Melbourne College of Divinity, 1997), 63. 789 André Lanfrey, History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: Marist Mission in a Violent and Secularised World (1907-1985), trans. Jeffrey Crowe, vol. 2, FMS Studia No.3 (Rome: General House, 2016), 259–61, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History2_EN.pdf; for many who joined when beginning secondary education, going to juniorates, few went on to become brothers. Given the ~ 153 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment the need for a deeper interiority, all the more necessary in an age of abuse scandals, not only in the Church, but in many institutions of society responsible for children and vulnerable adults. A well- grounded ongoing formation in interiority can mean a firmer commitment to their vocation as religious brothers.

In a real sense the vow of poverty was not much of an issue, since the candidates were from a very poor part of France, and country people were used to sharing the little they had.790 At LaValla they supplemented their living by making nails; manual work was a significant part of the formation and early candidates worked at various tasks with the brothers living at the Hermitage. Champagnat himself was an example of this, inspiring not only brothers, but the tradesmen who worked on the masonry in building the Hermitage. Manual work contributed to Champagnat’s insistence on humility and simplicity as the firm basis for a spirituality more open to the transcendent and the mystical.791 The first book Champagnat gave to a candidate entering the first formal stage of formation (as a postulant) was The Golden Book, a treatise on humility. In fact, ‘love of work,’ an attitude expected of a candidate for the community,792 became a hallmark of building community, not only in the variety of skills learned in constructing the Hermitage and its maintenance, but as the means to build ‘family spirit’.793 Commitment to the physicality of work is ‘a pledge of authenticity’ and keeps a brother close to the ordinary everyday life of those whose children he teaches.794

understanding of human psycho-sexual development today, accepting young men even in late adolescent years is not a way to develop an interiority marked by integrity. Accepting older candidates would seem to be an important key to the future. Sr Barbara Fiand SNDdeN raised the issue of beginners to religious life who were more mature. At a gathering of religious in Auckland, NZ over Christmas-New Year, 1994, she asked those assembled if they would expect someone to become a ‘baby sister’, if they had a doctorate in theology, lecturing for some years and wishing to join religious life; an issue formators still debate in terms of the best time to accept a candidate. 790 Poverty is more of an issue in an individualised society which grows globally, to which Champagnat’s Spiritual Testament provides a warning. 791 Furet recounts the moving story and simplicity of Brother Dorothée who died in 1837 as one whose mystical life was centred on the love of Jesus, see Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers, 110–117. 792 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 61. 793 Furet, ALS, 308, Ch.35, XI; International Marist Education Commission, “In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat: A Vision for Marist Education Today” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, 15 Aug 1998), 24–25, accessed September 17, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos /missaoEducativaMarista_EN.pdf. 794 Balko, “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers,” 62; that Marist Brothers have had an excellent reputation as hard workers in Catholic circles through most of the 20th century was mentioned by Br Romuald Gibson, assistant Novice Master in New Zealand (19 September 1972), who added that they did not have a reputation for being equally 'men of prayer.' ~ 154 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

The vow of obedience is a radical shift in one’s life and, as Champagnat sees it, unites one with God and is therefore inseparable from being a ‘true religious,’795 the refusal to obey tantamount to refusing God. He placed great store on obedience as the mainstay of community life and mission. Marcellin sees obedience as the ‘foundation and support of a community,’796 not only spiritually, but at a human and social level also; it is even the training ground for reverence in and for all. If, as Champagnat wished, obedience is of ‘heart and mind,’ then its outcome is love, so readily recognised in the first years at LaValla and at the Hermitage.797

But obedience for the present era is not that of schoolboys to their teachers or principal. Instead, brothers together ‘exercise obedience in [their] constant search for the will of God… [participating in] experiences of discernment in an atmosphere of prayer and a spirit of faith… attentive to the Word of God, faithful to [their] founding charism, and sensitive to the signs of the times’ (RL §16). It is an obedience of equals in communion, each with an ‘interior fidelity to the movement of the Spirit’ mediated by those in leadership, but not without prayer and consultation (RL §16). There is no room for political manipulation or wilful authoritarianism in this kind of obedience: instead, Champagnat emphasized the constant search for the will of God, not just as individuals, but together in community through the mediation of authority by a designated leader. The detachment and humility in this kind of obedience is acquired by an interiority that is deeply reflective, with a readiness to abandon one’s own attachment to this or that person, object or idea. In the teaching of Francis de Sales, whose influence was more pronounced in the mature Champagnat, that amounts to ‘holy indifference,’798 matching the sense of detachment and ‘letting go’ of, for example, one’s own opinions and dreams. This ‘holy indifference’ is a requirement of true interiority as was evident in Ignatius, John of the Cross,799 and Eckhart;800 this non-attachment can also be found in the Zen Buddhism,801 that so attracted Merton.802

795 Champagnat illustrated this dramatically when asked to relinquish to Colin the responsibility he had had as Superior of the brothers, only to be immediately reappointed by Colin as Superior of the brothers’ branch of the Society of Mary, even when both men each had a different concept of the Society; see Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:131. 796 Sammon, A Heart That Knew No Bounds, 75. 797 Alexandre Balko, “The Spiritual Testament of Father Champagnat,” Marist Notebooks 6 (December 1994): 62–63. 798 de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Bk.IX, Chs. 5-7 (Adobe PDF, 307–13/446). 799 John of the Cross, The Collected Works, 301–03, “Ascent of Mt Carmel,” Bk 3, 20:1-4. 800 Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany., vol. 4, History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Herder & Herder, 2008), 164. 801 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, Routledge classics (London: Routledge, 2002), 11. 802 Merton, AJ, 66, 113, 157–58, 303, 309. ~ 155 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

From visionary zeal to institutionalised memory

From what is known by witnesses, not only of Marcellin Champagnat himself, but also of his disciples,803 Marcellin’s relationship with those early brothers was such that others wishing to join the community could see and sense that this community and its ministry matched their own inner experience and their intuitive knowledge, undoubtedly with mixed motivations, always to be tested.804 With the rapid expansion of schools and the increasing number of those joining the brothers, Champagnat saw the need for a Rule, where formation as religious could continue in the various houses and with the leadership of each of the Brother Directors.

A formation in the interiority of faith is lived out in the tension between institutionalization and innovation because change occurs with different eras, cultures and circumstances.805 If interpreted in a literal way, returning to the precise situation in which the spirituality first emerged in a different era dishonours the founding group, Champagnat and his companions. The Rule of 1837 was one of precepts and prohibitions, which was the basis of an even more detailed Rule of 1852. Even with global expansion beyond France and Europe, the uniformity of the Rule applied, thereby crimping the spirit of those founding years when the freer mystical dimension was at play. That global expansion called for greater demands from bishops calling for brothers in the various dioceses of the Catholic world. Unfortunately, from the time of Brother Louis-Marie, the concentration on starting those formation programmes in early adolescence (younger than fifteen years of age)806 contributed to the constant call of Superiors General to address the quality of brother formation, calls that brothers possibly did not understand because their expanding ministries appeared to be flourishing, but with a concomitant neglect of the inner life of many brothers, notwithstanding the saints among them.

Forming the inner life of brothers in the midst of apostolic activity

The Rule was an effort on the part of Champagnat to have brothers continue their formation in the houses,807 a formation for apostolic, rather than monastic (as then understood) religious life,

803 Furet and Delorme, Our First Brothers; Delorme and Furet, Marvellous Companions; Brother François et al., “Documents Testimonies on Marcellin Champagnat,” Marist Notebooks 14 (November 1998): 111–34. 804 Furet, Life, 93–99. 805 André Lanfrey, “Towards a Method of Re-Reading the Spirituality of Religious Orders and of Spiritual Movements,” Marist Notebooks 5, no. May (1992): 40–41. 806 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:267–70. 807 Produced as a pocketbook, it was designed to slip into a brother’s pocket and be a reminder, in the same way that Francis de Sales used Le Combat Spirituel for his ‘spiritual director.’ ~ 156 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4 even though community life was modelled with adaptations on the timetable of a traditional contemplative monastery. However, in terms of the formation for interiority, which requires the kind of text that inspires and animates a person to respond heart, mind and soul to the invitation to live one’s vocation to the full, the circular of Brother François on the ‘Spirit of Faith’ provides the spiritual theology and the method to develop into what Champagnat would say to young applicants to the Brothers of Mary: to become a brother is to undertake to become a saint.808 François considered it a means to develop the necessary interiority for brothers to be faithful to their vocation and to grow in intimate union with God.809 His message is important no less for the present century as it was when first addressed to the brothers. Contrary to the preface in the Life by Brother Jean-Baptiste, there is no reference to monastic life in the circular of Brother François; however, Brothers of Mary embrace the same evangelical counsels.810 The spirit of faith is both gift and virtue expected of every Christian, and essential for the evangelizing brother educator, who is not only living the three-fold demands of the Gospel (the evangelical counsels) through the vows, but is also living the humility and simplicity of Mary.811 According to Br François, it is faith alone that can demonstrate the depth and meaning of religious life, which only makes sense for those who embrace their vocation freely. If they do not, they will neither be good Christians, nor good teachers, nor good religious. François reminds the brothers that the spirit of faith urges them to the transcendence of the self into a deepening relationship with God for which humility and simplicity form the characteristic of the congregation of the Brothers of Mary.812 If it is a dynamic

808 Furet, Life, 465. 809 Gabriel Rivat, “Circulaires 42 - Nécessité de l’esprit de Foi,” [Necessity of the Spirit of Faith], Marist Brothers, dated December 15, 1848, accessed September 28, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3033; “Circulaires 43: Esprit de Foi (2e Partie)- Fondement de l’esprit de Foi,” [Foundation of the Spirit of Faith], Marist Brothers, dated July 16, 1849, accessed September 28, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3035; “Circulaires 46: Esprit de Foi (3e Partie). - Pratique de Cette Vertu,” [The Practice of this Virtue], Marist Brothers, dated December 24, 1851, accessed September 28, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3038; at the time of writing these documents were not available in English online, but archival material in the Province of Australia was kindly made available in a bound volume entitled Collection of Letters (of the Superiors General), the four parts of the circular were published separately in 1848, 1849, 1851 and 1853 with sequential page numbering. 810 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 42:1,” Nous ne sommes pas religieux pour les autres. Nous le sommes surtout et avant tout pour nous-memes … - We are not religious just for others, but mostly and above all for ourselves. The first aim of our vocation is the salvation of our souls and our own sanctification; Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 47; what may be a reaction on the part of some brothers to terms such as “monk,” “monastic,” or “monasticism” may have more to do with their experience of the rigorously rigid horaria of pre-Vatican II styles of apostolic religious life, nonetheless, new models of monasticism continue to emerge and evolve, see Rory McEntee, The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2015); John Michael Talbot, The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011). 811 Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 27. 812 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 42:1” - leur caractère distinctif doit être un esprit d’humilité et de simplicité, qui les porte, à l’exemple de la sainte Vierge, leur mère et leur modèle [their distinctive character must be a ~ 157 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment commitment that keeps alive this deep relationship with the Transcendent in the present era, then a vibrant community life of Marists who are dedicated and passionate about their mission to the peripheries needs to be visible by their way of being.813 Only such a welcoming, hospitable community will touch the hearts of those who are indifferent to Mystery or the world of the Spirit. In his investigation into the early doctrine on formation and spirituality, André Lanfrey sums up by stating that:

to be a little Brother of Mary one ought to have an agreeable, happy and constant character, trusting in God and in Mary, filled with piety and the spirit of faith. Obedient, humble, mortified, filled with zeal, the Brother will be suitable for doing good among the children. By his openness of heart, his detachment from his relatives, his faith and the grandeur of his vocation the Brother will assure his perseverance in good.814 The first sentence could well be a description of Marcellin Champagnat himself, describing the qualities he wanted of those who came to the Hermitage aspiring to be brothers. The second indicates how they could best carry out the mission entrusted to them with a sense of discipline and passion, while the last sentence indicates the regard for the vocation and the quality of interiority required of candidates for the Brothers of Mary.

This interiority was codified in the very sketchy 1837 Rule which was given more detail through subsequent General Chapter editions producing the 1852 Common Rules and other manuals, designed to address the spiritual life of the brothers. Vatican II changed the regimented focus challenging religious life to return to its inspirational origins. For Marist Brothers, that shift is illustrated in the language of certain official documents in which can be detected a shift in the kind of language used; language moving away from the prescriptive and tending toward the more open-ended and the mystical (see Appendix A for a comparison). Br Basilio Rueda, Superior General from 1967-85 critiqued the spiritual life of the brothers and addressed what had long been spoken of as ‘the spirit of the institute’ in his circular of 1975.815 Further changes including brothers leaving the institute brought a concern for a better and more solid formation for brothers resulting in the Formation Guide of 1986. Br Charles Howard’s circular of 1992 marked a significant turning point in a much clearer 20th century articulation of the spirituality of the

spirit of humility and simplicity which carries them following the example of the Holy Virgin, their mother and their model]. 813 Pasquale Ferrara, “The Concept of Periphery in Pope Francis’ Discourse: A Religious Alternative to Globalization?” Religions 6, no. 1 (2015): 42–57. 814 André Lanfrey, “A Fundamental Work Which Has Been Forgotten: The Manual of Piety,” Marist Notebooks 16 (November 2000): 55. 815 Rueda Guzman, “Spirit of the Institute,”; during the inspirational foundation period (1817 to the death of Br François in 1881) “spirit of the institute” was interchangeable with “spirit of faith.” ~ 158 ~ Towards Interiority: inspiration and adjustment Chapter 4

Brothers of Mary in a circular entitled Marist Apostolic Spirituality.816 Superiors General since that time have continued to point out the need for a much deeper spirituality; it needs to be addressed still. The amended Formation Guide of 1994 (reprinted 2006) outlined a more holistic approach to the formation of a Marist spirituality that drew on the insights of psychology and anthropology, but now which is in need of still further updating for the 21st century, with an emphasis on applied mystical theology.

Conclusion

This chapter examined the formation for interiority as Marcellin Champagnat and his early companions lived it through learning and practice. What became the spirituality of the embryonic Society of Mary in the mind of Marcellin Champagnat had, as its foundation, his own personality and relational approach in his experience-in-faith: his trust in God and in his younger companions, through an educative practice in a spirituality expressed in a concern for all, but especially children and young people who were the most neglected.

Champagnat’s own formation for interiority was the blueprint he passed on to his young disciples. It was a formation that had its beginnings in family life and in the religious and political events of his time; but it was a formation also enriched by his personality, his friendships, and especially by his deep trust in God and the humility that allowed him such a deep love for Jesus and Mary. His young disciples were animated by his passion for God and for the poor whom he saw as needing the support and guidance of brothers rather than the stern authoritarian figures he remembered from his boyhood experience at school.

Training for such interiority included a consciously active formation of the will by paying attention to resolutions in the discipline of practice and keeping to a rhythm of prayer, study, and reading. That formation includes the asceticism of the ordinary, accepting what each day brings with its joys and disappointments, the love of work, and the trials of humiliation which can happen in the challenge of living in both community and the ministries with which one is tasked. That discipline grows one into humility, a humility based on the example of the Mother of Jesus; she is the one exemplar of humility as emptiness to be filled with God. It is humility that is the mark of authenticity, and the latter which opens one’s heart to Jesus and Mary in a spirituality that overflows into friendship, love and compassion for others.

816 Howard, “Marist Apostolic Spirituality,” 421, 428-31. ~ 159 ~ Chapter 4 Marist Interiority: inspiration and adjustment

Theologically, the virtues of authentic relationship are humility, simplicity and modesty where putting others first is the Marial presence of giving birth to Christ in the heart and in the world. To be present to such Love finds its source in the Incarnation, the Redemption and the Eucharist; expressed by Champagnat as the Crib, the Cross and the Altar; in adding the church bell, Marcellin speaks in concrete terms of the ordinary discipline of prayer and practice, a discipline that includes in the daily rhythm the necessity of solitude and silence.

After Marcellin’s death his disciples expanded his vision, all the while trying to balance the dynamic of being skilled professionals while devotionally tied to monastic rhythms to which they and the Eurocentric Catholicism of the time had held fast. Vatican II issued changes that affected the relationship of almost every member and organisation in the Church and their relationship to the wider world. Such a paradigmatic shift was not without consequences for the Marist Brothers who, in facing the calls of the Church, have made continued shifts not only in how they see themselves (constitutionally), but in how they continue to educate for greater interiority in the context of a rapidly changing world. Such a formative shift requires an open-hearted willingness for exchange and dialogue, not only with their founding roots, but with others also steeped in their own traditions as well as with those waking up to the implications of their own baptismal discipleship, whatever their vocational choice.

The next chapter becomes a conversation between Br François Rivat and the Marist Tradition and Thomas Merton. Because Merton was as much an educator of young people as are Marist Brothers, he provides a perspective through which Little Brothers of Mary can become more contemplative educators of experience-in-faith. In his relationships with student monks and the many and varied others with whom he engaged, Merton’s inner experience, though grounded in the deep mystical Christian Tradition, opened him to the presence of God in all creation. Merton’s insights in dialogue with those of Br François can lay the foundation for a more grounded interior life for Brothers of Mary.

~ 160 ~

Chapter 5

Towards Deeper Interiority for Marists: conversatio divina through courageous vulnerability

Introduction

The previous chapter has investigated the original inspiration of the Little Brothers of Mary, with emphasis on the approaches of Champagnat and his first companions to the formation of the interior life of the brothers, in the midst of a rapidly expanding congregation of educators. In contrast to the hierarchical structures of an institutional Church, both the Marist Brothers and Merton share in common the mutual recognition of consecrated life as vowed religious; while not monks in the strictly Roman canonical sense, Marist Brothers can be regarded as ‘monks-in-town’ or urban monks, as J-M Ferre suggests,817 or more simply, contemporary monks. That mutuality allows for greater learning in which Merton acts as one who, for the 21st century, can remind Champagnat Marists, brothers and lay alike, of the sources from which their own spirituality springs.

The subtitle of this chapter brings together two expressions from the monastic tradition that find their way into Christian spirituality of the present era, beyond the confines of monasteries or religious houses: lectio divina and conversatio morum; sacred reading and ongoing daily conversion. The English translation misrepresents the complex, yet systematic approach and meaning of each.818 Lectio divina, originating with Origen, but systematised by Guigo el Cartujo (d.1188), follows a path from reading (lectio), reflection (meditatio), prayer (oratio) to

817 Jose-Maria Ferre, “The Religious Brother in the Church: One way to live out the brotherhood of Jesus,” Marist Brothers, 6, last modified 2015, accessed October 21, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/bau/ THE%20RELIGIOUS%20BROTHER2%20- %20Sal%20Terrae%20-%20JM%20Ferre.pdf; many brothers speak of friends, colleagues and even family asking when they will 'go the whole way', that is, to become a priest, revealing how little understood is the brother's vocation. I suggest that 'monk,' as Ferre suggests, is a short-hand way to help people better understand the vocation of brother; many people have a concept of monk, as distinct from 'priest,' either robed in medieval monastic garb or wearing saffron robes like the Dalai Lama, but it conveys the three-fold dimension of being on the search for God, living simply in community (usually), and that commitment overflows into compassion for others, especially on the margins of society and, for Brothers of Mary poor children and young people. 818 Fernando Milán, “‘Lectio divina:’ un modo antiguo y actual de orar con la Sagrada Escritura,” Scripta Theologica 51, no. 1 (April 2019): 161–187; Bernardo Olivera, “Conversatio and Mysticism in the Benedictine-Cistercian Tradition Yesterday and Today,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (May 2018): 119–140. ~ 161 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority contemplation (contemplatio), mapping the mystical itinerary to union with God.819 A path that begins with words, moves to thoughts, to prayer and finally, to the wordless contemplation of the Divine. On the other hand, conversatio refers to the ongoing conversion of one’s exterior behaviours, or necessary ascetical disciplines analogous to the physical training an athlete must do to win Olympic gold.820 Juxtaposing the two as in this chapter’s subtitle returns this chapter’s contents to the beginnings of Christian mysticism and the origins of Champagnat’s Marist spirituality to their cornerstone: Jesus Christ, through whom Marists potentially become divinised, or Christified.

Moreover, conversatio suggests an integration of both inner experience in interaction with the world of external experiences. The root of the Latin word is also contained in the English ‘conversation.’ Beginners in Christian prayer start with ‘talking with Jesus’ or with God; it is talking with, rather than talking to, that becomes conversation, and as one is introduced to the Gospels, there is potential over time for deeper and more intimate conversation, even to the point of no longer needing words where a person is content to sit in silence, the language of God. In short, conversation leads to an ongoing conversion of one’s inner experience towards an interiority open to transformative experience and encounter. That conversion is facilitated by an openness to conversation and dialogue with others, both in person and the present, as well as through text in the Scriptures and ‘aided by the Masters of the spiritual life’ throughout the mystical Tradition.821

‘to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time’822

In 2017, the Institute of the Marist Brothers celebrated 200 years since its foundation. In the focused approach leading up to the year of celebration, there was a renewed emphasis among scholars of Marist patrimony on the origins and the foundational period from 2 January 1817 to the death of the first Superior General, Br François Rivat, who followed Marcellin Champagnat.823 Among the documents that were produced in the period after the death of Champagnat in 1840, was the circular from Br François on ‘the spirit of faith,’ which has ‘a totally exceptional place,

819 Milán, “Lectio divina,” 168–69. 820 Olivera, “Conversatio and Mysticism in the Benedictine-Cistercian Tradition Yesterday and Today,” 121–22. 821 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 9, Archives of the Marist Brothers, Melbourne. 822 From the poem “Little Gidding,” Thomas Stearns Eliot, T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems 1909 - 1962, Centenary ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), 208–09. 823 Br François resigned as Superior General in 1860 and then went to the Hermitage, in silent protest, thinks Lanfrey, of the direction his successor was taking the congregation; Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1: 286–87.

~ 162 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 both by its length, and by the fact that Br François returns to it for several years.’824 To return to the inspirational beginning deserves attention because, in the midst of the ensuing internal politics of the period,825 Br François reminds the brothers that, as the poet T. S. Eliot intuits, after all the exploration of how to be brother in an increasingly complex and rapidly developing religious world, what should never be forgotten is the call of Love ‘heard, half-heard, in the stillness’ who requires ‘A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything).’826 What is unique about the four-part circular is the lack of any reference to Champagnat, though in fact, his teaching is embedded in it.827 Drawing upon this source, the Founder’s secretary, from among the first of Champagnat’s earliest disciples, focuses attention on the kind of interiority Champagnat himself wished to pass on to the brothers.

From this point, Thomas Merton can add to the exchange because he reminds Marist Brothers about the value of their inner experience as the corpus of a vital formation for that, very necessary interiority that is essential to their contemplatively active ministry to young people on the peripheries. The conversation draws on Merton’s insights from Chapter 3 and includes commentary and critique from this author.

Experience as the soil of the interior life

In his circular on the ‘Spirit of Faith’, writing in the era of a hegemonic religious culture in France, Br François begins by a negative view of what a human being is like without faith. He urges the brothers to pay attention to acquiring the Spirit of faith and to living the life of faith – the terms are synonymous – that it is not a matter of adhering to certain devotional practices, but to be a disciple of Christ.828 Framed in the language of the time, François considers the spirit of faith to be like the soul, the ‘ever acting principle’ by which the body performs all its functions. This should be especially so for one who lives the consecrated life:

[it] should direct his thoughts, regulate his judgements, and animate his actions. He should see and judge all things by the light of faith, and should be guided only by its lessons and its counsels; he should ever speak its language and make it appear in the whole tenor of his conduct. In this way he shall live the life of faith, and have the Spirit of faith; believing in his heart unto justice, … by joining charity to faith, action to belief, he will attain justice and sanctity.’829

824 Lanfrey, “Circular on the Spirit of Faith,” Marist Notebooks 16 (November 2000): 22. 825 Torres, “A Re-Examination of the Unity of the Leadership of Brothers Francois, Louis-Marie & Jean- Baptiste,” 59–72. 826 Eliot, T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems 1909 - 1962, 209. 827 Lanfrey, “Circular on the Spirit of Faith,” 34, 41. 828 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 10. 829 Ibid., 12; his emphasis. ~ 163 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

In a faith culture that esteemed the religious vocation above the discipleship of ordinary Christians he lays out what he expects of his brothers: to be so imbued with this spirituality of living the Christ life that it inhabits their whole being. By contrast he addresses what he considers to be insufficient motivation,830 that is, the lack of any real desire or conviction to live consecrated life, dead, but not yet buried.831 Undoubtedly based upon his observations of brothers and their lives in community and mission, he adds that, while those brothers may appear to be holy, in fact they are lifeless.832 His comment is no less relevant in the contemporary period; not only for the brothers and religious life, but also for the Church as a whole, where clericalism has become careerism. Both Merton and François issue the challenge that as religious (monks), Brothers of Mary are in a position to remind the Church of what its members ought to be (Mt 23:8-9), but only if they endeavour to be fully alive in Christ.

François then lists the ‘truths of faith,’ constantly available if one will take notice of them: the life of the Trinity, the friend and companion that is Jesus Christ, who is present in the Eucharist, all contained in the Scriptures as source and knowledge of the Word; the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, prayer as grace and saving love. He includes the Blessed Virgin, the angels and saints and all creation.833 As a man whose every breath is the Gospel alive with the Spirit of faith, François makes light of what are called

weighty and important only those things that relate to time! We pretend to pity those who labour for eternity! We spend our life in spinning, with the greatest attention and the most serious application of mind, mere cobwebs which death will sweep away in an instant! We are Christians, and yet we live like pagans!834 This appears harsh, although it is softened by his use of the first-person plural. Nonetheless, he poses questions on specific areas to do with weak faith, suggesting that it has crept into even the best communities that have become lukewarm, so that one could say ‘that true Religious are, comparatively, as rare as true Christians?’835 François’ question is also echoed by Merton, who wonders whether monks are really contemplative.836 François raises other questions that are no less relevant for the contemporary era, especially in a world of increasing bureaucracy, where the inspiration for a deep interior life can be neglected by the demands of organization, efficiency and

830 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 1:271, 353. 831 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 12–13. 832 Ibid., 13. 833 Ibid., 14. 834 Ibid., 15. 835 Ibid., 16. 836 Merton, SC, 358.

~ 164 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 the immediate.837 François raises piercing questions, that are equally pressing for the contemporary era:

How many amongst us are truly poor in spirit, truly humble of heart, true lovers of the Cross of Jesus Christ? What has become of … obedience … that absolute denial of one’s own will, of the love of self-abnegation, of humiliations and sufferings? … so greatly has the Spirit of faith been impaired and rendered ineffective by our negligence and our tepidity … My dear Brothers, the cause of all our spiritual disorders, and of our little progress in the virtues of our state, lies solely in the weakness and the indifference of our faith… Why have we so little love for prayer, so little zeal and fervour in meditation? … It is because prayer, being the expression of faith, and drawing its power and efficacy only from the sighs and tears, the love and confidence which faith inspires, we are not men of prayer because we are not men of faith.838 He complains also about the lack of zeal for the children, because brothers do not see Christ in the children for whom they are responsible; that studies are frivolous, lacking any spirit of real evangelisation.839 François is most emphatic about the study of one’s faith,840 a subject dear to his heart as is clear in his own retreat notes,841 because it has a direct impact upon the quality of the ministry in educating young people in faith.842 Not to spend energy in such spiritual and theological study would be ‘contrary to the spirit of humility and simplicity, which should distinguish the Marist Brothers of the Schools.’843

François reminds his men that they are not simply there to serve others, but that ‘the first end of [their] vocation is the salvation of [their] souls,’ which is about the search for God and the true self. The language of this period expresses ideas not altogether different to those of Merton. The Spirit of faith is not about outward display and appearance, but requires a certain asceticism – self-abnegation, humiliations, and sufferings – the necessary discipline required of contemplative living. Merton names it as awakening the inner self and being constantly self-aware in order to deflate the false and illusory self, which is more inclined to tepidity and negligence. The self-abnegation of François is, for Merton, the gradual detachment of the false self to reveal the true self which, in François, finds its best expression in affective spirituality, in its mystical sense through ‘sighs and tears, love and confidence’ which makes him a man of prayer.844

837 Cf. Colin Chalmers, “Charism and Bureaucracy,” Champagnat: An International Marist Journal of Education and Charism 11, no. 1 (May 2009): 38–47. 838 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 16–17. 839 Ibid., 18. 840 Ibid., 18, 25. 841 Paul Sester, “Brother Francois: Retreat Notes,” Marist Notebooks 15 (May 1999): 84–98. 842 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 20–23. 843 Ibid., 18. 844 Ibid. ~ 165 ~ Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

François proposes that the remedy to address these concerns is the ‘Spirit of faith,’ the life of faith,’ one in the same thing. Yet, it has to be made practical by acting in conformity with the faith that one professes:

since we believe that God always sees us and knows the most secret thoughts of our heart, let us be watchful over all our actions, so that we may never do the least thing to displease Him; let us be religious in our words, regular in our conduct, fervent in our prayers … let our faith be animated by charity, for, says St Gregory the Great, “he alone believes perfectly, who practises what he believes, who conforms his conduct to his belief.”845 François flavours his circular with the sources of his reading and study.846 Though couched in the language of the time, François is speaking about the need to integrate the interior world with the external world, where that external world is also the world of belief and religious practice. It is about integrity of soul which finds its true expression in love.

François brings to this spirituality a sound anthropology which makes sense of the faith he urges brothers to live out. While he would have been unfamiliar with ‘anthropology’ as a science,847 François’s approach to the human being was a deeply theocentric outlook on human experience, based on faith as the primary and fundamental truth, in which human experience finds its raison d’être:

Faith [presents to us] as a primary and fundamental truth, the infinite Being of God and our own nothingness, will most efficaciously lead us to render to the Sovereign Majesty, the worship of adoration, love and dependence which we owe Him … it will show us, with equal certainty, that everything in existence comes from Him; that all creatures depend on His sovereign power … that without His continual assistance, they would instantly return to their original nothingness … Consequently, of ourselves we are nothing we have nothing, we can do nothing … Everything, therefore, is from God alone, belongs to God, and exists only for Him. Our whole being and all our thoughts and actions should be directed to Him. Thus on this great truth of the infinite Being of God and our own nothingness, the Spirit of faith will enable us to lay down the foundation of true humility. It will inspire us with the contempt and detachment of ourselves and of creatures; it will teach us to prize God above all things, to adore Him, love Him, and serve Him, with our whole heart.848 This theology, unique in the Marist literature of the inspirational period,849 is clearly Bérullian, reflecting what the brothers received from the Sulpician-trained Champagnat. As with the more mature Champagnat, there is, in this theocentric passage, little of the ‘annihilation’ of the self,

845 Ibid., 19. 846 François does not mention Champagnat, perhaps because he wishes to situate this first systematic writing on Marist spirituality in the great Mystical Tradition of the Church, since it is only eight years since the founder's death; Lanfrey, “Circular on the Spirit of Faith,” 42–46. 847 At the time of writing, while the early beginnings of anthropology were based in France and Germany, the science would not have been well known; “Anthropology - Wikipedia,” accessed May 25, 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology. 848 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 46–47. 849 Lanfrey, “Circular on the Spirit of Faith,” 41.

~ 166 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 because the self is existentially itself only in relation to the sovereign Being of God. Human experience for François is the rich ground-of-being a creature has in relationship to their Creator, supported by the bedrock which is the power, goodness and love of God who has created the human being out of nothing.

Humility as the compost for growing a deeper interiority Keeping this truth in faith central in one’s mind and heart leads to true humility, the humus of growth toward the kind of blossoming that flowers into, not only partnership, but union with the Divine. Returning that love is the ‘sole purpose of [one’s] creation’ and existence, for if God has given human beings minds capable of knowing, they are to use their minds to know God; if the human being has a heart that can love generously, its purpose is to love and be devoted to God; it is faith that informs the human being that all one is and has comes from God and belongs to God, which means that one is God’s and God’s alone. Turning away, then, from such love through the misuse of the gifts received of health, mind and heart, talents and faculties is a kind of theft.850 Embracing one’s vocation and the choice God has made in love is the only way to respond to such love, which is one’s aim, end and only purpose.851

Faith is the starting point of experience because it is the lens through which one is able to see the Providence of God, governing the universe, presiding over generations, guiding even revolutions at global, national, and familial levels, so that all things can be a means to true inner freedom for human beings.852 If the fact of God’s goodness and love is the starting point for considering experience then all experiential events, either internal or external, can be seen as God’s loving ‘paternal hand which … wounds in order to cure.’853 Living this Spirit of faith means being surrounded and penetrated by the essence of God who observes all one’s thoughts and words, ‘as if we were the only beings in the universe.’854 This suggests a loving, rather than a judgmental God. The almost romantic, but certainly mystical flavour that seeps through François’ words indicates, without revealing himself so directly, the kind of relationship he has with Divine Providence. Knowing one is so loved, engenders a loving response in an ‘active and lively faith in

850 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 48. 851 Ibid., 49. 852 Ibid., 50. 853 Ibid. 854 Ibid., 51. ~ 167 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority the presence of God’ which overflows into seeing God in all creatures who are the outcome of God’s goodness.855 The most important place to seek God, however, is:

within ourselves, in the depth of our hearts; for it is there He dwells as in His sanctuary, in order to receive our adoration and our homage … let us often retire, therefore, into this inner cell, this temple of our soul, there to find God, to converse with Him and to offer Him our respect and veneration.856 He suggests that brothers make the ‘Spirit of faith’ a living reality by echoing the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers; in short, repetitive prayers keep alive the sense of the presence of the Divine in the course of one’s daily life.857 This section, appearing by inference in other parts of the circular, reflects the Ignatian ‘seeing God in all things’ and anticipates the articles in the Formation Guide where, the formation of the interior life hinges upon the four relationships the candidate, and eventually the brother, has with nature, self, others and God (FG 1:13-23, 28, 80; 2:88; 3:171; 4:205-221; 7:450-459).

Merton expresses the same ideas in a linguistic style contemporary with the 21st century. In contrast to more recent official Marist documents, he does use the term ‘nothingness,’ thereby echoing the mystical tradition. There is a difference between nothingness and annihilation, at least in present-day English and with a worldview where the psychological has influenced so much of how people understand the human mind; what is required, then, is a more nuanced understanding of the terms.

From annihilation, nothingness, and emptiness, to self-emptying humility So taken with the Bérullian theology of Charles de Condren, Jean-Jacques Olier brought about among the priests and people in the parish of St Sulpice a resurgence of holiness through a Christocentric living faith characterized by the prayer ‘Jesus living in Mary,’ which he composed.858 Despite the revival, ‘annihilation of the self’ sounds depressing; taken literally it has the potential to lead one to severe depression, nervous breakdown or suicidal ideation, as crossed the mind of Thomas Merton.859 As mentioned in Chapter 2, it is reasonable to wonder if a spirituality based on a raw understanding of anéantissement led to Olier’s breakdown; once he had recovered, Sulpician spirituality took a form that was expressed in a three-fold balance of

855 Ibid., 50–51. 856 Ibid., 52. 857 Ibid., 52–53. 858 Deville, The French School of Spirituality, 93. 859 Merton, SFS, 20; Robert G. Waldron, The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton (New York: Paulist Press, 2011), 30–31.

~ 168 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 authority, learning and holiness,860 with primary emphasis on the last; expressed in this era as ‘spirituality,’ although holiness implies a more religious stance: the living conviction of a conscious and consistently chosen path of living faith, in an ever-deepening relationship with the Transcendent.861

Merton does not hesitate to refer to nothingness as the state of human beings when they ignore the promptings of the Spirit, within the depth of their soul and operate under the illusion of being completely autonomous as their own arbiters of truth and meaning with little or no attention to the transcendent in their lives. When acting on an internal movement to pray Merton writes:

first of all our meditation should begin with the realization of our nothingness and helplessness in the presence of God. This need not be a mournful or discouraging experience. On the contrary, it can be deeply tranquil and joyful since it brings us in direct contact with the source of all joy and all life. But one reason why our meditation never gets started is perhaps that we never make this real, serious return to the center of our own nothingness before God. Hence we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with him.862 The inner sense of helpless nothingness, then, is ultimately about the floor one has to fall through in order to enter into that inmost self-in-God, that innate desire for union with God. In another place, Merton comes close to the ‘self-abnegation’ of François, even more directly qualifying nothingness:

Desire not to be exalted but only to be abased, not to be great but only little in your own eyes and the eyes of the world: for the only way to enter into that joy is to dwindle down to a vanishing point and become absorbed in God through the center of your own nothingness. The only way to possess His greatness is to pass through the needle's eye of your own absolute insufficiency.863 Merton sees this in Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘a man who, plunging to the depths of his human nothingness comes back to us resplendent with the divine mercy. There is nothing left for us to see and praise in him but God.’864 François would concur.

The ‘nothingness’ François intends is integrally tied to the relationship of the human being to God as the ‘immense, immutable, absolutely infinite’ and all powerful, providential lover who provides and cares for all creation which is utterly dependent on God’s power and goodness, without which all would return to nothingness.865 To consider one’s self as nothing, is not

860 William Thompson-Uberuaga, “Christians Who Can Breathe and Laugh,” America 199, no. 7 (2008): 29–31. 861 The three-fold balance also applies to the other great faiths of humankind. 862 Merton, CP, 70. 863 Merton, DQ, 182. 864 Ibid., 281. 865 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 47. ~ 169 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority altogether different from kenosis or emptiness.866 In this, François echoes Meister Eckhart who says: Thus a man should be pervaded with God's presence, transformed with the form of his beloved God, and made essential by Him, so that God's presence shines for him without any effort; rather he will find emptiness in all things and be totally free of things.867 Within this emptiness, the same God comes intimately close to the consciousness of creation in the embodiment of the ‘God Man’, who is companion, friend and brother,868 ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ’ who is ‘the great source’ of Christian spirituality.869 Experience-in-faith is real, affective and loving if brothers also enter ‘deeply into the Heart of Jesus and [taste] a little of His ardent love, [they] should know by experience what it is to have the Spirit of faith, to live the life of faith.’870

To taste the love of Jesus and know by experience reflects the spirituality of Origen and certainly of Bernard of Clairvaux in his commentaries on the Songs of Solomon. This suggests a mystical orientation in François’s interiority, rather than a list of ascetical disciplines, though he does acknowledge, as does Merton,871 the necessity of certain ascetical practices, chiefly around keeping the Rule.872 This is expressed by paying attention to the ordinary asceticism of an equal love for all the children whom brothers are to consider the special friends of Jesus,873 as well as taking an interest in the brothers of the community, speaking favourably of them and bearing with their defects in sincere and effective love as Jesus commands (Jn 17:21).874 The sign of authentic inner experience and true interiority finds expression in external behaviour. Both François and Merton echo the mystics before them on naming humility as the essential ingredient in the soil that takes one into a deeper self-awareness, thereby readying one to free the inner self for the kind of interiority that leads to union with God. Merton argues that true humility is impossible without ‘a burning sense of our own imperfection … true humility is calm and peaceful. It accepts our

866 Kazuo Mutō, Martin Repp, and Jan van Bragt, Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School, Philosophy of religion. World religions v. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 61. 867 Meister Eckhart and Maurice O’C Walshe, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (New York: Crossroad, 2009), 492. 868 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 14. 869 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,”, 93. 870 Ibid. 871 Merton, NSC, 259. 872 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 62, 67-68. 873 Ibid., 64. 874 Ibid., 65.

~ 170 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 limitations; it is not surprised at imperfection, or even at sin.’875 Any deepening of interiority requires a disciplined asceticism, without which one cannot mature spiritually, which entails living at peace with oneself and with others; without such discipline it is unlikely one will ever experience the serenity of mystical prayer.876 It is living Spirit of faith that enables a person to lay the foundation of true humility; a person can be then inspired to acknowledge their nothingness which leads to detachment from the self and from all things so as to love and serve God whole- heartedly.877 Even so, that does not mean a disregard for the created world; on the contrary, others and the natural world are to be enjoyed and loved insofar as they lead to the ultimate end of the spiritual journey: being in love and in union with God.878 This especially applies to the young people brothers serve. Recalling that their pupils are the face of Jesus inspires ‘an equal love for all’ especially ‘the most ignorant;’ brothers are to have ‘a particular predilection for the poor, as representing … Jesus Christ annihilated and become poor for love of us.’879

Merton expresses the same insight existentially:

[we] must face the existential reality of our wretchedness, nothingness and abjection because it is there that our prayer begins. It is out of this nothingness that we are called into freedom. It is out of this darkness that we are called into light. Therefore, we need to recognize this as our true starting point.880 Merton also expresses psychologically what the mystical Tradition claims, but in language that is more immediate and understandable to 21st century ears:

The “ego,” the “outer self,” is respected by God and allowed to carry out the function which our inner self cannot yet assume on its own. We have to act, in our everyday life, as if we were what our outer self indicates us to be. But … we must remember that we are not entirely what we seem to be, and that what appears to be our “self” is soon going to disappear into nothingness… Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness and void. What we are not seems to be real, what we are seems to be unreal. We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden identity. And that is why the way to reality is the way of humility which brings us to reject the illusory self and accept the “empty” self that is “nothing” in our own eyes and in the eyes of men, but is our true reality in the eyes of God.881 Self-emptying and nothingness connect with the necessary work of what must be done to detach one’s false or illusory self from the true self: the way of humility. The goal ceases, then, to be

875 Thomas Merton, The Silent Life, e-Book. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1957), 72/115, Adobe PDF, accessed December 12, 2017, https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=51A352B4-7C86-40BB-B16B- 90FAFF4BBE64. 876 Ibid., 75. 877 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 47. 878 Ibid., 49. 879 Ibid., 64. 880 Merton, CWA, 217. 881 Merton, NSC, 281. ~ 171 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority something set by the human side of the relationship. One’s discovery of the ‘inmost self-in-God’ is no longer ‘work’ on the human level; instead, one is ‘taken up’ by the Spirit (cf. 2 Cor 12:2-3) into being one with God, while at the same time ontologically distinct.882 This is the transforming union of humility in its perfection.883

This humility, as the ‘distinctive characteristic’ of the Marist Brothers in François’s mind, is linked to the mother of Jesus as ‘their Mother and their Model;’ it finds expression in a preference for ‘a hidden life, lowly offices, for the poorest classes and localities,’ working quietly and modestly which ‘seeks its glory in a hidden and unknown life.’884 The following longer passage sums up the Christological anthropology of François and the humility that forms the interior life:

[Nothing] but the light of faith can make us understand the excellence of those virtues which all the world despises … nothing but a lively faith in the words and example of Jesus Christ and the meekness and humility of His adorable Heart; the gate of heaven closed against those who are wanting in the humility and simplicity of a little child; the kingdom of heaven promised to the poor in spirit and to those who suffer persecution of justice’ sake; nothing … but the consideration of faith could dissipate the illusions of vain glory, prevent the false calculations of pride, and show us that true glory, real security, and solid progress for each of us in particular, as well as for the whole Institute … are to be found only in humility, simplicity and modesty.885 François did not use the language of psychology; nevertheless, he had a clear understanding of the motivations that were the factors in a young man seeking a vocation to brotherhood. What he claims here is none other than the 20th century insights Merton echoes from the ancient wisdom of the search for God and for union with the God of love. Liberated from the shadows of an imaginary, joyless self and its grandiose illusions of vanity, the true self gains the ground of Reality and true freedom886 through the integration and interiorising of a lively, real and authentic faith.

Self-emptying humility in the four recent, major documents If aggiornamento is a return to where everything started, then it is appropriate to consider whether or not the major documents of the Institute since 1986 reflect the characteristic by which the Founder and his successor intended as the hallmark of the Brothers of Mary today. Humility is the single most necessary quality required of anyone entering upon the path to deeper interiority; it is the pattern throughout the mystical tradition. It is in humility that one realises one’s complete emptiness, enabling the person to be filled with the utter fullness of God (Eph 3:19). Appendix B

882 Ibid., 282. 883 Ibid., 183. 884 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 27; cf. Merton, NSC, 173. 885 Ibid., 27. 886 Merton, NSC, 57.

~ 172 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 sifts through the four documents considered, while what follows summarises the findings, adding Merton to the conversation.

There is, in the post-Vatican II Marist documents, a noticeable shift from a theocentric spirituality of François based on the ‘truths of faith’ that were self-evident to any who lived in culturally-Catholic, rural France during those inspirational years of the congregation.887 The documents of the latter half of the 20th century are based on the experience of, and in, faith, expressed and exemplified in stating metaphorically that Marcellin ‘was seized by the love Jesus and Mary had for him and for others’ (C&S §2).888 The anthropological theology of these four documents, however, is still grounded in the spirituality of humility and simplicity, a spirituality more Christocentric with Jesus and Mary often mentioned together, a habit of Champagnat’s; it is the fourth part of François’s circular that becomes more explicitly Christocentric. In these recent documents humility is largely seen in terms of horizontal relationships with others, which may well be ‘self-referential,’ which makes of it a moral virtue, a value commended in the workplace so that one is in some way rewarded by the praise of others.889 However, as a religious value, for which experience-in-faith is paramount in both François and Merton, humility has greater demands because it requires true freedom, that is, freedom from self-concern which leads to detachment, a virtue regarded as greater than humility.890 While the most recent document RL better captures the kind of inner spiritual life that François urged the brothers to develop, it does not convey so well that sense of detachment, of self-denial, or self-abnegation or the essential death to the self. Nevertheless, in the RL there are sections where the 21st century listener/reader seems directly challenged by Jesus; most of the Scripture references in the Rule of Life are taken from the New Testament.891 Those gospel challenges require discipline so that the traditional values of religious life such as humility, obedience, detachment and poverty (among others) do not get lost, even if humility needs to be reframed for the present era.892

Merton has a contribution here that reflects the necessary underpinning theology of humility that François intended:

obedience must be rediscovered … as openness to the hidden will of God … [The] discipline involved here is that of a crucifixion which eliminates a superficial and selfish kind of experience

887 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 12–15; “Spirit of Faith 2,” 35–38. 888 My emphasis. 889 James Kellenberger, Dying to Self and Detachment (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012), 31, 33. 890 Ibid., 35. 891 There are 95 New Testament references (mostly the gospels and Paul) in the text compared to 16 Old Testament references of which Mic 6:8 occurs in three different sections. 892 Merton, CWA, 113. ~ 173 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

and opens to us the freedom of a life that is not dominated by egoism, vanity, willfulness, passion, aggressiveness, jealousy, greed. … [it] means solitude of some sort, not in the sense of selfish withdrawal but in the sense of an emptiness that no longer cherishes the comfort of various social “idols” and is not slavishly dependent on the approval of others.893 Merton captures the sense of humility intended by the mystics as a way of being, an emptying of the self (of all that is false) in and through God, without whom human beings and all creation would be nothing.894 In his use of ‘crucifixion,’ Merton gives the sense of what is really demanded for an inner life of true interiority: an awakening to the inner self, and alert to all that is illusory about one’s ego-driven self, to come to one’s true self, in and through the One François refers to as ‘the God Man.’ The difficulty with the language in recent documents is in words like ‘self- giving’ or ‘self-gift’ where it is not clear how ‘self’ is understood. A similar confusion lies in ‘self- transcendence’ that raises the question as to whose initiative it is, in which one moves into closer unity with the Transcendent; for which reason ‘transcendence of the self’ may better express the reality that the self is nothing, apart from an all-loving God who draws the self into Godself, the Transcendent. Even the desire to respond to such an invitation is itself the work of grace.

Crucifixion, then, better encapsulates the gospel imperative (Mt 16:24; Lk 9:23) and, at least in terms of alignment with François’s circular on the Spirit of Faith, it is best expressed in the Formation Guide:

DYING to self is the basic requirement for following Jesus: “Anyone who loses his life for my sake will save it.” This death takes place when the “I” ceases to be the centre of its own universe and when God becomes the centre. That is the fundamental significance of the novitiate which marks the beginning of a process of conversion. It is of the utmost importance that this conversion be continued and consolidated during the subsequent stages. (FG 1:78) It is essentially this new relationship with God which will transform all of a person’s other relationships. To bring this Gospel dynamic to birth or rebirth, to make it grow and last, is precisely the aim of ongoing formation, which ends only on the day of our bodily death, the day of our birth into eternal life. (FG 1:80)

There is little doubt that the Spirit of Faith in its four parts, despite no mention of Champagnat, is embedded with his teaching and his spirituality; it is the spirituality that François received but has made his own. It is a combination of the necessary discipline of ascetical practices, as well as the mystical elements of an affective friendship ‘in sighs and tears’ of total surrender to a loving God for those who wish to grow their inner selves into being one with Christ. It is the journey to union with God, one of an integrated interiority that reflects the great mystical tradition

893 Ibid., 113–14. 894 Kellenberger, Dying to Self and Detachment, 32.

~ 174 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 of the Church; such a journey cannot be undertaken without a suitable environment and background.

The formative environment necessary for ‘the spirit of faith’

Very aware of the creatureliness of human beings, François knows that in God, grace abounds, yet also that human beings play a part in cooperating with that grace: ‘to second His grace by [their] own efforts.’895 That requires not only asking of God for a strengthened faith, but the constant, daily practice of living according to the ‘principles and divine teaching’ of that faith.896 The context, or environment, for such cooperation is the community and its mission exercised in its various ministries. The soil in which to grow the spirituality of a Marist interiority requires first ‘the holy exercise of the presence of God,’897 a practice Champagnat enjoined upon the brothers in his Spiritual Testament;898 the necessity of ‘assiduous’ study and reflection upon the sources of faith, and a love for the Eucharist which, in the contemporary world, needs an enlarged theology to mean more than Mass attendance or Eucharistic adoration.

Although François’s language is steeped in the spirituality of a different era, he nonetheless states the situation necessary to nourish the interior life:

We know by experience, that as long as we are fervent, nothing appears too difficult; the fatigues of teaching, the observance of the Rule, the practice of the Vows, become light and pleasant, or if we do feel the labour of it, the love of God makes it easy and agreeable. We have only ourselves to blame, if sometimes we find the yoke of religion too heavy … If we are what we ought to be, God will not fail to grant us the hundredfold promised. Let us, therefore, keep our engagements and He will keep His word.899 François speaks of authenticity: the integration of one’s inner experience with how it is expressed in the external world. This same integrity is expressed, not only in Merton’s life, but in his teaching on the vows:

What God seeks of us is His own image in ourselves. This image is not something that we can produce by our own efforts … It is already there. It is the simple reality of our true being as sons of God by grace. Our job in life is not so much to produce anything, as to be what we are supposed to be, to let the divine image come out and manifest itself in our lives by the way in which we live.900

895 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 74. 896 Ibid. 897 Ibid., 76. 898 Marist Brothers, C&S, p.167; see also Furet, Life, 312–13. 899 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 59. 900 Thomas Merton, The Life of the Vows: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 6, ed. Patrick F. O’Connell, Monastic Wisdom Series No. 30 (Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2012), 9. ~ 175 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

Here, both mentors of the inner life emphasise here what the recent Marist documents acknowledge but with insufficient emphasis: that human beings and all creation are nothing without God. It is by integrating one’s inner experience-in-faith with its outer expressions, that one begins to be divinised or, more expressly, Christified, as the Patristic writers clarified by their lives and by their teaching.

The practice of the presence of God

The ‘exercise’ of the practice of the presence of God was Champagnat’s preferred way to keep the proper perspective on life that kept anxiety in check. It required ‘believing with a firm and real faith that God is everywhere present, filling the universe with his immensity, with the works of goodness, with his mercy and his glory.’901 The underlying theology of such a spiritual practice is evident in François’s circular. The saints and mystics studied in Chapter 2 regarded the practice as their life-blood; Francis de Sales and Ignatius Loyola have had a significant influence on Marist spirituality where ‘seeing God in all things’ is reflected in the four-fold relationship one is to have with self, others, nature (and the universe) and God.902 First published during the inspirational period in catechism form, the Principles of Christian and Religious Perfection devotes a chapter to explaining the efficacy of the practice of the presence of God.903 Another way of drawing attention to an awareness of the presence of God is suggested by Thomas Keating in which he advocates the ancient practice of short, pithy statements of the desert abbas and ammas from the Psalms or the New Testament as ‘active prayer’ recalled in memory during one’s daily work that serves to keep alive the contemplative practice Keating advocates.904 In that vein, André Lanfrey draws attention to the Manual of Piety which comprises a series of maxims of Champagnat, as well as other material.905 Short maxims of founders and significant saints and mystics are a feature of the Christian mystical tradition from the desert fathers and mothers to the present era.906 While this publication was intended to establish a uniform method of prayer and

901 Furet, Life, 314. 902 Ibid., 312 n.1 Champagnat drew on the work of Alonso Rodriguez SJ and whose Exercicio de Perfección y Virtudes Cristianas informed the 1865 Marist Principles of Christian and Religious Perfection; see also Marist Brothers, RL, §38. 903 Marist Brothers, Principles of Christian and Religious Perfection for the Use of The Marist Brothers of the Schools (Little Brothers of Mary), 6th, revised and enlarged ed. (Grugliasco: Marist Brothers’ General House, 1934), 157–66. 904 Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel, New ed. with updates. (New York: Continuum, 2006), 133–35. 905 Lanfrey, “A Fundamental Work Which Has Been Forgotten: The Manual of Piety,” 49–55. 906 Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (New York, NY: New Directions, 1970); cf. “Saint Quotes That Will Fill You With Wisdom & Help You Lead A Better Life,” accessed June 10, 2020, http://www.famousquotes123.com/saint-quotations.html.

~ 176 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 formation for young brothers, an updated list of sayings in an appropriately 21st century theological idiom could have merit for the present era, so as to encourage a deeper interiority of Marist spirituality in Brothers of Mary.

By contrast, Merton’s spirituality was much broader than simply following the rules of a system that had ancient, fixed roots. From the tone of François’s circular, and more especially his notes, he had transcended the rules and was living a faith whose interior life was continually aware of the presence of God, within the four relationships of self, others, the natural world and God, even if expressed in the language and structured horarium of his day, where times for silence and a certain interior solitude were part of the structure of the day, laid down in the early Rule of 1837.

For Merton that presence of God was a continual presence he found, not only within the rhythm of the liturgy and his meditations, but within himself, as is clear in his journals when his comments are interspersed with prayer. That presence surrounded him in his openness to nature, in his love for the monks who were his responsibility and, despite the tensions, his love for the members of his community, including the abbot. The mainstay of the presence of God for Merton is silence:

Where this silence is lacking, … then there is much bustle and activity but no peace, no deep thought, no understanding, no inner quiet. Where there is no peace, there is no light and no Love. The mind that is hyperactive seems to itself to be awake and productive, but it is dreaming, driven by fantasy and doubt. Only in silence and solitude, in the quiet of worship, the reverent peace of prayer, the adoration in which the entire ego-self silences and abases itself in the presence of the Invisible God to receive His one Word of Love; only in these “activities” which are “non-actions” does the spirit truly wake from the dream of a multifarious, confused, and agitated existence.907 In terms of meditation Merton explained to Sufi scholar Abdul Aziz:

I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and His love. … it is centered on faith by which alone we can know the presence of God. One might say this gives my meditation the character described by the Prophet as “being before God as if you saw Him.” Yet it does not mean imagining anything or conceiving a precise image of God, for to my mind this would be a kind of idolatry. On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring Him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing Him as all.908 It is the combination of silence, stillness, and solitude, chiefly in the inner cell of one’s heart, that one can maintain the practice of the presence of God. Merton mentions Eckhart and the practice recommended by Brother Lawrence in the one sentence in his January 1966 letter to Aziz.909

907 Merton, L&L, 20–21. 908 Merton, HGL, 63-64, Merton’s emphasis. 909 Ibid., 61. ~ 177 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

In a general way, without the specific prescriptions of the early Rules (1837 and 1852) which François presumed, the Marist Rule of Life (2019) for Brothers expresses in up-to-date theology and language, in both an invitatory and challenging way how brothers are called to be prophetic mystics, but with an added sense of a resultant outreach or ‘return to the marketplace’:

Like Elijah, the prophet, never hesitate to be still and to cherish silence. Become aware of God’s presence in the gentle breeze or the quiet whisper (cf. 1Kgs 19:12). Each day put aside time to be with God and to discover the peace that you experience when you are in his presence. Let him speak to your heart; listen to the Spirit who cries out: Abba! (cf. Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15). By giving yourself the opportunity to experience intimacy with God in this way, you will come to understand the Divine mystery more fully, as well as the needs and concerns of those around you, and to respond with joy, confidence, courage. (RL 27)

The Institute invites the brother into the stillness and silence of his heart as did François as the foremost place to seek God’s presence,910 in order to be God’s presence both in the community and in the wider fields of ministry to poor young people (RL 32, 74, 81).

The necessity of studying spirituality

A greater portion of the ‘Spirit of Faith 4,’ circular is taken up with François’ chief concern, that of the necessity of spiritual reading.911 In today’s world, professionals in education, those who work in health, social services, the legal professions, including those in the trades and technology are expected not only to belong to a professional body, but to have regular periods of professional development in order to be practitioners in their field. However, for those who are professionally ‘Religious Brothers,’ they have been, for the most part left to themselves.912 In the period immediately following the canonization of Marcellin Champagnat in 1999, historians working in earnest returned to the origins of the Institute; they, and other theologians among the brothers and Lay Marists produced excellent documents such as Water from the Rock.913 Yet, apart from the

910 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 52. 911 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 76–92. 912 Marist Brothers, C&S, §95: 'Each one, led by the Holy Spirit and helped by the formation personnel, is the principal artisan of his own formation.' This writer has known several Provincial superiors who have expressed disappointment at the apparent lack of spiritual or theological reading of many brothers. 913 For some decades since Vatican II, at the Institute level, there have been international courses for brothers at mid-life and for those moving to their senior years. More recently there has been an effort to gather brothers internationally at each decade of their lives, so that those in their thirties, fifties, sixties also ~ 178 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5

Scriptural references, and the source documents of the Institute, there is little direct reference to the spiritual writers of the first 1,800 years of the Christian mystical tradition. While the precious heritage of that inspirational period is made contemporary by each generation,914 that heritage is, in fact, older than the two hundred or so years since the Little Brothers of Mary began in 1817; it is a heritage whose roots are in the Scriptures, through the Patristic writers and saints and mystics since those early days and including other spiritual writers and theologians to the present day.

In introducing the topic of spiritual reading François names several ‘masters of the spiritual life’ drawing on their wisdom,915 which demands that ‘careful reading and profound study of the word of God is the nourishment of the soul.’916 He suggests it should be an ‘agreeable occupation’ and is a necessity for a Religious; if it is displaced by other study or reading then brothers will lose the attraction to the spiritual life as they are increasingly taken up with ‘trifles, vanities, and countless extravagant thoughts’ forgetting that they are in fact the image of God.917 There is little integrity in such a distracted existence, making it difficult for the inner self to truly emerge; Merton urges his readers to recover the lost natural unity of being through a reintegration of the compartmentalised parts of one’s self,918 which involves both reflection, reading, and study.

No matter how good the Novice Master, François was aware that a novitiate was insufficient for the formation of an interior life that could sustain a brother throughout his life. Meditating on the Word of God and reading in spirituality he saw as the way to gain a more intimate knowledge and love of God;919 it has been the way since Pentecost. Not to do so is to remain ignorant of Christ;920 therefore, it becomes impossible to make Jesus known and loved, in following Christ as Mary did.921

François put particular emphasis on having the Brother Directors continue the formation of the young brothers. He reminded them that the future of the Institute depended on the solid

have an opportunity for renewal. The argument of this thesis suggests that in conjunction with those programs, brothers themselves need to take greater personal responsibility for enriching and deepening their interior life, aided by a programme of education in applied mystical theology. 914 Marist Brothers, WfR, 9. 915 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 76–78. 916 Ibid., 77. 917 Ibid., 81–82. 918 Merton, IE, 3. 919 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 84. 920 “Catechism of the Catholic Church - Sacred Scripture,” 133, n.112, accessed June 11, 2020, https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm; hereafter, CCC. 921 Marist Brothers, C&S, §2, §3. ~ 179 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority formation of the young brothers.922 This is no less an urgent need today, perhaps for all brothers. Twenty-first century millennials are too used to reading screens, rather than books, where a student does not get to know the whole thinking of a particular author.923 François was concerned that, like Eckhart, brothers should be so focused on their relationship with Jesus and Mary and the love God has for them that they will discover their own emptiness or nothingness, totally free and no longer clinging to anything.924 For such a formation in interiority and an education in allowing the inner self to freely emerge, Eckhart adds, ‘first there must be thought and attentive study, just as with a pupil in any art.’925 Not only is Eckhart echoed by François and Merton but also by 21st century formators and scholars of religious life:926 unless those in initial formation are formed to become ‘active mystics who are fired by divine love to seek a close union with Jesus and Our Lady’ then it is likely they will never be truly effective in their ministry of sharing the love of God.927 Len Kofler suggests:

when students enter deep into their own unique spiritual journey and understand the forward movement of that journey as outlined in the life and teachings of Christ and in the writings of the great mystics of Christianity, then … religious life [becomes] an enduring and exciting challenge.928 In any set of formation curricula ‘applied mystical theology’ must hold centre stage. Other subjects in the fields of biblical and systematic theology, pastoral studies, Christian ethics, Church History, communication skills and counselling are useful in the support of candidates’ inner journeys, no less so for all brothers. For a person to flourish in a deep interiority with Christ at the centre of her or his inmost self, applied mystical theology is of paramount importance.929 Otherwise, the person and the congregation risk spiritual bankruptcy with nothing to offer the contemporary world. For some, it may be already too late.

Both François and Merton were insistent on serious reading. While it is true that the classics of fiction can educate people in a formation for human relationships, and the necessity of

922 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 85. 923 Casey, The Art of Winning Souls, 5 Today's Generation, Areas Needing Special Attention, Formation to Lectio Divina and Prayer. 924 Eckhart and Walshe, 492; it is unlikely that Br François would have read Eckhart’s writings since he was regarded as a heretic despite the fact he was not condemned - only 28 of his more than 100 teachings were called into question. It is only in the 20th century that consistent, serious scholarship has restored his reputation as a theologian in line with the patristic saints and theologians; see “Eckhart: The Man,” Blog, The Eckhart Society, n.d., accessed June 13, 2020, https://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/eckhart-man. 925 Eckhart and Walshe, 492. 926 Sandra M. Schneiders, “Rethinking Religious Formation for the 21st Century,” Religious Formation Conference, last modified March 2018, accessed October 10, 2019, https://www.relforcon.org/sites/default/ files/articles/attachments/Rethinking%20Religious%20Formation%20March%202018.pdf. 927 Kofler, “Formation Today,” 295. 928 Ibid. 929 Ibid.

~ 180 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 confronting the various societal issues that have always been part of the nature of being human,930 spiritual reading needs a reverent approach where it is to be regarded as ‘a mirror to consider [one’s] faults and imperfections, to see how [one] should act, in order to correct whatever is defective … improve what is good, and advance in virtue.’931 Those ‘faults and imperfections’ are better translated in Merton’s terminology as the illusions of the false self, as was outlined in Chapter 3.

Above any other spiritual reading are the Scriptures, the gospels above all. Other masters of the spiritual life also need to be included,932 ancient, as well as modern. In quoting 1 Tim 4:13-15, François is insistent that no matter how busy brothers are, paying attention to reading and meditation are aspects of formation not only throughout life, but as the whole basis for any ministry.933 If a brother misses out on this essential aspect of formation for interiority, then his ministry to young people loses its effectiveness,934 which is the reason for the circular’s insistence that ‘the study of religion should hold the first place’ in the life of the vowed Religious.935 François regards the spirit of prayer as one and the same with the spirit of faith; toward the end of the fourth part of the circular, which is more Christocentric, he urges the study of the mysteries of Christ so that in contemplating Jesus’ actions, the time, place and person in each event, one can know the mind and heart of Christ. In meditating upon and penetrating each mystery it is possible, and even likely that the thoughts of Jesus become one’s own thoughts, his judgements become one’s own standards; in so doing, a person is stripped of their own ideas, their own illusions and therefore fully able to enter into the life of faith, ‘the life of the Son of God Himself (Gal 2:20 ).’936

Merton’s approach to the formation of interiority in his students, scholastics and novices alike, was to help them discover their true identity. His lessons made use of a Socratic method, bringing in the insights of his own research, study and experience. He re-designed the novitiate formation that included solid material on the vows, on the Christian mystics, the monastic tradition

930 Craig Larkin SM (RIP) in a talk to aspiring Marist Brothers in September 1971 insisted on the importance of reading novels (not thrillers), especially the classics of fiction, to better understand the nature of being human (author’s notes). 931 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 86. 932 Ibid., 88. 933 Ibid., 77. 934 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 20–23. 935 Ibid., 25; Gregory Ryan fms (RIP), a former provincial of New Zealand from 1978 to 1983, suggested once that the brothers' homes should have armchairs in the chapel since they spent so much time watching television, so then they might spend more time in prayer; on another occasion he opined that brothers should say publicly that they had stopped praying so that students and their parents would know not to take such notice of them; personal conversation in Greymouth, NZ, July 1982. 936 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 94. ~ 181 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority and the liturgy. He also included a broader education that involved his students in planting trees, appreciating silence and the beauty of nature, as well as literature and art in all their forms. He prepared notes for his students to enable his students to better understand Christian faith in a wholesome way, which may not have been their experience of Catholic culture before coming to the monastery, as John Eudes Bamberger explains:

[His focus was] explicitly spiritual, but based on exegesis and theological reasoning. He saw our greatest needs as getting to understand the Christian mystery in a wholesome and integral way, free from moralism and rigidity and a too negative approach. He also understood that we needed to get to know ourselves at a deeper level, get in touch with our feelings and intuition.937 Intuition and insight are key areas in the education and formation of an interior life. With most of his student monks having come from a ‘Western’ education system, more attuned to reason and logic as knowledge, Merton wanted them to get in touch with their intuitive selves. This can be a challenge to a formator of young men in their twenties and thirties, because the kind of knowledge that interiority demands is that born of experience and simple awareness, without analysis. Alongside the necessary cognitive dimension pertaining to faith education, the faculties of wonder, aesthetic intuition and the experiential awe of love in a contemplative relationship with God need to be developed.938 In a 1963 talk to novices, he speaks about experiencing God that captures this intuitive, rather than scientific, knowledge:

The natural knowledge of God is not purely that which you arrive to by reasoning ... There is such a thing as intuitive natural knowledge of God . . . [There] is this intuition of being, and not only a sense of one's own existence but a sense that everything exists; … [a] very strong experience of isness ... If you deepen that ... all that is … becomes completely transparent ... and you see ... somehow or other beyond all this being is Infinite Being … one sees that this Infinite Being is our Father, a person; so this kind of realization ... should be part of everybody's normal equipment.939 To be able to share one’s experience-in-faith in dialogue and openness to others, a demand made more necessary by the situation of the contemporary Church and society, requires a suitable qualification, not in terms of academic degrees even in theology or religious studies. What is required is an aptitude in which one has a thirst for the Word of God, a willingness to immerse oneself in meditation of that Word and a ‘fruitful life of prayer’ and liturgy, both at the personal and communal level, that ‘is not mechanical and punctilious but full of spontaneity and intuitive understanding;’ yet this cannot happen if one does not have the appropriate theological formation. One’s whole life should be ‘a pilgrimage to the sources of Christian truth.’940 Merton makes the

937 John Eudes Bamberger, as quoted in Thomas Del Prete, “The Contemplative as Teacher: Learning from Thomas Merton.,” accessed June 11, 2020, http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org/Heart/prete.htm. 938 Merton, L&L, 157; Merton, NSC, 13. 939 Del Prete, “The Contemplative as Teacher: Learning from Thomas Merton,” para. 9. 940 Merton, CWA, 194.

~ 182 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 very point François was emphatic about: ‘[all] our reading should tend, … to increase in us the knowledge and the love of God,’941 the goal of formation for the Christification of the self.942

Silence and solitude

The Formation Guide mentions silence specifically in only two articles related to the interior life: in terms of formation being an education to interior silence (1:20), where a novice ‘abandons himself to the Holy Spirit’ (4:215). Other references are to the location of the novitiate and the necessary awareness of what is expected in one preparing to enter the novitiate. However, ‘a certain degree of solitude and a great deal of inner space’ is called for if one is to be led by the Holy Spirit (4:196).

Solitude is part of the means to channel one’s ‘basic energy linked to sexuality and aggressivity’ in the way affection, friendships and the gift of self are lived out (4:210). Knowing how to live with solitude is part of the criteria for admission to vows (4:245). The deepest solitude is arrived at in the maturity of the ‘I’ (7:461, 462) when it is no longer a burden, not does it induce the fear of being abandoned. The Guide does not clarify if the ‘I’ is the ego, the self, or the Self, which is where Merton’s teaching on the false self, the inner self, and the true self-in-God offers a clearer perspective.

In terms of formation for a much deeper interiority, such as François and Champagnat before him indicated, the existential questions of being human need to be factored into the way the Guide speaks of silence and solitude. An associated human experience completely absent from the Guide is loneliness; neither the noun nor the adjective appears in the text. Yet it is a human reality that no one can live a lifetime without the experience of loneliness at one time or another. To go to that deep interiority, one will inevitably encounter loneliness which, like a friend, keeps company with solitude; as a friend, loneliness introduces yet another feeling – alienation – both of which are ‘deeply woven into the experience of solitude,’ leaving the footprints of an absent God.943 Merton speaks of what must happen:

Spiritual nakedness … is far too stark to be useful. It strips life down to the root where life and death are equal, and this is what nobody likes to look at. But it is where freedom really begins … [the] point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or poverty or failure. If you discover this nakedness, you’d better keep

941 Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 98. 942 Del Prete, “The Contemplative as Teacher: Learning from Thomas Merton,” para. 11. 943 Burton-Christie, “The Work of Loneliness,” 26. ~ 183 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

it private. People don’t like it . . . Society continues to do you the service of keeping you in disguises … is quite willing to strip you of this or that outer skin…944 Merton writes about solitude in a celebratory fashion and a creative opportunity in an essay on solitude,945 but mentions little about the loneliness and desolation of solitude,946 though in his journal he writes more fully of ‘a loneliness and a detachment that nothing can comfort and no one can satisfy.’947 Nevertheless, in this passage, there is a sense of the naked inner self being vulnerable, through stripping down what constitutes a person’s perception on what life is like and of who one is: an illusory self. People, and men in general, are uncomfortable about being vulnerable; yet, as Brené Brown suggests, when people hide themselves from ever feeling vulnerable, they close off other riches in their lives such as love and joy.948 Merton acknowledges the challenge and threat of facing one’s inner self in silence and solitude, which must be faced regardless of admitting the chasm between the depths of one’s being and the surface presentation of the self; the shallow, superficial self can never commit to authentic love. In the following paragraph Merton admits that avoiding and being afraid of silence and solitude is really about the fear of living life to its fullest:

If we are afraid of being alone, afraid of silence, it is perhaps because of our secret despair of inner reconciliation. If we have no hope of being at peace with ourselves in our own personal loneliness and silence, we will never be able to face ourselves at all: we will keep running and never stop. And this flight from the self is, … a “flight from God.” After all, it is in the depths of conscience that God speaks, and if we refuse to open up inside and look into those depths, we also refuse to confront the invisible God who is present within us.949 Such inner work requires struggle and endurance. This is the point where the advice of Br François may stimulate the courage necessary to face the struggle. He recommends that brothers take up the Scriptures, to think with Jesus’ mind (Phil 2:5), to endure with his endurance, and to face the solitude of the desert with his courage. It can be an opportunity to make use of the gift of imagination to consider the struggles of Jesus in facing the truth of himself and his calling as ‘Son of Man’ and God’s chosen (Mk 1:9-11);950 to draw strength from the One who is always present in a person’s experience-in-faith, even when God is perceived to be absent. Solitude and its accompanying silence is all the more necessary in the present era because the world, East and

944 Merton, L&L, 5. 945 Burton-Christie, “The Work of Loneliness,” 27. 946 Ibid. 947 Merton, SFS, 57–58. 948 Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. (Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 2010), 27-28/209. 949 Merton, L&L, 41. 950 Burton-Christie, “The Work of Loneliness,” 35–37; the writer draws on author Jim Crace’s novel Quarantine to illustrate the desolation and the range of feelings and experience of his Jesus character.

~ 184 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5

West, has become noisier and more distracted.951 While technology advances at a rate with which society’s ethical compass cannot keep pace, solitude and silence can address the submerged existential questions that people have.952 If humility is the compost to grow interiority, then solitude is the fertilizer enabling one to live in an atmosphere of silence, even in the midst of a busy street, a playground of squabbling students, or one’s own inner turmoil.953 In the stillness of one’s quiet heart, it becomes possible to hear the one Word of Love954 that is the breath of the Spirit in the soul, however the Wind blows.

Attention to and reflection upon inner experience

The challenge Merton offers Brothers of Mary is the meaning of silence beyond simply being associated with prayer or liturgical ritual learned in one’s early formation years. In the busyness of a ministerial life, Marist Brothers can forget they are firstly Brothers of Mary who, like her, are focused on Jesus in the fullness of his Incarnation.955 To be attentive to inner experience alone and in silence, requires firstly, an openness to experience in all its manifestations.

Openness to the variety of experience Chapter 3 examined several of Merton’s reported inner experiences which contributed to his conversion as well as his ongoing conversion as a monk. His journals illustrate that he was definitely open to his experience and that he reflected deeply on his internal world. He was not afraid to face the challenges that experiences offered him. Among those experiences were dreams; he first records the influence they had on him in late adolescence, resulting in a developing accusatory self-awareness:

Then I was proud and selfish and denied God and was full of gluttony and lust. I was so filled with all these things that even now the unhappiness of them does not leave me at all but keeps forcing itself back upon me in thoughts and dreams and movements of anger and desire. I am still full of that same pride and wretchedness which is very strong and very hard to get rid of because of the strength of self-will which weakens love and prayer and resists God.956

951 Merton, IE, 7. 952 Ibid., 26–27. 953 Merton, L&L, 21. 954 Ibid. 955 Cf. Rivat, “Spirit of Faith 1,” 25. 956 Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals, ed. Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo (Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 1999), 5, accessed July 1, 2015, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=204930 from his journal entry October 1, Perry Street, New York City. ~ 185 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

Merton pays attention to his thoughts, and emotions, but also his dreams, very probably in the images that also evoke emotions. His changed status in now being Catholic for eleven months brings about a retrospective view of his past life. His desire to ‘get rid of’ pride and wretchedness reflects, at this stage, the first fervour of conversion, where he is not yet ready to rest in the love of God, which the more mature Merton could do; being at ease with his sinfulness and flawed incompleteness, while knowing experientially the forgiveness and love of God.

Dreams, the consciousness of sleep To acknowledge that Merton has a role to play in deepening the interior life, suggests that dreams, as a manifestation of inner experience, should also be considered in a deeper Marist spirituality; Merton recorded his dreams. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to delve into the realm of sleep and consciousness, let alone the psychology and spirituality of dreams, though the biblical and early Christian historical evidence suggest they are phenomena that require discernment, as ways of divine communication available to human beings.957 Merton recorded many of his dreams, but with little sustained comment or analysis of them. An illustration of one to which he gave more attention will be sufficient for the purpose of this thesis, for dreams can be a kind of threshold into the mystical life; certainly, an entry into greater self-awareness and the rousing of the inner self to living a deeper interiority.

In his third year of working with novices, Merton records a dream, February 28, 1958; he introduces the dream by the mention of the previous day’s issues:

Yesterday turned into a day of frustrations—minor ones, anyway. But, after all these things, I had a dream. It may have had no connection with them whatever. On the porch at Douglaston I am embraced with determined and virginal passion by a young Jewish girl. She clings to me and will not let go, and I get to like the idea. I see that she is a nice kid in a plain, sincere sort of way. I reflect, “She belongs to the same race as St. Anne.” I ask her her name and she says her name is Proverb. I tell her that is a beautiful and significant name, but she does not appear to like it—perhaps the others have mocked her for it. When I am awake, I rationalize it complacently. “I loved Wisdom and sought to make her my wife”— Sophia (it is the sofa on the back porch) . . . No need to explain. It was a charming dream.958 Dreams bring together fragments of a person’s waking consciousness and put them together in a bizarre fashion. Weeks before this, Merton had been arguing with himself over his vocation as a Cistercian and had wondered if he was called to a more eremitical vocation. He had also been making a study of Russian Orthodox theologians and their work on the Wisdom literature of the

957 See notes 1 and 2 in the Preamble to this thesis. 958 Merton, SFS, 175–76.

~ 186 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5

Bible for some months, as well as studying the book of Proverbs for some weeks beforehand. The dream associates the young Jewish girl, Proverb, with the tool-shed of which he has had the use for some years and which he named ‘St Anne.’959 He had not been there for some time when he wrote this entry in his journal. There is also a sense of ‘coming home,’ perhaps to himself, suggested by the porch in Douglaston.960

Then, four days later, Merton ‘honours’ the dream,961 by writing a letter to Proverb in his journal, revealing aspects of himself that had been numbed:

Dear Proverb, … though there is a great difference in our ages and many other differences between us, you know even better than I that these differences do not matter at all … that it is as if they never existed. How grateful I am to you for loving in me something that I had thought I had entirely lost and someone who, I thought, I had long ago ceased to be. In you, dear, though some might be tempted to say you do not even exist, there is a reality as real and as wonderful and as precious as life itself. … I do not wish by my words to harm that which in you is more real and more pure than in anyone else in the world—your lovely spontaneity, your simplicity, the generosity of your love. … I treasure in you the revelation of your virginal solitude. In your marvelous, innocent love you are utterly alone: yet you have given your love to me, why I cannot imagine. And with it you have given me yourself and all the innocent wonder of your solitude. Dear, should I ask myself seriously if I will ever be worthy of such a gift? No, I am not—not because I could never probably be worthy, but because of my own love for you. And so, I give you everything. Dearest Proverb, I love your name, its mystery, its simplicity, and its secret, which even you yourself seem not to appreciate. Fortunately, Merton was serious about journaling. There are intimations in this journal piece that he has read Jung; it seems reasonable to assume that this represents a search for his soul.962 Then some weeks later he has that moment of unbidden, unexpected insight on the corner of Walnut and Fourth Street in downtown Louisville: it is as if his sleeping consciousness has prepared him for the moment.963 Robert Waldron presents his analysis of other dreams in which he suggests that Merton’s anima was presented in several different forms,964 which Merton anticipates: ‘I know that when I saw you again it would be very different, in a different place, in a

959 Ibid., 14. 960 Waldron, The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton, vii. Despite familiarity with Jung, I am more reluctant to analyse Merton's dreams based on the belief that it is only the dreamer her- or himself who can say fully what the dream means; that suggests the need for a living dialogue. As a dream practitioner (and member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams {IASD}) one can ask questions of the content and background which may contribute to the dreamer's interpretation. 961 Johnson, Inner Work, 196-199; Appendix C has a bibliography on working with dreams. 962 Waldron, The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton, viii. 963 Merton, SFS, 181–82. 964 Waldron, The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton, 75, 76, 81, 84. ~ 187 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority different form, in the most unexpected circumstances.’965 It would be eight years later when Margie Smith came into his life with healing and love which gave birth to new bursts of creativity, greater self-awareness and a more fervent, but realistic living out of consecrated love as a hermit within the community.966

Neither the Formation Guide, nor the Rule of Life mention dreams in the way Merton does, the latter only in terms of hopes and aspirations (RL §§12, 54, 59). Waking dreams do not enter into the spirituality of Br François. Nonetheless, dreams can be an opening into a deeper self- awareness and a step towards the transcendent. Merton may have confided his dreams to his confessor or friends like Wygal; he certainly used his journal to try and understand the meaning of the vivid ones, such as that about Proverb.

Trusting vulnerability as a means to encounter the divine ‘Faith-sharing’ is listed in the Guide as something to be planned for in the group- accompaniment that is part of initial formation before novitiate (FG 3:175), the only place it occurs. In the last two decades Institute-wide, brothers have been encouraged to be more creative in their prayer and to share their faith rather than simply reciting psalms at one another at the pace of a horse-racing commentator. If sharing faith is only about the latest piece of biblical or theological knowledge one has acquired, where the false self is on the stage, there is little chance of any deepening of one’s inner life, or the vibrancy of a community; sharing one’s faith on some passage of Scripture or other sacred writing needs to come from the heart and from the whole experience of the person rather than simply from retentive cognitive memory. Done this way faith- sharing does not engender greater trust in one’s community members (brothers and/or lay members), let alone greater trust in God.

More challenging, and involving a great deal of courage and trust, is the sharing of dreams. Because of their bizarre and sometimes embarrassing nature, people can be reluctant to share either the content of the dream or what they understand the dream to mean for them personally. To do so exposes one to feelings of vulnerability, and the accompanying fear of alienation or rejection. To share one’s inner experience at this level first requires an education in how to make sense of the

965 Merton, SFS, 182. 966 Two years after the love affair, Merton burns the letters from Smith, Merton, OSM, 157; Waldron has a cynical view of what Merton had done, suggesting it was the action of donning “the Catholic author mask” in which he had learned little from the relationship, whereas the action may well have been, and probably was, a kind of recommitment ritual, marking a significant shift to a humbler, more realistic self in one who was at this point more whole than he had ever been - Waldron also notes that Smith in relocating had lost Merton’s letters to her: Waldron, The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton, 172–73.

~ 188 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 imagery or voices that are part of the dream; one does not have to be a Jungian analyst to do this.967 Indigenous cultures have been taking dreams seriously for centuries.968 The early Christian Church also considered dreams as possible Spirit-guided pointers of direction, though not without discernment tested by the community.969 In terms of deepening the interior life, by a small group sharing their dreams (and at the same time their confusion, their hopes and aspirations, their joys and anxieties) trust grows. Trust only develops when people feel safe about feeling vulnerable; in a safe environment trusting others is easier and there is a consequent sense of knowing that God is a truly loving presence. Next to God’s presence and love in a vibrant Marist spirituality after the heart of Champagnat is confident trust in God.970 That sense of trust in God and in others does away with the traditionally male competitiveness that sometimes lies hidden in all-male communities. Instead, what enters into one’s heart and mind is a vitality and dynamism, despite one’s inadequacies and limitations, that engenders greater respect for others. Sharing experience- in-faith at this depth can only deepen and at the same time expand one’s heart in a greater openness to love of God and others.

Writing as a source of discovering the inner self Merton’s journal writing gives a greater insight into the man in his struggle for integration, leaving behind the false self he was constantly learning about, to allow the true self to emerge and to become one with the God of love, personified in the Christ of faith. Journaling became his saving grace that helped him awaken to the elements of his illusory self, so that experience-in- faith really did move him towards his true self-in-Christ. When a person begins novitiate, he should be aware that this is a very significant time in his life; it involves an intensification of his inner life. It would seem an appropriate time to begin a journal if one has not already done so. But the FG, the appropriate document for journal writing to be included, has only one mention of ‘keeping a spiritual journal’ (5:330) and only at a time when newly professed brothers are busy with studies and initial ministry options.

Writing and various artistic expressions of his inner life proved helpful to Merton, deepening his interior life, as he reflects occasionally:

967 Cf. Margaret M Bowater, Dreams and Visions: Language of the Spirit (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1999); Margaret M Bowater, Healing the Nightmare, Freeing the Soul: A Practical Guide to Dreamwork (Auckland, NZ: Calico Publishing, 2016); Patricia H Berne and Louis M Savary, Dream Symbol Work : Unlocking the Energy from Dreams and Spiritual Experiences (New York: Paulist Press, 1991). 968 Kathleen Deignan, “Dreaming Together with Wisdom,” The Merton Seasonal 38, no. 3 (2013): 5. 969 Robert Moss, The Secret History of Dreaming (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2009), 67–71. 970 Marist Brothers, WfR, §§16–18. ~ 189 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.971 Thinking at one stage that becoming a solitary would mean no longer keeping a journal he realises that the writing could be helpful for finding his direction in life.972 Three months later, after correcting the French proofs of his autobiography, Merton sees a change in himself:

[Writing] down what The Seven Storey Mountain was about was sufficient to get it off my mind for good. Last week I corrected the proofs of the French translation of the book and it seemed completely alien. I might as well have been a proofreader working for a publisher and going over the galleys of somebody else’s book. Consequently, The Seven Storey Mountain is the work of a man I never even heard of. And this journal is getting to be the production of somebody to whom I have never had the dishonor of an introduction.973 The change points to the value of journaling made all the more definite when he writes nine years later and distinguishes quite clearly the difference between his inner self with its shadowy side and his appropriately responsible exterior self:

To put more feelings into this Journal which is not for publication. And in which therefore I can speak freely. (But perhaps what I say for others is more controlled, more responsible, more objective, and therefore better…)974 His example provides a lead for Brothers of Mary to take up the serious venture of deepening their experience-in-faith through writing in all its forms, not in order to produce books, essays, dissertations or texts for ministry, so much as a way of developing their interior life through journaling.975

Developing an interiority open to the universal In the early 1980s in some parts of the Catholic world, parishes were beginning to take seriously the calls of the Church to ecumenism. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of New Zealand had worked together with the other mainline Christian Churches on a common version of the Lord’s Prayer in English and Māori until the Curia-imposed, exclusive language of archaic and

971 Merton, SJ, 204. 972 Merton, ETS, 453. 973 Ibid., 458. 974 Merton, SFS, 392. 975 Jim Martin, “Journaling as a Spiritual Discipline,” Leaven 2, no. 4 (1992): 25–28; Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. (London: Souvenir Press, 2012), the author suggests a daily practice of “morning pages” of continuous writing (as fast as the thoughts come) of at least thirty minutes; James W. Pennebaker and Joshua M. Smyth, Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain, 3rd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2016); Appendix C includes a list of other resources on journaling and creativity.

~ 190 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 frequently unintelligible English of an out-dated ecclesiology was introduced in 2010.976 Given the movement of the Spirit in the global Church, including its distant geographical regions which are not so Eurocentric, it is somewhat surprising that a formation for ecumenical attitudes only appears in the chapter on preparing Marist formation personnel (FG 7:478) and is not part of the formation of younger candidates and brothers. Any reference to inter-religious or inter-faith dialogue is completely absent in the same Guide. However, the Rule of Life does make a reference that is planetary in its outreach in terms of education, but presumes that it is an outcome of one whose sense of brotherhood is universal but earthed in a passionate love for God that is participatory and prophetic (RL §76) :

As Marists, we offer an education that helps young people to integrate life, faith, and culture. Consequently, we choose to make our ministries forums of human development and evangelisation that promote a committed, compassionate, inclusive, and transforming experience of learning. As one who shares in that mission, work to advance intercultural and interfaith dialogue as well as respectful and enriching relationships between cultures and religious traditions. Commit yourself to the work of solidarity and of social and ecological transformation, and invite others to join you in these efforts. (RL §77) Merton was certainly concerned with the ‘household of the faith,’ but his ecumenism went wider than the Christian Churches. Interreligious dialogue involves ‘the household and the spiritual family of [human beings] seeking the meaning of [their] life and its ultimate purpose.’977

Merton’s interest in religions of the East had a definite influence on his understanding of inner experience and contemplation to the point that some opinions have expressed doubt about his faith within the Catholic Church.978 However, John Eudes Bamberger who worked alongside Merton in the formation of young monks, is firm in correcting such opinions:

A careful examination of his extensive writings on this subject reveal that there is no basis for the opinion that Merton’s faith in the Church or in his Cistercian vocation was ever modified, much less weakened, by his interest in the East. His contacts with these traditions both by study and dialogue with members of these traditions certainly had an impact on his views of monastic life and

976 Gerald A. Arbuckle, Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad: Analysis and Pastoral Responses (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2017), 114. 977 Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters, 14th print. (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), x. 978 See, for example, Anthony E. Clark, “Can You Trust Thomas Merton?” Catholic Answers, accessed June 23, 2020, https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/can-you-trust-thomas-merton. ~ 191 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

contemplation. This influence was a wholesome one in that it led him to emphasize the fundamental simplicity and other central elements of the contemplative life.979 Merton’s letters illustrate the extent and sometimes depth with which he was able to engage with those of other faith traditions, like the Anglican Etta Gullick,980 the author Boris Pasternak,981 or the Zen master, D. T. Suzuki.982 In Zen and the Birds of Appetite, he comments on his exchanges with Suzuki:

Although Dr Suzuki accepted … that Eckhart does represent a profound, wide and largely orthodox current in Western religious thought: that which goes back to Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius and comes down in the West through Scotus Erigena and the medieval school of St. Victor, but also profoundly affected Eckhart’s master, St. Thomas Aquinas. Having come in touch with this relatively little-known tradition Suzuki found it congenial and was able to make good use of it. I found for example that in my dialogue with him … he was able to use the mythical language in which the Fall of Man is described, in the Bible and the Church Fathers, to distinct advantage psychologically and spiritually.983 Clearly illustrated in this example is Merton’s ‘concentrated mining of his own tradition,’ in his dialogue with Suzuki.984 The passage also demonstrates the importance of sound theological knowledge based on experience and study of the sources that are necessary for true dialogue. Even before he had been baptised, Merton showed an openness and respect for traditions and the people of the East, in his conversations with Bramachari; it was this open and honest exchange of mutual respect in his regard for his friend that Merton was so readily trusted by some of the best exemplars of Eastern traditions as D. T. Suzuki and the Dalai Lama.985 What is demanded, then, for Brothers of Mary who are increasingly becoming more global and intercultural, is not only a fascination with and respect for different cultures and faith traditions, but also a serious study of them, though not without a firm understanding of their own faith and spirituality; a more demanding basis for ecumenical, intercultural and interreligious exchange than has been hitherto familiar in cultures that are also predominantly Catholic. That means having the qualities of relationship Merton demanded of himself regarding his own tradition: ‘a critical sense and a constant willingness to open oneself in order to facilitate acceptance of the other, not through condescension or fear,’

979 John Eudes Bamberger, Thomas Merton: Prophet of Renewal, Monastic wisdom series no. 4 (Kalamazoo, Mich: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 63. 980 Merton, HGL, 340–80. 981 Thomas Merton, The Courage for Truth: The Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers, ed. Christine M Bochen, First eBook ed. (HarperCollins, 1993), Loc.2006-2145. 982 Merton, HGL, 560–71. 983 Merton, ZBA, 63–64. 984 John Wu, “Thomas Merton’s Inclusivity and Ecumenism; Silencing the Gong and Cymbals. - Free Online Library,” Cross Currents 59, no. 1 (2009): 29. 985 Bamberger, Prophet of Renewal, 64.

~ 192 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 regardless of the differences between persons or faiths, in order to recognise that the universality of being human makes dialogue not only possible but essential.986

Marist interiority amid the blossoming variety of inner experiences

Since the years before Vatican II many lay Catholics have struggled to find their identity in a highly clerical church where it was popularly understood that they did not have a ‘vocation,’ something that was the preserve of those who were priests or religious sisters and brothers.987 Since the Council, many have discovered their own Christian identity by attaching themselves to one or another religious order or congregation to the point that many religious congregations developed connections with alumni, or formed associations of varying membership: from volunteers, to associates, to companions, to partnership.988

Gathered Round the Same Table (GRST) is the product of lived experience. It is the development of the spirituality that resulted in the appearance of the Champagnat Movement of the Marist Family and the deepening of the spirituality of shared mission since the canonization of the Founder in April 1999.989 Other documents have been produced that include Champagnat Marists as they continue to develop formation programmes for becoming lay Marists of Champagnat, the most recent produced by the Secretariat of the Laity on formation, entitled Being a Lay Marist.990 The lived experience of being Champagnat Marists, brothers and lay, has resulted in communities like that of the Maristes Bleus (Blue Marists) in Aleppo, a community that includes brothers and lay, as well as those of other faiths.991 To some degree, this movement may have shaken the foundations of some brothers’ vocations, especially in areas of the world where the presence of the Marist Brothers has existed for over a century. As the educational ventures in many places need to acquiesce to the demands of various government ministries of education, a necessary bureaucracy is introduced, accentuated by situations such as the crisis of sexual abuse. Notwithstanding the necessary safeguards and prudent organization, too much attention to the

986 Wu, “Thomas Merton’s Inclusivity and Ecumenism; Silencing the Gong and Cymbals. - Free Online Library,” 31. 987 Marist Brothers, “Gathered Round the Same Table: The Vocation of Champagnat’s Laity” (Secretariat of the Laity, September 2009), 8, accessed October 10, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/En_torno_EN.pdf. 988 Ibid., 9–10. 989 Ibid., 14. 990 Marist Brothers, “Being a Lay Marist,” Secretariat of the Laity, last modified January 2, 2018, accessed October 14, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/000.php?p=571. 991 “SYRIA-Blue Marists of Aleppo,” Fondazione Marista per La Solidarietà Internazionale ONLUS, n.d., accessed June 24, 2020, https://fmsi.ngo/syria-blue-marists-of-aleppo/?lang=en. ~ 193 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority demons of risk-averse efficiency and policy output stifles the spirit of the inspirational period; the corporation model allows little or no room for the fresh breath of the Spirit’s spontaneity and call to return to and revivify the sources. On this point, Colin Chalmers draws on the wisdom of Max Weber:

Once fully established, bureaucracy is among the social structures which are the hardest to destroy. Bureaucracy is the means off transforming social action into rationally organized action … One of the decisive motives underlying all cases of the routinisation of [charism] is naturally the striving for security.992 The development of the corporate model of governance is certainly a feature of the Institute in the part of the world traditionally known as Oceania, a style of governance that can lead to a lack of transparency and a centralized bureaucracy in which many brothers sense they no longer have a voice. Losing touch with the charismatic inspiration of the beginnings risks the demise of Marist interiority as well as the identity and role of the brother. The General Chapter of 1967-68 restored the emphasis on the sources of the Marist heritage. The danger to Marist interiority is that if the Institute moves away again from its inspirational roots ‘into the iron cage,’ which represents the domination of bureaucracy,993 then the keys of inspirational freedom are likely to rust into a multi-national corporation more concerned about its holdings of status and prestige locally, regionally and globally. Perhaps unwittingly, even under the leadership of Br François, so faithful a disciple of Champagnat, the brothers had moved away from the original inspiration more mystical in its tone.994

The term ‘Marists of Champagnat’ which the Institute is now using recognises the partnership of the laity who feel called to respond to the Gospel in and through the charism of Marcellin Champagnat and the early brothers. Lay Marists do not see a future without brothers; neither do the brothers see a future without Lay Marists.995 The aging of brothers in the parts of the world with a long-established Marist presence might be seen as a sign that the charism is now in the hands of the laity. But, according to several Lay Marists, the brothers are a vital part of the future because of their zeal and singular commitment to Jesus in the way Mary, as first disciple, expressed her union with Jesus in the ordinary humble service of others.996 Nevertheless, it is not

992 Chalmers, quoting Weber in “Charism and Bureaucracy,” 44. 993 William J. F. Keenan, “Clothed with Authority. The Rationalization of Marist Dress-Culture,” in Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-Cultural Perspective, Dress, body, culture (Oxford, UK: Berg, 2000), 84. 994 Lanfrey, “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality,” 40–44; cf. Chalmers, “Charism and Bureaucracy,” 41. 995 Implied here is the need for a mutual recognition of each’s vocation and of the need to promote each vocation equally. 996 Phone conversation with two Lay Marists, Janet and Chris Webster, 24 June 2020.

~ 194 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 unreasonable for some brothers to wonder about the meaning of their vocation despite the appearance of the new Rule of Life.

Returning to a version of Champagnat’s original name for his young companions, a name preserved in the bronze cross many brothers wear, may reinforce the call to greater interiority; to be ‘Brothers of Mary’ among the Marists of Champagnat may serve also as a reminder of the ‘religious life’ dimension of the charism. While one Superior General called the brothers the ‘guardians of the charism,’ certain Lay Marists could equally lay claim to that descriptor.

Sandra Schneiders suggests that the religious life as a life-form is, as a sociological archetype, a type of virtuosity.997 What marks the brother’s vocation as distinct from the vocation of the Lay Champagnat Marist is its commitment to the search for God, in committed life-long, consecrated celibacy. It is different to but in no way superior to the lay vocation. To say, ideally at least, that the brother is a religious virtuoso is to say that the nature of his commitment is the life-long search for and identification with Christ as his primary commitment. As in an orchestra, a virtuoso violinist does not mean that person is better than the percussionist or the flautist; it is simply the extent of the time commitment, coupled with the desire to be the best they can be at their specialty, that distinguishes the person from their peers. A virtuoso instrumentalist may well be talented, but that talent is truly enhanced when surrounded by her or his fellow instrumentalists who form the orchestra; it is equally so with Religious Life in the Church. In every time and culture there have always been shamans or virtuosi of the ancient ways. It does not mean that the religious virtuoso is superior to other Christians in their particular vocational stance, nor that they, single or married, cannot also be virtuosi.998 It does, however, imply that the Marist religious virtuoso has a gift for and a specialisation in his particular field of endeavour,999 that is, the quest for Christ, following him as the ‘one thing necessary’ just as Mary did. Perhaps, then, referring to these consecrated men as ‘Brothers of Mary’ may remind brothers of their call to be virtuosi of inner experience, of interiorising the charism as they live and work alongside and among those who share their experience-in-faith as Marists of Champagnat.

997 Sandra M. Schneiders, Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context, vol. 1, Religious life in a new millennium (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), 32–36. 998 Cf. Frederic Ozanam, Edel Quinn, Evelyn Underhill, Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin 999 Schneiders, Finding the Treasure, 1:39. ~ 195 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority

Conclusion

This chapter began by juxtaposing two ancient Christian traditions: lectio divina and conversatio mores, by combining the two in a new way as conversatio divina: the ongoing conversion towards Christification. Just as this thesis began by examining inner experience from the perspective of the experience of the first disciples, the Patristic theologians and the mystics, saints and founders who had faced the illusions of what Merton would call the false self, so this chapter returned to where Marist spirituality began towards the end of its inspirational phase.

In the circulars of Br François to whom Marcellin entrusted the leadership of the first group, the spirituality of François himself, though not mentioning Champagnat, illustrated the depth of his own spirituality imbued as it was with the teaching and example of the Founder. In tracing the theology of the circulars on the ‘spirit of faith,’ the chapter brought out the theological emphases which illustrated that Marist spirituality originates in the long mystical tradition of the Church.

Thomas Merton’s insights were interspersed with that explication in which François voiced his concern that the brothers, for whom he was mandated as the Founder’s successor, would keep alive that spirit of faith which the Founder, and he himself intended: a spirituality that was earthed in following Jesus in the manner of Mary. It is a spirituality that emphasizes an ever-present, ever- loving God before whom human beings are mere creatures, but bathed in and surrounded by the all-loving providence of God. As François emphasised the nothingness of the human being, so too did Merton, though with specific focus on the necessary emptiness required in one’s inner experience; it is an emptiness that demands action on the part of the one who wishes to align with Christ through awakening to an inner self, by emptying out; detaching oneself from the masks and illusory selves that are the detritus of the ego.

Merton’s insights contribute to a formation for Marist interiority in his attention to all his inner experience, including dreams as the consciousness of sleep, as a way to further learn the wiles of the false self, as well as to discern the movement of the Spirit in one’s life. To enter into that kind of formation requires humility, about which Merton is in harmony with François and the greater mystical tradition. Like Eckhart and François before him, Merton insists upon reading and study centred on a sound theological, mystical tradition whose foundation is the Scriptures so that one’s inmost self-in-God becomes the Christ that St Paul proclaimed (Gal 2:20).

Merton’s journaling illustrates how keeping a journal can assist one in deepening self- awareness. His own journals give ample illustration of how, through seriously considering all his experience, he became in time less judgmental of himself and others. He became more aware of

~ 196 ~

Towards Deeper Interiority Chapter 5 the parts of himself needing ongoing conversion in his journey into Christ, becoming more whole, and ‘at home’ with himself. The more a person travels into their own life and story, the more one discovers that the image of God is deep within one’s soul; that is ‘both the beginning point and the destination.’1000 Such self-awareness makes for greater openness to all one’s experiences which, if shared with others, opens a person to feeling vulnerable. In a space where trust flourishes, vulnerability can open one even more than one imagines to a greater intimacy with God in love, immense joy and compassion; that is the goal Champagnat, François and Superiors General following François, wished for the Brothers of Mary. For the more deeply one immerses oneself in ‘the story of God,’ the more one’s life is filled with the love of Christ.1001 While humility is the nurturing soil of a deeper interiority in Marist spirituality, what Merton brings is an understanding that humility is an emptiness in which the illusions to which one is attached have to drop away or be emptied out so that one’s authentic self-in-God can emerge; a life-long exercise of trust and vulnerability where solitude and silence are the groundwork for the discovery of the inner-self.

However, silence and solitude are not enough by themselves. By themselves they would be a path to insanity or, at the least, the dissolution of a healthy self-esteem. Human beings are made for relationship and in a formation based on experience-in-faith, a community of disciples called Church at both local and universal levels, is the door that opens one to the encounter with Mystery, with God, Godself. However, that community of disciples is not only found in one’s present lived experience; the rich heritage of that community extends beyond the present post-Vatican II era, from the beginning of the Church through to the present, in the history of encounter with Christ centred on the Scriptures, but also through the wisdom writings of Christian mystics and saints. It also includes a range of ascetical practices, such as the Practice of the Presence of God or the Review of the Day and others suitable for the present era. Both Merton and François stress the importance of reading, and the study of the sources of Tradition; this is the lack that needs to be addressed if Marist Brothers (and by extension, Lay Champagnat Marists) of the future are to grow into a profound spirituality rooted in the sources.

However, being brother in the contemporary era has to be very different from the period in which older brothers joined the congregation in a Catholic subculture that stood apart from the hegemonic Catholic culture of the time in which they entered. In the post-modern and post- Christian world of the 21st century, being brother today calls for greater, ‘stand-alone’ interiority,

1000 Helen Cepero, Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Encountering God through Attentive Writing (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008), 9. 1001 Ibid. ~ 197 ~

Chapter 5 Towards Deeper Interiority where reliance on or absorption into the group is insufficient to sustain the development of one’s true self-in-God. Alongside Lay Marists, Merton’s inclusive and universal attitude of welcome and real, personal engagement with others, no matter their faith or circumstance, offers a way to live community with the heart of an energised and joyful Marist spirituality; a spirituality that requires a renewed emphasis on the formation of inner experience in an applied mystical theology, as is suggested in the concluding chapter.

~ 198 ~

Chapter 6

By way of a conclusion: towards a ‘school of Interiority’

This thesis began with experience, the experience of listening to a brother who had encountered the divine. The memory of that encounter had sustained him in his vocation as a Brother of Mary. That this kind of experience is so seldom shared among the brothers, or the fact that encountering God personally in one’s life is infrequently shared with younger men in formation could be addressed in a more intentional formation for Marist interiority. In a world where people yearn for the touch and taste of God in the tangibility of encounter, brothers are in a unique position to be bridge-builders between being fully human in the experience-of-faith on the one hand, and the lack of interest in any religious dimension to being human on the other. The latter condition is complicated by ignorance of what Catholic faith and social teaching is through an inadequate grasp of that Tradition where people may believe but not identify with nor belong to any church, a characteristic of the post-modern individual.1002 It therefore means a formation for deeper interiority is an urgent necessity. It is who and how brothers are, rather than what they do, that counts for those discerning their direction in life, whether or not that is a call to a specific vocation, such as that of vowed religious life. It is not enough, however, to just belong to a community. The call of the Church is clear: any profound interiority rooted in Tradition must be present and embodied in the world, God’s world, in which brothers find themselves. The first place of God’s presence is among God’s people, especially among those disregarded and on the edge, for this has always been the place where the Spirit of God breathes afresh, embodying Christ anew in every era and culture.1003 This is the context in which there is a need to ‘build’ a ‘school of interiority’ for Marist Brothers that provides a firmer foundation for the mission to make Jesus Christ known and loved.

Experience-in-faith as the foundation of a ‘school of interiority

Such a formation has to begin with experience that is at first personal experience, both of one’s inner reflective and imaginal world as well as happenings in one’s external world. It

1002 James Sweeney, “Religious Life Looks to Its Future,” in A Future Full of Hope? (Dublin: The Columba Press, 2012), 143. 1003 Ibid. ~ 199 ~

Chapter 6 By way of conclusion becomes, in the context of Christian discipleship, experience-in-faith through encounter with Jesus Christ as Risen Lord.

The type of experience examined in this thesis has been inner experience; it is reflection within one’s inner experiences that awakens one’s inner self. The inner self is that which, in the process of one’s psychological, emotional and biological development initially needs the ego to help in determining the personality and the boundaries of relationship a person has with self, others, the world and the Transcendent.

The experience of events associated with that human development towards adulthood is increasingly associated with the search for meaning, that is, reflection on what events or experiences mean in a person’s life and how they match with one’s worldview in terms of Ultimate Reality. In time, however, through experience-in-faith, the Christian disciple can recognise the limitations of such self-definition and interpretation. One discovers the illusory nature of such a constructed self, always a discovery in the challenge of having to let go in order to be authentic. What begins to emerge, then, is an inner self that is more real, grounded in experience-in-faith which includes attitudes of trust, openness and vulnerability, and therefore, an awakened openness to encounter with Mystery in the human-divine person of Jesus Christ. Encounter rather than experience becomes the path to the truly self-aware inner self in faith and hope, enabling one to recognise the illusory self; one’s true self-in-God is gradually revealed, and becomes the source of an ever deeper interiority.

Discernment through the test of Tradition

While one may speak of a particular event or moment in that experience-in-faith, that happening or ‘experience’ is in fact an interpretation; what must be discerned is whether or not the ‘inner event’ is an illusion, the fruit of a psychotic episode or genuinely an encounter with what is perceived to be divine. It must be tested through the Christian community and its Tradition. Such has been the wisdom of the long river of Christian mystical tradition and its many rivulets and streams from the first disciples of Jesus, through the apostolic period, the Patristic theologians, and the genuine mystics since. Included are many martyrs, saints and holy people, such as Marcellin Champagnat and his early companions, as well as, closer to the contemporary era, Thomas Merton.

The root source of testing by Tradition is the Scripture. For through the gospel of John and the letters of Paul, Christian interior life illustrates the way to become fully human, sharing in the divinity of Christ who shared in the humanity of disciples then and since. To take on the Christ-

~ 200 ~

By way of conclusion Chapter 6 life is to willingly surrender to the deification or divinisation explicated by the Patristic scholars East and West. From Irenaeus to Origen to Bernard, they are careful to point out that divinisation is God’s initiative and is therefore the sheer gift of faith, which later mystics, including François and Thomas Merton, point out.

Each of these exemplars of deep interior life, embodied their experience in their own historical context, though not without conflict and various trials, through which mystical theology was further refined and clarified in contexts that differed from the Semitic and Aramaic origins of Christianity. While the monastic tradition of the first millennium held fast to the mystical tradition begun with the early Church, the second millennium gave birth to new expressions of incarnational Christian mysticism in theologies that made the encounter with Christ available to a wider circle of disciples. Those expressions included elements from Spain and France, which influenced the plethora of new congregations in those countries, and from which spring the stream that is Marist spirituality in the footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat. It became clear that with Ignatius of Loyola, with de La Salle, de Sales, Olier and others that contemplation was no longer the reserve of monks and nuns but had come to the marketplace to find expression among all Christians (and not simply those who were Catholic).

Thomas Merton, who was at the cutting edge of his own Cistercian tradition stood on the edge between tradition and renewal but was firmly earthed in the mystical tradition on the one hand, and on the other, the modern psychologies and the burgeoning challenges of the changes and ressourcement brought about by the paradigm-shifting wind of the Spirit at Vatican II. Through the storms of such change, Merton’s commitment to the search for God in religious life, opened him up to deep contemplation and, at the same time, becoming his true self in Christ. His life and writing re-awakened in many the desire for true intimacy with God in Christ; he enabled others to claim their own experience as a way to make sense of their own interior life and faith.

Incarnational inner experience as the path to deeper interiority

Merton’s grounding in the deep mystical tradition taught him that experience-in-faith best happened through a daily contemplative practice in the necessary atmosphere of community prayer, liturgy, reading and study. The foundation for such is an attentive listening to one’s experience in all the ways one notices, including those of thought, emotion and imagination. Merton’s capacity for reflection was enhanced by the simple act of writing, by which he could gain a much greater self-awareness, be enriched by his relationships with the members of his community and as well, by his correspondence with a wide range of people.

~ 201 ~

Chapter 6 By way of conclusion To listen attentively to one’s experience is a necessity for reflecting upon that experience but in the light of the mystical background gained through the Scriptures as prime source and including the teachings of the mystics and saints since. He willingly acknowledged that there were truths to be found through the other great writings of the other great faith religious traditions, as he exemplified in his writing and correspondence with other Christians, both Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant as well as those scholars from Islam, Zen Buddhism, and including other seekers open to exploring the meaning of being truly human.

If experience-in-faith towards deeper communion with God is a journey, then the two essential hiking sticks are solitude and silence. These tools for the journey are aimed at bringing one into the unknown territory of the self in order to discover there the hindrances to becoming truly authentic in the emergence of the true self. Merton uses the term false self which is all that is illusory in one’s perception of one’s self; the true self is that inner self which resides in an emptiness that no longer has the masks of the virtual self within. This demands a great deal of courage, combined with the endurance necessary to face the loneliness of the journey. Though it is a life-long process, nevertheless, the person gains a glimpse of their inmost self-in-God, and at the same time encounters the Divine indwelling (who resides in that emptiness), which is an encounter with Love. It is Love by which the inner self is transformed: by being loved and at the same time, loving. In that transformation a person grows in openness to all their experience, in the world of nature, in relationships and with the ability to see God in all things.

Through a ressourcement of the re-spirited original charism

Since the mid-1980s Marist scholars have done much research into their original documents to arrive at a new understanding of the Founder, Marcellin Champagnat and his first companions. Marcellin saw the need for brothers who as vowed religious men would be passionate about love for Jesus and Mary and educating young people at the margins of faith and society to love and serve God and people. Included in the aggiornamento of the Church’s Vatican II call, ressourcement has to do with ‘returning to the sources’ and defining for today the reason for being brother, what that means within the Marists of Champagnat, for brothers, both individually and communally; it then requires brothers to embrace that way of being brother, committing to it ‘stubbornly, fiercely, joyfully,’ and more significantly for the present era, ‘unapologetically.’1004

Underpinning such a course is a deep trust in God, exemplified in Champagnat’s approach for which humility based on the example of the Mother of Jesus moves one towards the necessary

1004 “Ressourcement | About the Name,” n.d., accessed September 2, 2020, https://ressourcementinc.com/about-ressourcement/about-the-name/. ~ 202 ~

By way of conclusion Chapter 6 emptiness of time-centred illusions in order to be filled with God in the heart of Christ by the breath of the Spirit. A brother then becomes fully a brother for others because his love is centred on the embodied Christ in the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Redemption, and the Eucharist. The love engendered by such an interior life is expressed in love for those the brother mentors and educates, especially those at the peripheries. At the same time, his ministry needs to strike a balance between the social action of loving others and the contemplative dimension, which ensures that a brother is truly who he claims to be: an authentic son of Champagnat who becomes Christ for those he serves.

The building blocks of a ressourcement ‘school of interiority’

As one whose writing in the 20th century is as relevant in the present century, Thomas Merton can make a significant contribution to the construction of such a school of interiority. Like Br François, Merton had a sound basis for his own interior life based on experience, as Origen and Bernard taught. That basis is framed by the mystics and saints, who were also theologians who drew on the traditions of disciples encountering Christ. What developed was mystical theology, which is the theology of encounter with the Divine, in which a person becomes fully human discovering that their true self in that inmost self-in-God.

The cornerstone of such a school, therefore, is what must be called ‘applied mystical theology.’ It is ‘applied’ because this is what must sustain brothers in their very active, yet apostolic, life. It is all the more necessary because younger generations are searching for substantial meaning, the kind that will have a lasting impact on their lives; brothers formed in a solid Marist interiority, such as indicated by the emphases of Br François or Thomas Merton, are the kind of brothers that those they serve will seek out, as younger generations strive to find meaning in a rapidly changing world.

The atmosphere of living brotherhood as Champagnat, and then François intended, means that there is focused, and serious attention given to the study of one’s spirituality; this is fostered among brothers as each endeavours to deepen their knowledge of their inner self, together with the mysteries that form the complex of the Christian faith in the mystical tradition. On this, François is directly insistent and such study is implied in the writings of later Superiors General. This is the ‘professional development’ (PD) that has priority over other PD related to brothers’ ministries.

~ 203 ~

Chapter 6 By way of conclusion Elements of the ‘curricula’ The anthropological background of the present Formation Guide already provides a firm basis where the aspects of human formation contribute to a spirituality of interiority. Merton contributes towards the psychological dimension in his distinction between the interior and exterior self, and then in the false (virtual) self and the true self. But his contribution is considerable in developing an interiority based on a contemplative discipline and practice. What follows are a series of points, previously detailed in the sections on both Merton and François

Solitude and silence. Both solitude and silence can be new experiences for emerging generations, and even for brothers not so new in their vocational stance. Even so, an education to these disciplines is needed in a way that links the Marist to their origins, not only in the broad themes of their heritage, but also in their purpose in the mystical tradition. There are creative ways of exploring these aspects of interiority as brothers endeavour to draw closer to the Jesus they make known and loved.

Writing

Merton, as well as François, in his retreat notes, illustrates the value of writing as a means of coming to greater self-awareness, and entering deeply into the knowledge of the Scriptures and other reading on the interior life. However, there are other creative ways, as Merton illustrated in his drawings or calligraphic sketches. Journaling is best considered over time and has to be regular to be of any real benefit. Its advantage is that it is for oneself alone, which enables one to concretise their thinking and feeling; in a very real sense a person is able to look at their experience more objectively in the act of writing and reading. Its value is further given emphasis in the autobiographies and writings of mystics and saints, like Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse Martin and others.

Dreamwork

The Episcopal priest and analyst, Bob Haden, considers dreams (or alternately conscious moments in the waking life) to be God’s unopened letters.1005 If the prophets had not paid attention to their dreams or visions, then disciples would not have been able to discern their own call and direction in following Christ. If Peter had not shared his dream-like trance, Christianity would have remained, at best, another Jewish sect. Spiritual directors and therapists often make use of the dreams their directees may experience as they follow their own journeys in the spiritual life.

1005 Robert L Haden, Unopened Letters from God: A Workbook for Individuals and Groups ([Flat Rock, NC?]: Haden Institute, 2010). ~ 204 ~

By way of conclusion Chapter 6

The challenge of dreamwork in a group provides an opportunity to trust. That trust requires courage because the bizarre nature of dreams or visions (which may only be an audible inner voice) opens a person to vulnerability. But the attitudes of trust and courage, and the emotion of vulnerability are the very dimensions that open one further to the Spirit of God at work in the soul; it can mean then that the inner self loses its inhibitions or the masks of the constructed self, and is therefore more receptive to the movements of the Spirit drawing one closer to Christ. Appendix C examines, albeit briefly, how valuable dream sharing can be.

The Marist Sources Marist historians, investigators and translators have provided some rich material for students of Champagnat’s charism. However, some of the early writing, particular that of Br Jean-Baptiste’s Avis, Leçons, Sentences, could be made available in a simpler style with a more up-to-date theology.1006

Interfaith dialogue and participation As Merton grew through solitude and silence as well as in his ministry as formator of young monks, he paid close attention to his own experience-in-faith within his own tradition. As he opened himself to Love, through the experience of ‘falling in love’ and in the ‘holding environment’ of his hermitage within the monastic community, he was also able to listen to the experience of others, including those of other religious traditions. A ‘school of interiority’ also demands engagement with other traditions in a programme that includes, where possible, various faith traditions working together on shared projects.

With Champagnat Marists as ‘Brothers of Mary’

In a post-Vatican II Institute, the formation of a community with Lay Champagnat Marists, even a community without walls, is needed to bring new life to the charism of Champagnat in which brothers and Lay share in being Marists of Champagnat. Both brothers and lay need to be wary of falling prey to the bureaucratic warlords of society and Church. Fratres Maristae a Scholis was the name Rome pronounced upon the Institute. Returning to the original name, one that Champagnat used, could be simplified as ‘Brothers of Mary,’ to keep fresh the original intention of Champagnat which François also endeavoured to maintain. Recognising that the charism with

1006 An excellent example of this is by William Meninger and St Francis de Sales, The Committed Life: An Adaptation of The Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales (New York: Continuum, 2000). ~ 205 ~

Chapter 6 By way of conclusion which the Spirit endowed Champagnat and his companions, belongs to the whole Church, it is the witness of the ‘Brothers of Mary’ who keep alive the ‘consecrated life’ dimension of the charism, serving the Mystery in which all share.

Next to the awe of the Mystery in a person’s life, one can recognise that a human being is nothing as Br François and the mystics before him claim. He and they are right. A human being is no thing. Once a person recognises this, that one is no thing, then a person can never say ‘I am experiencing God,’ because that makes God into an object that the ‘I’ has possession of. In the depth of Christian faith no one, no thing can ever possess God; that statement indicates ownership and is therefore idolatrous. The clay pot, however cracked or blemished, can never own the potter. Only the potter can claim such a relationship, and the pot remains a thing, albeit an expression of the artist’s talent, skill and imagination. Yet, the living soul of a human being is altogether different because, created out of nothing, the soul has a space where nothing resides, le point vierge, according to Merton; that is, the space cleared of the illusory self to which a person is usually too attached.

Thus, a person, the created, cannot possess their Creator; one can only be possessed by God. And then a person can say, very carefully and only momentarily, in one of those sudden, unbidden moments of transcendence, ‘I am God experiencing Godself.’ A person then gets a glimpse of seeing oneself in God, and God who abides in that space of nothingness in the soul, sees Godself in the person become fully alive in the glory and love of God. In that sudden moment of transcendent insight, which is always transient, where a person can echo the name of the immutable, ever-provident, unknowable Lover, God dwells in the person in and through the heartbeat which embodies the Christ; in the breath, the life-force and creativity of the Spirit; and earthed in the very ground of their being that is the Father. In this way a person has, in their essence, become Love, loved, and loving; this is the transformation of the self, one’s inmost self-in-God. This is the goal of a formation for Marist interiority in Brothers of Mary, exemplified in her humility, her emptiness so that God can be all in all.

~ 206 ~

Epilogue The mysticism of inner experience from which mystics speak is not an empirical science. Instead, it is a subjective science from which meaning emerges experientially through human interaction which occurs through relationships human beings have with other subjects: it is intersubjectivity that brings about meaning.1007 Being subjective does not mean it cannot be tested or verified by certain criteria including art, symbol and language, all of which involve the lives and actions of other human beings throughout history to the present. Inner experience is largely part of persons’ non-material, non-rational world, where the inner ‘experience’ of God can be communicated through symbolic converse presented in ways that fuse feeling and knowing, albeit incompletely.1008 It means, therefore, that the ‘last word’ of this thesis does not belong to the field of academia, even if it is theology, but rather to the world of literary art which endeavours to express the inexpressible, in a poem penned after the privilege of receiving someone’s encounter with Mystery.

…following…

1007 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 14, Collected works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: Published by University of Toronto Press for Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College, 1988), 55–56. 1008 Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Inner Experience in Christian Mysticism,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1, no. 2 (2001): 156. ~ 207 ~

Abrupt and interrupted to fellow Christ-bearers Sun strike suddenly sears my December soul awaiting joy unexpected. My Son-struck brother humbles me, sitting there with eyes too full of Mystery, just now without the language, too dumb struck to tell the truth of Love whose language is breathless And that IS ALL there IS: ALL IS LOVE IS ALL and all else pales. A wordless shout disrupts the din of doing, the mess of yearning years abruptly halted, fathomed with silent tears mourning a lifetime frenetic and fruitless. That shout becomes the voice across the wilderness – the lover’s voice whispered to the beloved, full of promise and wonder: the lovers’ exchange and midnight refreshment. Death becomes the key to midnight heaven’s splendour Sketch by Juan de la Cruz where Love is all in all, the only language that captures, snares, nay, seduces and’s wordlessly caught as I AM in the language of God: Kevin Dobbyn, 14 December 2013 S i l e n c e. Feast of St John of the Cross

~ 208 ~

Bibliography Adams, Kate, B. J. Koet, and Barbara Koning. Dreams and Spirituality: A Handbook for Ministry, Spiritual Direction and Counselling, 2015. Aelred of Rievaulx. Aelred of Rievaulx: Spiritual Friendship. Edited by Marsha L. Dutton. Translated by Lawrence C. Braceland. Cistercian Fathers series no. 5. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2010. Aithal, Sreeramana. “Innovations in Experimental Learning – A Study of World Top Business Schools.” Munich Personal RePEc Archive, no. Paper No. 71748 (May 2016): 5–6 of 16. Allen, John L. “Benedict Battles the ‘Dictatorship of Relativism.’” National Catholic Reporter, September 16, 2010. Accessed April 30, 2020. https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr- today/benedict-battles-dictatorship-relativism. Arbuckle, Gerald A. Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad: Analysis and Pastoral Responses. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2017. Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh; New York: Canongate, 2008. Accessed October 24, 2019. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=5723 20. Athans, Mary Christine. In Quest of the Jewish Mary: The Mother of Jesus in History, Theology and Spirituality. Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 2013. Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2019. Accessed July 12, 2019. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=5717437. Aumann, Jordan. Christian Spirituality in the Catholic Tradition. Ebook in pdf format. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Media Release - 2016 Census: Religion.” c=AU; o=Commonwealth of Australia; ou=Australian Bureau of Statistics, June 27, 2017. Last modified June 27, 2017. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/mediareleasesbyReleaseDate/7E65A144540551D7 CA258148000E2B85. Balko, Alexandre. “Father Champagnat and the Formation of the Brothers.” Marist Notebooks, no. 3 (May 1992): 25–76. ———. “The Spiritual Testament of Father Champagnat.” Marist Notebooks 6 (December 1994): 61–70. Bamberger, John Eudes. Thomas Merton: Prophet of Renewal. Monastic wisdom series no. 4. Kalamazoo, Mich: Cistercian Publications, 2005. Bass, Randall V., and J. W. Good. “Educare and Educere: Is a Balance Possible in the Educational System?” Educational Forum, The 68, no. 2 (2004): 161–168. Bayer, Oswald. “Tillich as Systematic Theologian.” In The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, 18– 36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Bearsley, Patrick J. “Mary the Perfect Disciple: A Paradigm for Mariology.” Theological Studies 41, no. 3 (1980): 461–504. Beauregard, Mario, and Denyse O’Leary. The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. New York: HarperOne, 2008. Beeley, Christopher A. “Christ and Human Flourishing in Patristic Theology.” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 25, no. 2 (May 2016): 126–153.

~ 209 ~

Bibliography

Belden C. Lane. “Merton’s Hermitage: Bachelard, Domestic Space, and Spiritual Transformation.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 4, no. 2 (October 8, 2004): 123–150. Benner, David G. Spirituality and the Awakening Self : The Sacred Journey of Transformation. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2012. Berk, Fatih Mehmet. “The Role of Mythology as a Cultural Identity and a Cultural Heritage: The Case of Phrygian Mythology.” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 225 (July 14, 2016): 67–73. Berne, Patricia H, and Louis M Savary. Dream Symbol Work : Unlocking the Energy from Dreams and Spiritual Experiences. New York: Paulist Press, 1991. Berry, John Anthony. “What Makes Us Human? Augustine on Interiority, Exteriority and the Self.” Scientia et Fides 5, no. 2 (August 24, 2017): 87. Bireley, Robert. The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450 - 1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation. European history in perspective. London: Macmillan, 1999. Blosser, Benjamin P. Become like the Angels: Origen’s Doctrine of the Soul. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012. Boothe, Brigitte, and Dragica Stojkovic. “Communicating Dreams: On the Struggle for Reliable Dream Reporting and the Unreliability of Dream Reports.” In Unreliable Narration and Trustworthiness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 415–428. E-Book. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. Accessed March 15, 2018. https://sci.libgen.pw/item/adv/59e686ec3a04465a5e4765. Boroditsky, Lera. How Language Shapes the Way We Think. Ted Talks, 2017. Accessed October 9, 2019. https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think. Bowater, Margaret M. Dreams and Visions: Language of the Spirit. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1999. ———. Healing the Nightmare, Freeing the Soul: A Practical Guide to Dreamwork. Auckland, NZ: Calico Publishing, 2016. Brambila, Aureliano. “Basilio Rueda Guzman, Marist Brother of the Schools.” Marist Notebooks 34 (May 2016): 87–96. Brown, Brené. Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. First ed. New York: Random House, 2017. ———. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. Center City, MN: Hazelden Publishing, 2010. Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988. Bruteau, Beatrice, and Ilia Delio, eds. Personal Transformation and New Creation: Essays in Honor of Beatrice Bruteau. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2016. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Ronald G Smith. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958. Bucke, Richard Maurice. Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind. Philadelphia: Innes & Sons, 1905. Bulkeley, Kelly. “Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice.” Anthropology of Consciousness 7, no. 2 (1996): 1– 15. ———. Spiritual Dreaming: A Cross-Cultural and Historical Journey. New York: Paulist Press, 1995. Burton, Patricia. “Merton Vade Mecum: A Quick-Reference Bibliographic Handbook.” The Thomas Merton Center, 2016. http://merton.org/Research/Resources/Merton-Vade-Mecum-4th.pdf. Burton-Christie, Douglas. “The Work of Loneliness: Solitude, Emptiness, and Compassion.” Anglican Theological Review 88, no. 1 (2006): 25–45.

~ 210 ~

Bibliography

Calhoun, Adele Ahlberg. Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us. Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Accessed June 21, 2020. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=2036506. Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. London: Souvenir Press, 2012. Accessed July 19, 2017. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=895534. Cameron, Julia, and Emma Lively. It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again: Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond, 2016. Accessed July 19, 2017. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=11480 26. Casey, Michael. “Bernard’s Biblical Mysticism.” Studies in Spirituality 4 (1994): 12–30. ———. “Reading Saint Bernard: The Man, the Medium, the Message.” In A Companion to Bernard of Cloairvaux, 62–107. Boston: Brill, 2011. ———. The Art of Winning Souls: Pastoral Care of Novices. Kindle. Monastic wisdom series no. 35. Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications: Liturgical Press, 2012. Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2019. Cepero, Helen. Journaling as a Spiritual Practice : Encountering God through Attentive Writing. Downers Grove Ill.: IVP Books, 2008. Chadwick, Henry. Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen. Repr. of the 1. ed. 1966, First issued as a paperback. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. Chalmers, Colin. “Charism and Bureaucracy.” Champagnat: an International Marist Journal of Education and Charism 11, no. 1 (May 2009): 38–47. Champagnat, Marcellin. Letters of Marcellin J. B. Champagnat 1789-1840: Founder of the Institute of the Marist Brothers. Edited by Paul Sester. Translated by Leonard Voegtle fms. Vol. 1. Rome: Casa Generealizia Dei Fratelli Maristi, 1991. de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard. The Human Phenomenon. Brighton: Sussex Academic, 2003. Ciorra, Anthony J, and Michael W Higgins. Vatican II: A Universal Call to Holiness. New York: Paulist Press, 2012. Accessed November 20, 2019. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=58770 4. Ciraulo, Jonathan M. “Divinization as Christification in Erich Przywara and John Zizioulas: Divinization as Christification in Erich Przywara and John Zizioulas.” Modern Theology 32, no. 4 (October 2016): 479–503. Clark, Anthony E. “Can You Trust Thomas Merton?” Catholic Answers. Last modified January 2008. Accessed June 23, 2020. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/can-you-trust-thomas- merton. Cline, Austin. “Einstein Says Religion and Science Are Driven by Mystery.” Learn Religions. Accessed July 6, 2019. https://www.learnreligions.com/einstein-quotes-on-mystery-249860. Clisby, Edward. Far Distant Shores: The Marist Brothers of the Schools in New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and Kiribati 1838-2013. Auckland, New Zealand: New Zealand Marist Brothers Trust Board, 2017. Coelho, Paulo. “Rumi’s Wisdom.” Paulo Coelho. Last modified October 1, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2019. https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/10/02/character-of-the-week-rumi/. Cohn-Sherbok, Dan, and Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok. Jewish & Christian Mysticism: An Introduction. New York: Continuum, 1994.

~ 211 ~

Bibliography

Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. “Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church.” CICLSAL, December 15, 2015. https://nrvc.net/268/article/identity-and-mission-of-the-religious-brother-in-the-church-3733. Conner, James. “Thomas Merton: A Prophet for the 21st Century.” The Merton Seasonal 20, no. 3 (1995): 4–8. ———. “Thomas Merton and the Body of Christ.” The Merton Seasonal 32, no. 3 (2007): 15–17. Contributor. “Australia Sees Drop in Catholic Population of 2.7% between 2011-2016.” Crux, April 7, 2019. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://cruxnow.com/church-in-oceania/2019/04/australia-sees- drop-in-catholic-population-of-2-7-between-2011-2016/. Cox, Harvey G. The Future of Faith. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 2009. Accessed July 15, 2014. http://www.contentreserve.com/TitleInfo.asp?ID={243F1527-3517-49C8-B157- 583909324C28}&Format=410. Creevey, Paul. “Forged in the Furnace of God’s Love: The Influence of St Francis de Sales on the Spirituality of St Marcellin Champagnat.” Marist Notebooks 37 (May 2019): 5–23. Cunningham, Lawrence S. “Who Was St. John of the Cross?” America Magazine. Last modified January 30, 2006. Accessed November 14, 2019. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2006/01/30/who- was-st-john-cross. Dahill, Lisa E. Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation. Eugene, OR.: Pickwick Publications, 2009. Dave Dobbyn - Topic. A Long Way Across Town. Vol. Anotherland. Auckland, NZ: 49 Murdoch St, 2017. Accessed June 19, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8hOzAvhAk4. Davies, Paul. The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order the Universe. Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2004. Deignan, Kathleen. “Dreaming Together with Wisdom.” The Merton Seasonal 38, no. 3 (2013): 3–10. Dekar, Paul. Thomas Merton: Twentieth-Century Wisdom for Twenty-First-Century Living. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2012. Accessed May 13, 2019. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/detail.action?docID=3328470. Del Prete, Thomas. “The Contemplative as Teacher: Learning from Thomas Merton.” Accessed June 11, 2020. http://www.thomasmertonsociety.org/Heart/prete.htm. Delio, Ilia. Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness. Catholicity in an evolving universe. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015. ———. The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love. Kindle. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013. Delorme, Alain, and Jean-Baptiste Furet. Marvellous Companions of Marcellin Champagnat. General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2011. Accessed September 11, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/livros_recebidos/FMSMeravilloscompaneros_EN.pdf. Deville, Raymond. The French School of Spirituality: An Introduction and Reader. Translated by Agnes Cunningham. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1994. Dobbyn, Kevin P. “I Aoni Kawaira: Towards an Inculturation of Marist Spirituality in Kiribati as Received in the Charism of Marcellin Champagnat.” M. Theol, Melbourne College of Divinity, 1997. Dojčár, Martin. “The Phenomenon of Consciousness from the Perspective of a Comparative Study of Mysticism.” Studies in Spirituality 23 (2013): 1–11. Donnelly, Doris. “Knowledge.” The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1993.

~ 212 ~

Bibliography

Doyle, Brian. Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace. Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2017. Dunne, Tad. “Experience.” In The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, 369–76. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. Eckhart, Meister, and Maurice O’C Walshe. The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart. New York: Crossroad, 2009. Edwards, Mark. “Origen of Alexandria.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Patristics, 99–110. 1st ed. Hoboken: Wiley, 2015. Egan, Harvey D. “Christian Apophatic and Kataphatic Mysticisms.” Theological Studies 39, no. 3 (September 1978): 399–426. ———. Soundings in the Christian Mystical Tradition. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2010. Eliot, Thomas Stearns. T. S. Eliot: Collected Poems 1909 - 1962. Centenary ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. Endean, Philip. Karl Rahner and Ignatian Spirituality. Oxford theological monographs. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. “The Concept of Ignatian Mysticism: Beyond Rahner and de Guibert.” The Way - supplement, no. 103 (2002): 77–86. Enoka, Mava. “When You Compare NZ’s Suicide Rate to Australia’s, the Stats Are Shocking.” RNZ. Last modified January 20, 2017. Accessed November 5, 2019. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the- wireless/374427/when-you-compare-nz-s-suicide-rate-to-australia-s-the-stats-are-shocking. Erikson, Erik Homburger. Childhood and Society. Frogmore, St. Albans: Triad Paladin, 1978. Estes, Darrell Wayne. “Physical and Ontological Transformation: Metamorphosis and Transfiguration in Old French and Occitan Texts (11th–15th Centuries).” PhD, Ohio State University, 2017. Falsani, Cathleen. “For Millennials, Mysticism Shows a Path to Their Home Faiths.” CathNews NZ and Asia Pacific, May 16, 2019. Accessed May 17, 2019. https://cathnews.co.nz/2019/05/16/millennials-mysticism/. Farneda, Danilo L. “‘The Teacher’s Guide’: An Historico-Critical Study.” Marist Notebooks 5 (May 1994): 49–61. Ferrara, Pasquale. “The Concept of Periphery in Pope Francis’ Discourse: A Religious Alternative to Globalization?” Religions 6, no. 1 (2015): 42–57. Ferre, Jose-Maria. “The Religious Brother in the Church: One way to live out the brotherhood of Jesus.” Marist Brothers. Last modified 2015. Accessed October 21, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/shared/bau/THE%20RELIGIOUS%20BROTHER2%20- %20Sal%20Terrae%20-%20JM%20Ferre.pdf. Ferrer, Jorge N., and Jacob H. Sherman, eds. The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008. Finley, James. “Thomas Merton: Mystic Teacher for Our Age.” The Merton Annual 28 (2015): 181–95. Fiorelli, Lewis S. “Salesian Understanding of Christian Anthropology.” Salesianum 46 (1984): 487–508. FMS Archives. “Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat.” Marist Brothers. Last modified 1998. Accessed October 8, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2724. Fontana, David. The Meditation Handbook : The Practical Guide to Eastern and Western Meditation Techniques. London: Watkins, 2010. Four Arrows, and Darcia Narvaez. “Reclaiming Our Indigenous Worldview: A More Authentic Baselinefor Social/Ecological Justice Work in Education,” n.d. Accessed October 28, 2019.

~ 213 ~

Bibliography

https://www3.nd.edu/~dnarvaez/documents/FourArrowsDarciaNarvaezsubmittedAuthenticbaseline .pdf. Fowler, James. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest of Meaning. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1981. Frazier O’Brien. “Thousands Join Campaign to Delay Changes to Missal.” National Catholic Reporter. Last modified 4:00pm. Accessed May 20, 2019. https://www.ncronline.org/news/parish/thousands- join-campaign-delay-changes-missal. Friedman, Harris L., and Glenn Hartelius, eds. The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. Furet, Jean-Baptiste. Life of Blessed Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat 1789-1840: Marist Priest, Founder of the Congregation of the Little Brothers of Mary. Translated by Ludovic Burke. Bicentennary. Rome: General House, 1989. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2711. ———. Listen to the Words of Your Father: Opinions, Conferences, Sayings and Instructions of Marcellin Champagnat. Translated by Leonard Voegtle. General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1927. Furet, Jean-Baptiste, and Alain Delorme. Our First Brothers: Marvellous Companions of Marcellin. General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2009. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/livros_recebidos/PremierFreres_EN.pdf. Gibson, Romuald. “Father Champagnat: The Man and His Spirituality - Studies in Marist Spirituality.” Mimeographed copy, 1971. Gilson, Etienne. The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard. Translated by A. H. C. Downes. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940. Gledhill, Ruth. “Pope Francis Warns against ‘Sick’, Closed-in Church.” The Tablet. Accessed September 29, 2020. https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/13390/pope-francis-warns-against-sick-closed-in- church. Glendon, Lowell M. “French School of Spirituality.” In The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, 421. Ebook in biblia.com. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993. Goldstein, Diane E. “The Language of Religious Experience and Its Implications for Fieldwork.” Western Folklore 42, no. 2 (1983): 105–113. Gordon, Mary. On Thomas Merton. First Edition-Epub. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2018. Goto, Courtney T. The Grace of Playing: Pedagogies for Learning into God’s New Creation. Horizons in religious education. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2016. Gray, Philip. “Without the Church There Is No Salvation.” Catholic Education Resource Center. Last modified 1999. Accessed April 24, 2020. https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and- philosophy/apologetics/without-the-church-there-is-no-salvation.html. Green, Michael C. History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: Dawn’s Uncertain Light (1985-2016). Vol. 3. 3 vols. FMS Studia No.3. Rome: General House, 2017. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History3_EN.pdf. ———. “The Montagne Myth: An Archetype of Marist Ministry.” Marist Notebooks 35 (May 2017): 5– 25. Griffiths, Bede. Return to the Centre. London: Collins, 1976. Groban, Josh. “You Are Loved (Don’t Give Up).” Accessed October 27, 2015. http://www.songlyrics.com/josh-groban/you-are-loved-don-t-give-up-lyrics/. Haase, Albert. Becoming an Ordinary Mystic: Spirituality for the Rest of Us. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2019.

~ 214 ~

Bibliography

Haden, Robert L. Unopened Letters from God: A Workbook for Individuals and Groups. [Flat Rock, NC?]: Haden Institute, 2010. Haight, Roger. Spiritual and Religious: Explorations for Seekers. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2016. Hall, Gerard. “‘Are There Really Angels in Oceania? Forging a New Mysticism of Place, Time and History Through Dialogue Among Oceanic Peoples and Traditions.’” A Forum for Theology in the World 2, no. 2 (2015): 181–96. Hameroff, Stuart. “Overview by SH | Quantum Consciousness.” Accessed January 7, 2017. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/content/overview-sh. Hampson, Sarah E. “Mechanisms by Which Childhood Personality Traits Influence Adult Well-Being.” Current directions in psychological science 17, no. 4 (2008): 264. Hanh, Thich Nhat. “(59) Emptiness Is NOT Nothingness -.” Last modified June 23, 2015. Accessed June 4, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA2c7ViZx-I. Harmless, William. Mystics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hempstead Milton, Sheila M. “Shared Facts, Different Stories: The Mother of Thomas Merton.” The Merton Journal 7, no. 1 (2000): 36–50. Herman (Brother Lawrence), Nicholas. Writings and Conversations on the Practice of the Presence of God. Edited by Conrad De Meester. Translated by Salvatore Sciurba. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1994. Hollis, James. Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life. New York: Gotham Books, 2005. Accessed October 19, 2015. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=15789 3. Horan, Daniel P. “Striving toward Authenticity Merton’s True Self and the Millennial Generation’s Search for Identity.” The Merton Annual 23 (2010): 80–89. Howard, Charles. “Marist Apostolic Spirituality.” Marist Brothers, March 25, 1992. Howells, Edward. “Spanish Mysticism and Religious Renewal: Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross.” In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, 422–36. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2013. Ignatius of Loyola. A Pilgrim’s Journey: The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1985. ———. Personal Writings: Reminiscences, Spiritual Diary, Select Letters Including the Text of The Spiritual Exercises. Translated by Joseph A Munitiz and Philip Endean. E-Book. London: Penguin Books, 1996. Accessed November 6, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=et8lAQAAIAAJ. International Marist Education Commission. “In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat: A Vision for Marist Education Today.” Institute of the Marist Brothers, August 15, 1998. Accessed September 17, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/missaoEducativaMarista_EN.pdf. Irenaeus of Lyon. Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Online. Vol. 1. 2 vols. CCEL, n.d. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01/anf01. Jacobs, Anne C. “Spirituality: History and Contemporary Developments – An Evaluation.” Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 78, no. 1 (April 15, 2013): 12 pages. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience a Study in Human Nature. London: Routledge, 2002. John Montague. “Mystic of the Ordinary: Doing His Work.” Irish Pages 8, no. 2 (January 1, 2014): 110+.

~ 215 ~

Bibliography

John of the Cross. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1979. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints. New York: Continuum, 2003. Johnson, Robert A. Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Johnson, Sophie. “Meaning of Violet Flowers | Garden Guides.” Article. Flowers. Last modified September 21, 2017. Accessed September 20, 2019. https://www.gardenguides.com/82340- meaning-violet-flowers.html. Johnson-Miller, Beverly. “The Complexity of Religious Transformation.” Journal of Adult Theological Education 2, no. 1 (March 17, 2005): 31–49. Kanagaraj, Jey J. “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John: An Inquiry into Its Background. Journal for the study of the New Testament 158. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. Kasper, Walter. That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity. London ; New York: Burns & Oates, 2004. Katz, Steven T., ed. Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Kaufman, Scott Barry. “The-Real-Neuroscience-of-Creativity.” My Team’s Wings. Accessed November 26, 2017. http://myteamswings.org/Bibliographie/The-Real-Neuroscience-of-Creativity.pdf. Keating, Thomas. Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel. New ed. with updates. New York: Continuum, 2006. ———. “The Difference Between Centering Prayer and Dom John Main’s Christian Meditation.” Contemplative Outreach. Last modified November 2017. Accessed November 9, 2019. https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/article/difference-between-centering-prayer-and-dom-john- mains-christian-meditation. ———. “The Four You’s.” Contemplative Outreach News 23, no. 2 (June 2008): 1–2. ———. The Human Condition: Contemplation and Transformation. The Harold M. Wit lectures. New York: Paulist Press, 1999. Keenan, William J. F. “Clothed with Authority. The Rationalization of Marist Dress-Culture.” In Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversionn from a Cross-Cultural Perspective, 83–100. Dress, body, culture. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2000. Kegan, Robert. The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Kellenberger, James. Dying to Self and Detachment. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2012. Kelsey, Morton T. God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams. Rev. and Expanded ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991. ———. The Other Side of Silence: A Guide to Christian Meditation. New York: Paulist Press, 1976. Kenny, Anthony. An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy. Illustrated ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006. Khan, Mohammed Masud R. The Privacy of the Self: Papers on Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique. Reprinted. Maresfield Library. London: Karnac, 1996. Knight, Hilary. “Saint Bernard of Clairvaux on Experience.” Medieval Mystical Theology 24, no. 1 (May 2015): 59–79. Koch, Carl. Praying with John Baptist de La Salle. Companions for the journey. Winona, Minn: Saint Mary’s Press, 1990.

~ 216 ~

Bibliography

Koet, B. J. “Divine Dream Dilemmas: Biblical Visions and Dreams.” In Dreaming in Christianity and Islam, 17–31. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. ———, ed. Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas. Studies in the history and anthropology of religion 3. Leuven: Peeters, 2012. Kofler, Len. “Formation Today.” The Furrow 62, no. 5 (May 2011): 293–295. Kourie, Celia. “Christ-Mysticism in Paul.” The Way - supplement 102, no. Fall (2001): 71–80. Krippner, Stanley, Christophe Jaeger, and Laura Faith. “Identifying and Utilizing Spiritual Content in Dream Reports.” Dreaming 11, no. 3 (2001): 127. de La Salle, Jean Baptiste de. Explanation of the Method of Interior Prayer. Edited by Donald Mouton. Translated by Richard Arnandez. Vol. 5. Landover, MD: Lasallian Publications, 1995. Accessed November 19, 2019. http://www.lasallian.info/doc/Method-2007.PDF. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Lamb, Matthew L., and Matthew Levering, eds. The Reception of Vatican II. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Lanfrey, André. “A Fundamental Work Which Has Been Forgotten: The Manual of Piety.” Marist Notebooks 16 (November 2000): 49–79. ———. “A New Document.” Marist Notebooks 21, no. April (2005): 73–91. ———. “Circular on the Spirit of Faith.” Marist Notebooks 16 (November 2000): 19–48. ———. “Editorial.” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 3–5. ———. “Essay on the Origins of Spirituality.” Marist Notebooks 19, no. June (2003): 19–52. ———. History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: From Marlhes to the World (1789-1907). Translated by Anthony Hunt. Vol. 1. 3 vols. FMS Studia No.3. Rome: General House, 2015. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History1_EN.pdf. ———. History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: Marist Mission in a Violent and Secularised World (1907-1985). Translated by Jeffrey Crowe. Vol. 2. 3 vols. FMS Studia No.3. Rome: General House, 2016. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History2_EN.pdf. ———. “Research on the Origin of the Most Important Marist Mottos (1815-1852).” Marist Notebooks 35 (May 2017): 75–89. ———. “The Affective Life of Marcellin Champagnat.” Marist Notebooks 6 (December 1994): 71–78. ———. “Towards a Method of Re-Reading the Spirituality of Religious Orders and of Spiritual Movements.” Marist Notebooks 5, no. May (1992): 39–48. Levering, Matthew. An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event. Sacra Doctrina Series Volume 1. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Myth and Meaning. Repr. Routledge classics. London: Routledge, 2002. Lipka, Michael. “Religious ‘nones’ Becoming More Secular.” Fact Tank. Pew Research Center, November 11, 2015. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2015/11/11/religious-nones-are-not-only-growing-theyre-becoming-more-secular/. Llansana, Louis Serra. “Champagnat at His Time.” Marist Brothers. Last modified 1983. Accessed October 8, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2735. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. Method in Theology. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran. Vol. 14. Collected works of Bernard Lonergan. Toronto: Published by University of Toronto Press for Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College, 1988. Loo, Mark Kam Loon. “Spirituality in the Workplace: Practices, Challenges, and Recommendations.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 45, no. 3 (September 2017): 182–204.

~ 217 ~

Bibliography

Loughnane, Micheál. “Fashioning a Dialogical Vision for Catholic Education through Analysis, Critique and Contemporisation of Paulo Freire’s Education as the Practice of Freedom.” Melbourne College of Divinity, 2008. Louth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. 2nd ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Lynch, William F. Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless. Baltimore, MD: Helicon, 1965. Malits, Elena. The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton’s Transforming Journey. 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. Maney, Christopher. “Une Tendre Affection: A Question about Interpretation, Inspiration and Motivation.” Marist Notebooks 27 (October 2009): 127–172. Mariani, Paul. “How St. John Baptist de La Salle Brought Education to Millions of Poor Kids like Me.” America Magazine. Last modified September 13, 2019. Accessed November 19, 2019. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/09/13/how-st-john-baptist-de-la-salle-brought- education-millions-poor-kids-me. Marist Brothers. “16th General Chapter: Formation,” November 21, 1968. ———. “Being a Lay Marist.” Secretariat of the Laity. Last modified January 2, 2018. Accessed October 14, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/000.php?p=571. ———. Common Rules of the Congregation of the Marist Brothers of the Schools or The Little Brothers of Mary. Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1960. ———. Common Rules of the Institute of the Marist Brothers of the Schools. n.a.: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1947. ———. Constitutions and Statutes. 1986 with amendments. Rome: Marist Brothers (Little Brothers of Mary), 2010. ———. Constitutions and Statutes of the Marist Brothers of the Schools or Little Brothers of Mary (US Edition). U.S. Edition. Marist Press, 1990. ———. “Formation Guide.” FMS General House, Rome, 1994. Accessed January 9, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/shared/documenti_maristi/GuidaFormazione93_EN.pdf. ———. “Gathered Round the Same Table: The Vocation of Champagnat’s Laity.” Secretariat of the Laity, September 2009. Accessed October 10, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/En_torno_EN.pdf. ———. Weekly Newsletter. “Marist News.” Weekly Newsletter, August 28, 2018. Accessed September 18, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/NM/pdf/539_EN.pdf. ———. Principles of Christian and Religious Perfection for the Use of The Marist Brothers of the Schools (Little Brothers of Mary). 6th, revised and enlarged ed. Grugliasco: Marist Brothers’ General House, 1934. ———. Water from the Rock: Marist Spirituality Flowing in the Tradition of Marcellin Champagnat. General House, Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 2007. Accessed April 4, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/shared/documenti_maristi/AcquaRoccia_EN.pdf. ———. “Wherever You Go: Rule of Life of the Marist Brothers.” XXII General Chapter, October 7, 2019. Accessed October 10, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/shared/bau/EN_Regla_De_Vida.pdf. Marist Brothers of the Schools or Little Brothers of Mary. “Constitutions and Statutes.” Marist Brothers’ General House, ed 2010. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/constitutions2011_en.pdf.

~ 218 ~

Bibliography

Marmor-Lavie, Galit, and Patricia A. Stout. “Consumers’ Insights About Spirituality in Advertising.” Journal of Media and Religion 15, no. 4 (October 2016): 169–185. Martin, Hannah. “Study: Pacific Youth More at Risk of Suicide than Any Other Group.” Stuff. Last modified April 28, 2017. Accessed November 5, 2019. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/91938328/study-pacific-youth-more-at-risk-of-suicide- than-any-other-group. Martin, Jim. “Journaling as a Spiritual Discipline.” Leaven 2, no. 4 (1992): 25–28. May, Gerald G. Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins, 2009. McAdams, Dan P. “Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Framework for Studying Persons.” Psychological inquiry 7, no. 4 (1996): 295–321. McAdams, Dan P., Ruthellen Josselson, and Amia Lieblich, eds. Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative. 1st ed. [The narrative study of lives v. 4]. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2006. McCarthy, Coleman. “When Thomas Merton Called Me ‘Utterly Stupid.’” National Catholic Reporter. Last modified December 17, 2018. Accessed November 25, 2019. https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/when-thomas-merton-called-me-utterly-stupid. McColman, Carl. “I’m Uncomfortable with the Notion of the ‘False Self.’ Here’s Why.” Carl McColman, May 6, 2019. Accessed May 15, 2019. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlmccolman/2019/05/im- uncomfortable-with-the-language-of-the-false-self-heres-why/. McDonnel, Eunan. “Understanding the Spirituality of the ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’ as an Asceticism of Love.” Salesianum 75 (2013): 649–669. McDonnell, Kilian. “Spirit and Experience in Bernard of Clairvaux.” Theological Studies 58, no. 1 (February 1997): 3–18. McEntee, Rory. The New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2015. McGinn, Bernard. “The Language of Inner Experience in Christian Mysticism.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1, no. 2 (2001): 156–171. ———. The Presence of God: The Harvest of Mysticism in Medieval Germany. Vol. 4. History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Herder & Herder, 2008. McGrath, Alister. “On Truth, Mystery and the Limits of Human Understanding.” Text. ABC Religion & Ethics. Last modified November 12, 2016. Accessed July 6, 2019. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/on-truth-mystery-and-the-limits-of-human- understanding/10096364. McGuire, Brian Patrick, ed. A Companion to Bernard of Clairvaux. Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition. Leiden: Brill, 2011. McNamara, Patrick. The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Accessed May 20, 2013. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10338501. McPolin, James. “Johannine Mysticism.” The Way 18, no. 1 (1978): 25–35. Meconi, David Vincent. The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification. Washington, D.C: Catholic University of America Press, 2013. Meissner, W. W. “Winnicott’s Legacy: On Psychoanalyzing Religious Patients.” Psychoanalytic Inquiry 33, no. 1 (January 2013): 21–35. Meninger, William, and St Francis de Sales. The Committed Life: An Adaptation of The Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. New York: Continuum, 2000.

~ 219 ~

Bibliography

Merton, Thomas. A Course in Christian Mysticism: Thirteen Sessions with the Famous Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. Edited by Jon M. Sweeney. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2017. ———. A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk’s True Life. Edited by Lawrence Cunningham. Pymble, NSW; New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007. ———. A Vow of Conversation. Edited by Naomi Burton Stone. Basingstoke, U.K.: Lamp Press, 1988. ———. An Introduction to Christian Mysticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 3. Edited by Patrick F. O’Connell. Monastic wisdom series MW13. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2008. ———. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. New York, NY: Image Books/Doubleday, 1966. ———. Contemplation in a World of Action. Gethsemani studies in psychological and religious anthropology. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1998. ———. Contemplative Prayer. New York, NY: Image Books Doubleday, 1971. ———. Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. Edited by Robert E Daggy. New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007. ———. Disputed Questions. 1st Harvest/HBJ ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. ———. Entering the Silence Becoming a Monk & Writer. Edited by Jonathan Montaldo. Pymble, NSW; New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 1995. ———. Faith and Violence: Christian Teaching and Christian Practice. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968. ———. Learning to Love Exploring Solitude and Freedom. Edited by Christine M Bochen. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997. ———. Love and Living. Edited by Naomi Burton Stone and Patrick Hart. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. ———. Mystics and Zen Masters. 14th print. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. ———. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions, 1972. ———. No Man Is an Island. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. Accessed July 13, 2017. http://ebook.3m.com/library/BCPL-document_id-duwfnr9. ———. Reflections on My Work. Edited by Robert E Daggy. London: Fount, 1989. ———. Run to the Mountain the Story of a Vocation. Edited by Patrick Hart. New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2007. ———. The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. Edited by Naomi Burton, Patrick Hart, and James Laughlin. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1975. ———. The Courage for Truth: The Letters of Thomas Merton to Writers. Edited by Christine M Bochen. First eBook ed. HarperCollins, 1993. ———. The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns. Edited by William H. Shannon. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1985. ———. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited by William Henry Shannon. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2004. ———. The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals. Edited by Patrick Hart and Jonathan Montaldo. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins e-books, 1999. Accessed July 1, 2015. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=20493 0. ———. The Life of the Vows: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 6. Edited by Patrick F. O’Connell. Monastic Wisdom Series No. 30. Trappist, KY: Cistercian Publications, 2012.

~ 220 ~

Bibliography

———. The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey. Edited by Patrick Hart. The journals of Thomas Merton v. 7. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998. ———. The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction. Edited by Patrick Hart. First eBook ed. HarperCollinsCanada, 2011. ———. The Seven Storey Mountain. 50th anniversary ed. Orlando: A Harvest Book, 1998. Accessed June 10, 2015. http://ebook.3m.com/library/BCPL-document_id-duy89g9. ———. The Sign of Jonas. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. ———. The Silent Life. E-Book. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1957. Accessed December 12, 2017. https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=51A352B4-7C86-40BB-B16B-90FAFF4BBE64. ———. The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century. New York, NY: New Directions, 1970. ———. Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters. Edited by William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen. Oxford: Lion, 2009. ———. Thomas Merton: I Have Seen What I Was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings. Edited by M. Basil Pennington. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2005. ———. Thomas Merton: Selected Essays. Edited by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2013. ———. Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings. Edited by Lawrence Cunningham. New York: Paulist Press, 1992. ———. Thoughts in Solitude. Tunbridge Wells: Burns & Oates, 1997. ———. Turning toward the World: The Pivotal Years. Edited by Victor A Kramer. New York, NY: HarperCollins e-books, 2007. ———. Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis. Edited by William Henry Shannon. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace, 1995. ———. Zen and the Birds of Appetite. New York: New Directions, 1968. Merullo, Roland. “A Novice and His Master 6/26/2010 Part One.” Thomas Merton and the Quest, June 26, 2010. Accessed December 5, 2019. https://mertonocso.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/a-novice- and-his-master-part-one-2/. ———. “A Novice and the Master 6/26/2010 Part Two.” Thomas Merton and the Quest, June 25, 2010. Accessed December 5, 2019. https://mertonocso.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/part-two/. Michel, Gabriel. “Marcellin Champagnat’s Pathway of Obedience.” Marist Notebooks 14 (November 1998): 39–88. Milán, Fernando. “‘Lectio divina’: un modo antiguo y actual de orar con la Sagrada Escritura.” Scripta Theologica 51, no. 1 (April 2019): 161–187. Miller, John B. F. “Convinced That God Had Called Us”: Dreams, Visions, and the Perception of God’s Will in Luke-Acts. Biblical interpretation series v. 85. Leiden: Brill, 2007. ———. “Dreams/Visions and the Experience of God in Luke-Acts.” In Experientia: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Christianity, 1:177–192. Society of Biblical Literature Symposium 40. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008. Moral, Juan. “A 200 Year-Old Champagnat Document: Marcellin’s First Resolutions.” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 23-. Moss, Robert. The Secret History of Dreaming. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2009. Mosser, Carl. “The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Antecedents, and the Origin of Christian Deification.” The Journal of Theological Studies 56, no. 1 (April 2005): 30–74.

~ 221 ~

Bibliography

Mott, Michael. The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Mulcahy, Thomas L. “The Soul’s Journey to God: A Concise Summary of Saint Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle.” Catholic Strength, March 23, 2017. Accessed November 11, 2019. https://catholicstrength.com/2017/03/23/the-souls-journey-to-god-a-concise-summary-of-saint- teresa-of-avilas-interior-castle/. Mutō, Kazuo, Martin Repp, and Jan van Bragt. Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School. Philosophy of religion. World religions v. 2. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Newberg, Andrew B. Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us about Spirituality. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Oakes, Edward T., and David Moss, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar. Cambridge companions to religion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. O’Brien, Timothy W. “‘If You Wish to Be Perfect’: Change and Continuity in Vatican II’s Call to Holiness: ‘If You Wish to Be Perfect.’” The Heythrop Journal 55, no. 2 (March 2014): 286–296. O’Collins, Gerald. Rethinking Fundamental Theology: Toward a New Fundamental Theology. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. O’Donohue, John. “Spirituality as the Art of Real Presence.” The Way - supplement 92 (1998): 85–101. Office of the Surgeon General. Chapter 2 Culture Counts: The Influence of Culture and Society on Mental Health. Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US), 2001. Accessed April 18, 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44249/. O’Leary, Brian. “Ignatian Mysticism and Contemporary Culture.” The Way 52, no. 4 (October 2013): 44– 56. Olivera, Bernardo. “Conversatio and Mysticism in the Benedictine-Cistercian Tradition YeSterday and Today.” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (May 2018): 119–140. O’Murchu, Diarmuid. In the Beginning Was the Spirit: Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012. Origen. “ANF04. Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second - Christian Classics Ethereal Library.” Accessed July 8, 2019. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.ix.iii.xxviii.html. Ortiz, Jared. “You Made Us for Yourself”: Creation in St. Augustine’s Confessions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016. Osborn, Eric Francis. Clement of Alexandria. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press, 1936. Parker, Stephen, and Edward Davis. “The False Self in Christian Contexts: A Winnicottian Perspective.” Journal of Psychology & Christianity 28, no. 4 (2009): 315–325. Patrick H. Reardon. “The Man Alive.” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. Accessed July 8, 2019. http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-05-003-e. Pearson, Paul M. “A Dedication to Prayer and a Dedication to Humanity: An Interview about Thomas Merton with James Conner, OCSO.” Merton Annual 23 (2010): 212–239. Pennebaker, James W., and Joshua M. Smyth. Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford Press, 2016. Pennington, M. Basil. Thomas Merton, Brother Monk: The Quest for True Freedom. New York: Continuum, 1997. Perrin, David Brian. Studying Christian Spirituality. New York, NY: Routledge, 2007. ~ 222 ~

Bibliography

Pilch, John J. Flights of the Soul: Visions, Heavenly Journeys, and Peak Experiences in the Biblical World. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011. ———. “Paul’s Ecstatic Trance Experience near Damascus in Acts of the Apostles.” HTS: Theological Studies 58, no. 2 (2002): 690–707. Pope Benedict XVI. “Deus Caritas Est.” Last modified December 25, 2005. Accessed October 25, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben- xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html. ———. “Spe Salvi.” Last modified November 30, 2007. Accessed October 25, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben- xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html. Pope Francis. Amoris Laetitia, The Joy of Love: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on Love in the Family. Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2016. ———. “Evangelii Gaudium : Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World.” The Holy See. Last modified November 24, 2013. Accessed April 26, 2017. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa- francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. ———. “Laudato Si’.” Last modified May 24, 2015. Accessed May 12, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/documents/papa- francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si_en.pdf. ———. “Lumen Fidei.” The Holy See. Last modified July 29, 2013. Accessed October 25, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/encyclicals/documents/papa- francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei.html. Pope John Paul II. “Familiaris Consortio.” Last modified November 22, 1981. Accessed April 18, 2017. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp- ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html. ———. “Redemptoris Mater.” Last modified March 25, 1987. Accessed October 25, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp- ii_enc_25031987_redemptoris-mater.html. ———. “Veritatis Splendor.” Last modified August 6, 1993. Accessed April 18, 2017. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp- ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html. Pope Paul VI. “Marialis Cultus.” Last modified February 2, 1974. Accessed October 25, 2019. http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p- vi_exh_19740202_marialis-cultus.html. Quenon, Paul. In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2018. Rahner, Karl. “Experiences of a Catholic Theologian.” Theological Studies 61, no. 1 (2000): 3–15. Rahner, Karl, and Annemarie S. Kidder. Ignatius of Loyola Speaks. South Bend, IN: St. Augustines Press, 2013. Raja Rao, Thelagathoti J. “The Mystical Experience of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort.” Studies in Spirituality, no. 0 (2007): 147–184. Rakoczy, Susan. “Martha and Mary: Sorting Out the Dilemma.” Studies in Spirituality 8 (1998): 58–80. Ravier, André. Francis de Sales Sage and Saint. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1988. Rawlings, Helen. The Spanish Inquisition. Historical Association studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006.

~ 223 ~

Bibliography

Reed, Chris. “Losing Faith: Why Fewer New Zealanders Are Attending Church.” NZ Herald. Last modified June 28, 2018. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12074520. Rice, Edward E. The Man in the Sycamore Tree: The Good Times and Hard Life of Thomas Merton. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972. Rigby, Paul. The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Rivat, Gabriel. “Circulaires 42 - Necessite de l’esprit de foi.” Marist Brothers. Last modified December 15, 1848. Accessed September 28, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3033. ———. “Documents Testimonies on Marcellin Champagnat.” Marist Notebooks 14 (November 1998): 111–34. ———. “Letter to a Master of Novices.” Archives of the Marist Brothers, n.d. Doc. 1042. Archives of the Marist Brothers. ———. “Letter to Another Master of Novices.” Archives of the Marist Brothers, n.d. 1449. Archives of the Marist Brothers. AFM. ———. “Spirit of Faith 1.” Marist Brothers, 1848. Marist Brothers, Melbourne. ———. “Spirit of Faith 2,” July 6, 1849. Accessed September 28, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3035. ———. “Spirit of Faith 3.” Marist Brothers, December 24, 1851. Accessed September 28, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3038. ———. “Spirit of Faith 4.” Marist Brothers, April 9, 1853. Accessed September 28, 2019. http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=3044. ———. “To a Brother Director of a Novitiate,” January 7, 1857. 1627. Archives of the Marist Brothers. Roberts, Bernadette. The Path to No-Self : Life at the Center. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991. Roberts, Brent W., Nathan R. Kuncel, Rebecca Shiner, Avshalom Caspi, and Lewis R. Goldberg. “The Power of Personality: The Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important Life Outcomes.” Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science 2, no. 4 (December 2007): 313. Ross, Maggie. “Behold Not the Cloud of Experience.” In The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England: Papers Read at Charney Manor, July 2011 [Exeter Symposium 8], edited by E. A. Jones, 29–50. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. Accessed May 15, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt2tt1ms.8. ———. “Jesus in the Balance: Interpretation in the Twenty-First Century.” Word & World 29, no. 2 (2009): 152–161. ———. Silence: A User’s Guide. Volume 1. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014. ———. Writing the Icon of the Heart In Silence Beholding. La Vergne: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013. Accessed July 8, 2019. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=5705110. Rueda Guzman, Basilio. “Fidelity.” Marist Brothers, September 8, 1984. Circulars of the Superior General. ———. “The Spirit of the Institute.” Marist Brothers, December 1975. Circulars of the Superior General. Accessed October 4, 2019. http://champagnat.org/510.php?a=5a&id=2773. Russell, John F. “St. Therese and Her Little Way - Reflections on St. Therese.” Society of the Little Flower - US. Last modified n.d. Accessed November 17, 2019. https://www.littleflower.org/therese/reflections/st-therese-and-her-little-way/.

~ 224 ~

Bibliography

Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. de Sales, St Francis. Introduction to the Devout Life. Blacksburg, VA: Wilder Publications, 2011. ———. Treatise on the Love of God. Translated by Henry B. Mackey. E-Book. Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2012. Sammon, Seán. A Heart That Knew No Bounds: Saint Marcellin Champagnat - The Life and Mission. Rome: General House, 1999. ———. “A Revolution of the Heart: Marcellin’s Spirituality and a Contemporary Identity for His Little Brothers of Mary.” Institute of the Marist Brothers, June 2003. Accessed September 8, 2019. http://champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/31_1_EN.pdf. ———. “In Her Arms and In Her Heart: Mary Our Good Mother, Mary Our Source of Renewal.” Institute of the Marist Brothers, May 31, 2009. Accessed September 17, 2019. http://champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/31_5_EN.pdf. Sanchez Barba, Ernesto. “Homes of Light.” Institute of the Marist Brothers, September 8, 2020. Sanchez, Manuel Mesonero. “From Asceticism to Mysticism: The Life of Marcellin Champagnat.” Marist Notebooks 32 (May 2014): 7–22. ———. “How a Founder Is Forged? (Part 2): The Formation of Marcellin the in the Major Seminary.” Marist Notebooks 37 (May 2019): 25–39. Schiffhorst, Gerald J. “On the Threshold of Silence: Thomas Merton and the Act of Reading.” The Merton Seasonal 34, no. 3 (2009): 16–21. Schneiders, Sandra M. “Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?” In Religious Life: The Challenge of Tomorrow, 9–34. Mahwah, N.J: Paulist Press, 1994. ———. Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context. Vol. 1. 3 vols. Religious life in a new millennium. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. ———. “Religion vs. Spirituality: A Contemporary Conundrum.” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 3, no. 2 (2003): 163–185. ———. “Rethinking Religious Formation for the 21st Century.” Religious Formation Conference. Last modified March 2018. Accessed October 10, 2019. https://www.relforcon.org/sites/default/files/articles/attachments/Rethinking%20Religious%20For mation%20March%202018.pdf. ———. “The Discipline of Christian Spirituality and Catholic Theology.” In Exploring Christian Spirituality: Essays in Honor of Sandra M. Schneiders. New York: Paulist Press, 2006. Sester, Paul. “Brother Francois: Retreat Notes.” Marist Notebooks 15 (May 1999): 84–98. ———. “Champagnat’s Notebooks.” Marist Notebooks 8 (January 1996): 61–141. Shannon, William H. Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation. Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2000. Sheldrake, Philip. A Brief History of Spirituality. Blackwell brief histories of religion series. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2007. ———. “A Critical Theological Perspective.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, 533–548. Blackwell, 2013. Simmonds, Gemma. “Professed Religious Life.” In The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, 266–281. Cambridge companions to religion. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. ———. “‘Spiritual But Nor Religious’ - Some Final Reflections.” New Blackfriars 97, no. 1068 (March 2016): 218–230.

~ 225 ~

Bibliography

Sobolev, Dennis. “Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Language of Mysticism.” Christianity & Literature 53, no. 4 (September 2004): 455–480. Stewart, Mac. “The Honey-Sweet Doctor: Bernard of Clairvaux.” Covenant, August 20, 2016. Accessed July 27, 2019. https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/08/20/the-honey-sweet-doctor/. Stoner, James A. F. “Creating a Spiritually Friendly Company.” In Handbook of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace: Emerging Research and Practice, 491–517. London: Springer, 2013. Strank, Lillian Thomas. “Ordinary Myticism and Ordinary Mystics.” The Way 30, no. 3 (1990): 231–43. Streeter, Carla Mae. Foundations of Spirituality: The Human and the Holy: A Systematic Approach. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012. Strickling, Bonnelle Lewis. Dreaming about the Divine. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist. Routledge classics. London: Routledge, 2002. Sweeney, James. “Religious Life Looks to Its Future.” In A Future Full of Hope?, 129–144. Dublin: The Columba Press, 2012. Talbot, John Michael. The Universal Monk: The Way of the New Monastics. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 2011. Tamet, Jean-Felix. The Memoirs of Little Brother Sylvestre: An Edited Compilation of the Recollections and Reflections of Brother Sylvestre (Jean-Felix Tamet), One of the First of St Marcellin Champagnat’s Little Brothers of Mary. Edited by Michael C. Green. Translated by Douglas Welsh. Sydney, NSW: Marist Publishing, 2008. https://issuu.com/champagnat/docs/brsylvestre_s_memoirs_of_marcellin_. Tate, Pa Henare. He Puna Iti i Te Ao Marama: A Little Spring in the World of Light. Illustrated. A: Libro International, 2014. Tavard, George H. Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way. Marquette studies in theology no. 52. Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette University Press, 2006. Taves, Ann. “Experience as Site of Contested Meaning and Value: The Attributional Dog and Its Special Tail.” Religion 40, no. 4 (October 2010): 317–323. ———. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. Taylor, Justin. “Fourviere, July 23, 1816.” Marist Notebooks 34, no. May (2016): 5–14. ———. Jean-Claude Colin: Reluctant Founder. Adelaide: ATF Theology, 2018. Accessed December 30, 2019. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctvd1c9b5. Teresa of Avila. The Collected Letters of St. Teresa of Avila. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2001. ———. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila V.1. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. E-Book. Vol. 1. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987. ———. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila V.2. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez. E-Book. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987. ———. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila V.3. Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodríguez. E-Book. Vol. 3. 3 vols. Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1987. ———. The Complete Works of St Teresa of Avila. Edited by E. Allison Peers. Translated by E. Allison Peers. London: Burns & Oates, 2002.

~ 226 ~

Bibliography

———. The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself. Translated by J. M. Cohen. E-Book. London: Penguin Books, 1957. Accessed November 8, 2019. https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=F990E942-B106-486A-84A9-B07C5BB230CE. Thompson, Phillip M. Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton’s Wisdom for a Technological World. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2012. Thompson-Uberuaga, William, ed. Bérulle and the French School: Selected Writings. Translated by Lowell M Glendon. The Classics of Western spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1989. ———. “Christians Who Can Breathe and Laugh.” America 199, no. 7 (2008): 29–31. ———. Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid to Be Partners. Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006. Thurston, Bonnie Bowman. “Paul on the Damascus Road: The Study of the New Testament and the Study of Christian Spirituality.” Lexington Theological Quarterly 38, no. 4 (2003): 227–240. Torres, Juan Miguel Anaya. “A Re-Examination of the Unity of the Leadership of Brothers Francois, Louis-Marie & Jean-Baptiste.” Marist Notebooks 36 (May 2018): 47–73. ———. “We Have New Wine; Do We Need New Wineskins?” Marist Notebooks 28 (May 2010): 5–29. Turu, Emili. “He Gave Us the Name of Mary.” FMS General House, Rome, January 2, 2012. Accessed November 10, 2018. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Circulares/32_1_EN.pdf. ———. Letters of the Superior General. “LaValla: The Lighthouse.” Letters of the Superior General, March 25, 2017. Accessed November 10, 2018. http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/emili_turu/LetterEmili2017_EN_alta.pdf. Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: The Preeminent Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. 1st ed. An Image classic. New York: Doubleday, 1990. Waldron, Robert G. “Merton’s Dreams: A Jungian Analysis.” The Merton Seasonal 16, no. 4 (1991): 11– 23. ———. The Wounded Heart of Thomas Merton. New York: Paulist Press, 2011. Wallace, James Buchanan. Snatched into Paradise (2 Cor. 12:1 - 10): Paul’s Heavenly Journey in the Context of Early Christian Experience. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 179. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Watson, Floyd. “06.04 THE ISNESS OF GOD.” Blog. Stones of Fire. Accessed May 14, 2019. http://www.sigler.org/watson/new_page_13.htm. Whittington, J. Lee. “Spiritual Disciplines for Transformation, Renewal and Sustainable Leadership.” In Handbook of Personal and Organizational Transformation, 401–25. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018. Wilber, Ken. Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy. 1st pbk. ed. Boston: Shambhala, 2000. William of St Thierry, Arnold of Boneval, and Geoffrey of Auxerre. The First Life of Bernard of Clairvaux. Translated by Hilary Costello. Cistercian Fathers series 26. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015. William of St Thierry. Williams, Rowan. The Wound of Knowledge. London: Darton Longman & Todd, 2014. Accessed July 15, 2019. http://public.eblib.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=4462786. Windt, Jennifer. “Reporting Dream Experience: Why (Not) to Be Skeptical about Dream Reports.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7, no. 708 (2013): online. Winnicott, Donald W. Playing and Reality. Edited by Robert Rodman. Reprint. Routledge classics. London: Routledge, 2010.

~ 227 ~

Bibliography

———. The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: Hogarth Press, 1965. Wright, Wendy M. Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004. Accessed July 25, 2019. http://books.google.com/books?id=y2XZAAAAMAAJ. ______. “Seventeenth-Century French Mysticism.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Christian Mysticism, 437–451. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Wu, John. “Thomas Merton’s Inclusivity and Ecumenism; Silencing the Gong and Cymbals. - Free Online Library.” Cross Currents 59, no. 1 (2009): 28–48. Yaden, David B., Johannes C. Eichstaedt, H. Andrew Schwartz, Margaret L. Kern, Khoa D. Le Nguyen, Nancy A. Wintering, Ralph W. Hood, and Andrew B. Newberg. “The Language of Ineffability: Linguistic Analysis of Mystical Experiences.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 8, no. 3 (2016): 244–252. Zank, Michael, and Zachary Braiterman. “Martin Buber.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2014. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2014. Accessed June 4, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/buber/.

Web page references

“Anthropology - Wikipedia.” Accessed May 25, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology. “Birdlime.” Wikipedia, September 27, 2019. Accessed November 16, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birdlime&oldid=918155366. “Catechism of the Catholic Church - Sacred Scripture.” Accessed June 11, 2020. https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c2a3.htm. “Conversio or Conversatio? Fidelity to the Monastic Life.” Accessed May 3, 2019. https://www.idahomonks.org/sect805.htm. “Eckhart: The Man.” Blog. The Eckhart Society. Last modified 1999. Accessed June 13, 2020. https://www.eckhartsociety.org/eckhart/eckhart-man. “God Talks To Moses - YouTube.” Accessed May 5, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueBrtHPdypU. “Human Respect | Encyclopedia.Com.” Accessed November 16, 2019. https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/human- respect. “Journaling | The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.” Accessed December 26, 2019. http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/journaling. “Maori Names for North and South Islands Approved.” RNZ. Last modified October 10, 2013. Accessed March 9, 2020. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/224273/maori-names-for-north-and-south- islands-approved. “Pope Francis Addresses Joint Session of Congress – FULL SPEECH (C-SPAN) - YouTube.” Last modified September 24, 2015. Accessed November 21, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBM7DIeMsP0. “Ressourcement | About the Name,” n.d. Accessed September 2, 2020. https://ressourcementinc.com/about-ressourcement/about-the-name/. “Saint Quotes That Will Fill You With Wisdom & Help You Lead A Better Life.” Accessed June 10, 2020. http://www.famousquotes123.com/saint-quotations.html.

~ 228 ~

Bibliography

“SYRIA-Blue Marists of Aleppo.” Fondazione Marista per La Solidarietà Internazionale ONLUS, n.d. Accessed June 24, 2020. https://fmsi.ngo/syria-blue-marists-of-aleppo/?lang=en. “The Virtues Project.” Accessed October 1, 2019. https://virtuesproject.com/. “Types of OCD.” BrightQuest Treatment Centers, n.d. Accessed November 7, 2019. https://www.brightquest.com/obsessive-compulsive-disorder/types-of-ocd/. “UC Student Volunteer Army.” Student Volunteer Army. Accessed January 4, 2017. http://www.sva.org.nz/.

~ 229 ~

Appendix A

The Changing Language of the Rules/Constitutions

In the period before Vatican II, the Institute of the Marist Brothers endeavoured to further the development of interiority through their legal, canonical documents. The following illustrates the shift in the language used towards a more inspirational tone away from a code of precepts and prohibitions.

The Common Rules of 1947 and 1960

The instruction on the esteem brothers should have for their Rules echoes the 1837 edition. But there is a preponderance of obligatory and legislative language and a great deal of detail, for example, in how to pause at the asterisk when reciting the psalms of the Office of Our Lady,1009 or how to greet a superior or senior brother, doffing the hat and saluting with a slight bow in the chapter on mutual respect.1010 The 1947 edition reflects a spirituality that pays exaggerated attention to unnecessary detail and indicates a certain uniformity of performance and regularity in carrying out to the letter a manner of living the ‘spirit of faith;’ in effect, a very Eurocentric rule book. The General Chapter in Rome in 1958 responded to the request to treat the articles of the Rule more positively, stressing the uplifting aspects of religious life rather than ‘an arid, inflexible code of precepts and prohibitions,’1011 reflecting a movement of the Spirit, though in small steps, to return to the mystical tradition of those first years at La Valla and the Hermitage.

A comparison of the same article in each edition (though differently numbered) will suffice to illustrate the difference of thinking and a more inspiring guide, closer in spirit to the period 1817 to 1830: a period when Champagnat, with the support of his first companions, shared the mystical approach to a religious brotherhood for ministry, the ascetical dimension relegated to second place. Comparing the title given to the first chapter in each edition indicates

1009 Marist Brothers, Common Rules of the Institute of the Marist Brothers of the Schools (n.a.: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1947), Ch. II:15. 1010 Ibid., Ch. XII:258. 1011 Marist Brothers, Common Rules of the Congregation of the Marist Brothers of the Schools or The Little Brothers of Mary (Rome: Institute of the Marist Brothers, 1960), 2. ~ 230 ~

Appendix A a re-emerging shift in perception. The brothers do not simply have a purpose (end) but in the later version they have a more corporate sense of themselves (congregation); more than a purpose, but a spirit animating them and their mission. While the 1960 version is more descriptive than prescriptive, the prescriptive language still features. The ‘three violets’ are there in both editions as the characteristic of the brothers, though humility is given more emphasis in the earlier version, which may have more to do with ‘perfect obedience’, though probably not the obedience of adults in mutual communion with the Spirit.

Common Rules 1947 Common Rules 1960

Ch. 1: The End of the Little Brothers of Mary Ch. 1: Aim and Spirit of the Congregation

§6 The Brothers should aim at acquiring solid §3 The spirit of this Congregation should be virtues, such as profound humility, perfect one of humility, simplicity and modesty, after obedience, continual abnegation of themselves, the example of the Holy Family. The Brothers a tender and generous love for Jesus Christ and should consider themselves under a special His Holy Mother, and an ardent zeal for the obligation to have a personal love of the Blessed salvation of souls; and should always keep in Virgin, and then to bring to her love and the paths of humility, simplicity, and modesty, service, as leading more directly to Jesus, in the which are characteristic of this Institute. It is by words of their own motto: ‘All to Jesus through the constant practice of these virtues that they Mary; all to Mary for Jesus.’ In all this, they will labour efficaciously for their own shall take as guide and model, Blessed perfection and render themselves really useful to Marcellin Champagnat, their founder. their neighbour.

The 1947 Rule has Jesus and Mary together, while the 1960 Rule considers a love and service for Mary as the way to go directly to Jesus. The latter version drops ‘the ardent zeal for the salvation of souls’ and ‘profound humility, perfect obedience, continual abnegation of themselves,’ changing this to being ‘under a special obligation to … love and service’ while linking the ‘three violets’ of humility, simplicity and modesty to the Nazareth home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Of the founder the 1947 Rule makes no mention in the first, second or third part of the book, apart from a reference from the General Council to ‘the hand of our pious founder’ and the inclusion of Champagnat’s Spiritual Testament.1012 While the 1947 Rules presented a religious life disconnected from the mystical dimension of its roots, the 1960

1012 Marist Brothers, 1947 Rules, 10, 139–42. ~ 231 ~

Appendix A version is little better, albeit with an improved theology of Mary’s place in salvation history. Like much of the theology behind Marist spirituality to this point, the Holy Spirit or the Trinity hardly figure in both editions of these Rules.

There are gains and losses. While the 1960 version simplifies the language and updates it, obviously reflecting shifts in theology, the language is bland and uninspiring. Lost is something poetic, hinted at in the 1947 version in expressions like ‘tender and generous love’ or ‘ardent zeal’ both suggesting a vibrant, affective life of self-giving love. Even the word ‘virtue’ is missing; and in a present age virtues are a significant means of uniting people across religious and ethnic divides.1013 It could also be that ‘continual abnegation of themselves’ reflects the profound humility needed in the self-awareness that leads to the wiles and tricks of the false self in which ‘always keep in the paths’ suggests ‘journey’ and growth where reflected-upon inner experience makes a spirituality real in a continuing process towards the goal of union with God. Despite the 1960 response to requests to avoid the language of prohibition, much of the expectations of a performance-based approach to living religious life remained in place, ignoring any connection with the society in which communities are immersed.

The ‘Disruption’ of Vatican II

The two documents that immediately affected religious life and its unique way of forming the interiority of its members are Lumen Gentium and Perfectae Caritatis. From 1876 to the 1950s and even the 1960s, juniorates were the way to attract many to join the Marist Brothers, but by the 1970s they were no longer effective. However, somewhat unwittingly, the brothers’ contributed to the formation of an educated laity who, in turn, could educate others. Of the many who joined the brothers, then later left having realised that consecrated celibacy in community life was not their particular vocation, several took up teaching and the administration of Catholic schools, so continuing their evangelizing mission as single people or married and/or with families.1014 What has been called a ‘crisis of membership’ world-wide for the Institute has come about in part because of a pivotal chapter in the Constitution on the

1013 An interreligious initiative, to better family life and relationships across religious divides was successfully introduced into Kiribati by the Baha’i Faith from the mid-1990s and served to bring people together of different faiths in a country where Ecumenism has still not fully landed despite efforts at the grassroots. Marist Brothers took part in the initiative at the time. It served to stretch this writer's horizons of inner experience and spirituality to include interreligious dialogue; see “The Virtues Project,” accessed October 1, 2019, https://virtuesproject.com/. 1014 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 2:377.

~ 232 ~

Appendix A Church (LG 5:39-42), which stresses that ‘all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love (LG 39).’ This is a reversal of the mind of those now named as the People of God, or the Pilgrim People, with the former being the predominant metaphor for the Church. Before Vatican II and for many centuries it was thought that holiness was the business of those who were priests or religious, and not of the laity.1015

The specific call of the Church to religious: Perfectae Caritatis

One of the briefest documents of the Council, the decree on ‘The Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life’ outlined five principles for revitalisation: (1) that following Christ of the Gospels is the ultimate ‘Rule’ of religious life; (2) that a return to and honouring of the founder’s spirit and intuition is a treasure for the whole Church, and therefore the sound traditions of the patrimony are to be valued; (3) for the life of the Church each Institute needs to share their gifts which pertain to fields biblical, liturgical, dogmatic, pastoral, ecumenical, missionary and social; (4) that members are educated for the conditions of their society together with the needs of the Church, both of which demand a ‘see, judge, act’ approach in the light of faith; and with passion for the Gospel, becoming more effective evangelizers; (5) the purpose of religious life helps members to follow Christ, united to God in the vows of the evangelical counsels. However, the document by itself is weak unless read with the two Constitutions of the Church, Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.1016 Adaptation to the needs of the age will only be effective by a renewed spirit (PC §2).

The response of the Marist Brothers to Vatican II The years 1967 through 1985 were a period of reimagining Marist religious life through three chapters and the circulars of Brother Basilio in his eighteen-year mandate.1017 Several documents appeared which were the basis of the ad experimentum Constitutions, approved as

1015 In certain parts of Oceania, this thinking is still part of the Church’s mindset, not helped by clericalism fostered in some quarters by traditional chiefly systems with the result that laity become passive members of the Church unaware of their full membership and responsibility by reason of their baptism. It is a mindset that is dangerous for both laity and clergy; on the one hand laity can abrogate the call to holiness to clergy and religious, while clergy and religious can take unto themselves privilege and status, the antithesis of gospel servanthood. 1016 Gemma Simmonds, “Professed Religious Life,” in The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, Cambridge companions to religion (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 280. 1017 Aureliano Brambila, “Basilio Rueda Guzman, Marist Brother of the Schools,” Marist Notebooks 34 (May 2016): 90–91 only 42 when he was elected, Br Basilio was instrumental in shifting the Institute into the modern era culminating in the Constitutions and Statues (and resulting Formation Guide) in 1985-86. ~ 233 ~

Appendix A such by the Church.1018 They included documents, on religious life, on Mary, on religious consecration, on prayer, on formation (little more than an expansion of chapter XXVI of the 1960 Common Rules,1019 albeit with references to various Church documents) and on community life. Surveys carried out during the years of 1973-74 indicated that many communities lived at a very superficial level.1020 Communities were often defined by everyone working in the same school. This was the monastic style of community life that Champagnat had quickly established once the early brothers moved to the Hermitage. However, in the beginning from 1817 through 1822, they were a group of young men praying, working and living together while also serving the wider community, as Br Laurent did, going to teach catechism to the children of Le Bessac.1021 In the broadening community and apostolic encounters brothers began to have in the middle years of the last century, and that Brother Basilio himself had experienced,1022 communities were led to a renewed understanding of themselves as a community of educators, rather than just a team of teachers in one particular school.1023 Change was ongoing in this period towards a more pluralistic world-view in and of society. The Church also was facing change at all levels, theologically, spiritually and pastorally, with religious institutes leading the way, like the beloved disciple running ahead of Peter.1024 There was a recognition that brothers were increasingly operating in partnership with laity in their schools and other ministries with and for young people, an early indication of what would become a more inclusive attitude in the Institute in which laity were beginning to identify with the Champagnat charism as theirs also. Formation for brotherhood became an increasing concern and no effort was spared to continue formation for brothers at an international level.1025

1018 If an Institute of Consecrated Life changes its Constitutions at a General Chapter, it is expected that they present the Constitutions to the Vatican Congregation of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. 1019 Marist Brothers, 1960 Rules, 89–95. 1020 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 2:405; Br Basilio designed and conducted many of these surveys himself. 1021 Furet, Life, 79–80; 'Lawrence' is a variant spelling. 1022 Brambila, “Basilio Rueda Guzman, Marist Brother of the Schools,” 91. 1023 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 2:405. 1024 The beloved disciple (read: congregations and spiritual movements) continues to run ahead while Peter (read: the clerical structures of the Church) lag behind; most frequently, it is religious women who have led the way. 1025 Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 2:173; the first international course was begun in 1961 with a year of spirituality programme held in Rome. Since then other shorter courses have been designed for formators, community animators, and for brothers at various age levels by decade.

~ 234 ~

Appendix A In his opening talk at the 1985 General Chapter, Brother Basilio indicated that formation was a weak point for the Marist Brothers.1026 Basically, the 1968 document on formation simply expanded the chapter in the 1960 Common Rules on formation of the brothers,1027 though it did acknowledge there was a crisis of identity in lay religious life.1028 That document included no theological background nor foundational references to the charismatic dimension of lay religious life, that is, much of the Marist heritage both examined and alluded to earlier in this chapter. In 1982 the General Council establish a commission to prepare a text to be ratified at the following chapter.1029 Different cultural groups throughout the Institute had different ways of forming young men to be brothers; in the 1970s some provinces were still operating juniorates. However, amid much debate, the capitulants of the 1985 General Chapter accepted the text ad experimentum.

The vigorous debate concerned the roles of anthropological psychology as if opposed to incarnational theology in the discernment of vocations and the processes of initial formation guiding a young brother towards life commitment. But it was as much about the personalities of the proponents of psychological assessment as it was about making use of psychology as part of the formation programme.1030 It was as if the formation of a psychologically adjusted and adult human being was to receive far more emphasis than the spiritually rich disciple of Jesus, both factions of the debate ignoring the truth of the humanity and divinity of one and the same Christ, as a metaphor for a mature and integrated self-in-God, fully alive (Gal 2:20; Jn 10:10); the very goal that underpinned all of Merton’s writing on interiority.

1026 Michael C. Green, History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: Dawn’s Uncertain Light (1985- 2016), vol. 3, FMS Studia No.3 (Rome: General House, 2017), 372, accessed August 14, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Studia/03_History3_EN.pdf. 1027 Marist Brothers, 1960 Rules, 89–95. 1028 Marist Brothers, “16th General Chapter: Formation,” November 21, 1968, 9; see also Lanfrey, History of the Institute, 2:408; Louis Serra Llansana, “Champagnat at His Time,” Marist Brothers, last modified 1983, accessed October 8, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2735 The author notes, “Colin had the idea that the brothers of the Society of Mary formed one single group with two classes: the Marist Brothers, destined to be teachers, and the Joseph Brothers at the service of the priests in their residences. Marcellin was always opposed to there being two classes of brothers. To him, Marist Brothers, whether they were assigned to teaching or to manual work, would form one single category. In that regard, he was far ahead of his time.”; Despite asking Champagnat to resign as superior of the brothers, albeit with some delicacy, Colin, understandably in the Church of that time, could only think of priests being the mainstay of a religious order; see FMS Archives, “Marcellin Joseph Benedict Champagnat,” Marist Brothers, last modified 1998, accessed October 8, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/510.php?a=1a&id=2724. 1029 Marist Brothers, “FG,” 3. 1030 Green, History of the Institute, 3:373. ~ 235 ~

Appendix A Formation of brothers (1986-93) At the 1993 Chapter the Formation Guide became part of the Proper Law of the Institute.1031 However, such a Guide springs not only from present day concerns, but from the essence and spirit of the origins of the founder and his companions, interpreted for the present day in the spirit of the 1837 Rule and its evolution, faithful to the lead of the Spirit within the Church, that is, through the Constitutions approved in 1986. It is worth pausing briefly to examine the shift between the experimental version 1968 and the officially approved edition, updated in 2010.1032

A linguistic shift to the mystical In many ways it is language that determines thinking.1033 For example, if dogma, doctrine and orthodoxy are uppermost among one’s value system, then one’s thinking is determined by the boundaries the language such a system sets, so that to think beyond what is stated clearly and permitted presents an obstacle difficult to overcome.1034 When one’s ultimate values are love of God and the Gospel of mercy, one’s thinking can readily go beyond a legalistic approach to life; since March 2013 this dynamic is fleshed out in the person and orthopraxy of Pope Francis whom orthodox dogmatists rail against. A comparison of just two articles from each of the Constitutions of 1968 and the 2010 edition of the 1986 version will serve to illustrate the shift towards and return to a more mystical way of living the vocation of Marist Brother.

Constitutions of the Marist Brothers 1968 1986 (2010)

§2 The nature of the Marist Brother §2 Charism of the Founder The love which the Holy Spirit pours into our Led by the Spirit, Marcellin was seized by the love hearts directs all our energies to this single aim: that Jesus and Mary had for him and for others. His TO FOLLOW CHRIST in His life of love of the experience of this, as well as his openness to events Father, and of men, for the love of the Father. and to people, is the wellspring of his spirituality

1031 FG, 3. 1032 Br Emili Turú (SG from 2009-17) points out that minor changes over the previous three General Chapters were included in a new edition, along with a better layout; see Marist Brothers, C&S, 6–7. 1033 Lera Boroditsky, How Language Shapes the Way We Think, Ted Talks, 2017, accessed October 9, 2019, https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think. 1034 Walter Kasper, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity (London ; New York: Burns & Oates, 2004), 133; Kasper posits that the language of translating dogmatic statements is not as important as an open mind and heart to interpret anew the experience of each and all partners in dialogue and their longing for meaning and mercy.

~ 236 ~

Appendix A

We seek in community to attain this ideal of and of his apostolic zeal. It made him sensitive to charity and we wish to give witness of it by the needs of his times, especially to the ignorance living the demands of the Gospel, by profession concerning religion among young people and the of the vows of Chastity, Poverty and Obedience. poor circumstances in which they were placed. This special consecration is deeply rooted in that His faith and eagerness to do God’s will led him to of baptism and expresses it more fully. realise that his mission was to “make Jesus Christ The Constitutions, approved by the Holy See, known and loved.” He often said: “Every time I see guide us in the practical accomplishment of the a child, I long to teach him his catechism, to make intentions of the Founder. him realise how much Jesus Christ has loved him.” This implies for each one total dedication, in a It was this attitude that led him to found our community action, to the different forms of Institute for the Christian education of the young, Christian Education of youth, especially among especially those most in need. those least favoured.

§3 The members §3 Marcellin Champagnat’s Disciples Our Congregation is composed of professed The love which the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts brothers: with temporary vows, perpetual vows, gives us a share in the charism of Marcellin and the vow of stability. Champagnat and directs all our energies to this one There is no distinction among them of class or aim: TO FOLLOW CHRIST AS MARY DID, in observance: they are lay Religious, all brothers His life of love for the Father and for people. We in the same family, linked to each other by live out this ideal in community. charity and by their obedience to the By profession of the vows of chastity, poverty, and Constitutions. obedience, we commit ourselves to live the The Novices are associate members. They share evangelical counsels. This commitment makes us in the spiritual favours and privileges of the witnesses to, and servants of the Kingdom of God. Congregation. Our vocation as Brother is a special call to live the Affiliated members benefit in a like manner. brotherhood of Christ with everyone, especially They are chosen from among those persons who with young people, loving them with a selfless love. lead an exemplary Christian life, and who have Our Constitutions, approved by the Holy See, guide shown outstanding attachment to the us in living out our consecration and in carrying out Congregation. the intentions of the Founder.

The first chapter of the earlier version is headed, ‘Our Marist Vocation,’ whereas the 1986 first chapter’s ten articles is headed, ‘The Identity of the Marist Brother in the Church.’ This shift is significant because it situates the brothers where they belong: not standing alone, but within and alongside other members of the People of God. The one aim to follow Christ is refined in 1986, in adding ‘as Mary did’, as well as adding that brothers share in Champagnat’s

~ 237 ~

Appendix A charism, already implying that the possibility exists for those who are not brothers to share in the charism which is, after all, a gift for and of the Spirit to the Church.

That brothers are ‘Lay Religious’ is given emphasis (in articles 1 and 3) in the earlier document, described as an autonomous family of simple vows. The later version in its first article establishes the fact without capitalization while indicating a shift to a better ecclesiology with a reference to Vita Consecrata §60, naming the fruit of Champagnat’s charism as a ‘religious Institute of Brothers.1035 In describing the members of the Congregation, the revised Constitutions speak of being not simply witnesses (implied in 1968) but also servants of the Reign of God, in which the brother’s call is to live that brotherhood with more than those of his community, and especially with the young people brothers serve as educators. The earlier document reflects the changes that Vatican II introduced, but a more scientific, historical research into the Founder and the origins of the Congregation was at that time, not long underway.

Most striking in the later document is its grounding by the mention of the charism of Marcellin Champagnat. The language points towards the reality of the inner experience of Champagnat’s encounters with Jesus and Mary using metaphor, encounters one would hope to be the experience of his present-day disciples also. Marcellin was seized by the love he experienced in his encounter with Mystery.1036 That memory was recalled time and again, as evidenced in his letters, becoming the wellspring of his spirituality. Metaphor, most frequently the palette knife of poetry,1037 liberates listeners and readers from ‘conventional ways of seeing, so [they] can grasp the patterns by which the world is transfigured.’1038 Metaphor and poetry, so much a part of religious language, have a transformative power that can lead a person (and groups) to encounters with the divine, as does the Word of God itself.1039 Metaphor and poetry,

1035 This is developed more fully in the much later document, an historic first in the history of the Church; see Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, “Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church” (CICLSAL, December 15, 2015), https://nrvc.net/268/article/identity-and-mission-of-the-religious-brother-in-the-church-3733. 1036 The American English edition reads that Marcellin “became powerfully conscious,” a much less effective rendition; see Marist Brothers, “Constitutions and Statutes of the Marist Brothers of the Schools or Little Brothers of Mary (US Edition)” (Marist Press, 1990). 1037 Dennis Sobolev, “Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Language of Mysticism,” Christianity & Literature 53, no. 4 (September 2004): 455–480. 1038 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 475. 1039 In the early 2000s brothers were asking for language that inspires to describe their spirituality that eventuated in 2007 in Marist Brothers, WfR; This desire for less juridical language led the brothers of the last General Chapter to accept in principle the work of the Commission for the revision of the Constitutions, separating the canonical required Constitutions, establishing the Marist Brothers as a legal

~ 238 ~

Appendix A then, have a way of tapping into the interiority that good formation hopes to develop, enriching not only one’s inner world, but the whole of one’s experience.

An overview of the 20th century Formation Guide 1040

The Guide (FG) endeavours to address in a systematic way what Champagnat and the early formators did in educating candidates and brothers for a deeper interiority and an integrated spirituality of Marist life. So, FG is holistic in its intent covering the life span, noting that the ‘call to incarnate the Marist charism is heard in the context of a human situation’ (FG 1:24).1041 When a candidate gets beyond the attraction of the call, he discovers a ‘yes’ that is a decision, not without its consequent challenges, to enter into the process of formation, not only as a Marist, but as a religious brother. Formation’s task, then, is to educate the ‘yes’ in which the person becomes more and more attentive to ‘receiving the seed God is sowing (Mk 4:1-9).’ Assisted by the person’s willingness, the educative process enables him to

harmonize all the elements, some of them unconscious which tend to remain outside the scope of the ‘yes’ … bringing forth a ‘yes’ to everything that promotes and furthers life, … [a] process of growth which … goes from a desire for holiness to a repeatedly felt ‘need to be converted anew’ (C&S §166).1042 The call to live the Marist charism specifically as a consecrated person encompasses a response to move ever closer towards Christ. Recognising that it is a unique way of serving God with a specific spirituality earthed in a call and invitation from God requires certain characteristic choices to be made. An integral formation of the person involves not only his relationship but his communion with the natural world, with others, with himself and with God

entity within the Church and the more inspirational Rule of Life. The official text due in January 2020 is formatted in a poetic style and addressed to each brother personally. See Marist Brothers, “Wherever You Go: Rule of Life of the Marist Brothers,” Marist Brothers, first online October 7, 2019, accessed October 10, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/bau/ EN_Regla_De_Vida.pdf; hereafter, RL. 1040 The 1986 Guide (and its several revisions) is designed for brothers, from their initial formation through to ongoing formation throughout the lifespan. Formation in the lay Champagnat Marist charism is a process that is ongoing and still somewhat experimental, the study of which is beyond the scope of this thesis. The masculine pronouns necessarily pertain to those being formed for the consecrated life of Marist brotherhood. 1041 One of several documents from the 1968 chapter, the Guide on Formation was superseded in the 1986 General Chapter, its latest edition being 1994 and even later in its online editions marginally different; Institute of the Marist Brothers, “Formation Guide” (FMS General House, Rome, 1994), accessed January 9, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/shared/documenti_maristi/GuidaFormazione93_EN.pdf. 1042 Institute of the Marist Brothers, FG, 1:26. ~ 239 ~

Appendix A (FG 1:28). Every stage of his life is a step in the journey of life, providing him with opportunities for growth and conversion:

The conversion process is somehow implanted in a person’s very nature. Acceptance of the call usually begins with conversion of the will, but it must then spread to every faculty and dimension of the person. Conversion is aimed at identification with the person of Christ. It follows that the formation process leads to the transcending of human identification with any group or individual, in order to interiorize Marist Gospel values (FG 1:27). Formation for integrity takes account of the person in the anthropological, biblical, theological, ecclesiological, psychological, spiritual and pastoral elements that contribute to an ongoing process towards a deeper interiority and inner healing as the Guide explains: the person’s inner world is

where he encounters his divisions, limitations and imbalances … In addition, the various states of an individual’s life history leave behind them certain traces which carry strong emotional consequences that might show up later on in life. That is why there may appear in a person’s life history certain developmental delays, forms of regression, or many tensions and conflicts, as well as real deviations. All these behaviours are manifestations of psychological immaturity which makes the road to spiritual maturity difficult. The process of knowing, accepting, transcending or converting all these behaviours indicates the road to be travelled towards inner healing (FG, p.161). In discovering these traces and psychological immaturities, a person wakes up to what Merton calls the false self. Together these limitations represent the illusory self that objects to change and conversion. Awakening to the uncomfortable reality of the flawed human condition empowers a person to call on the help of the Spirit in the Word to heal what one has now discovered as hindrances to their desire to become their true self-in-God.

Elements of the formation for interiority

There are several elements, all of which form an integrated whole, provided they are kept in balance; in the recent past the psychological played too great a role.1043 Chief among elements of the curriculum is personal accompaniment of the person as an individual and as part of the group or community.

Accompaniment The formator may have the skills of a counsellor or spiritual director, but accompaniment is more a walking alongside the person in his questions, struggles, joys and hopes, not just

1043 Michael C. Green, History of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: Dawn’s Uncertain Light (1985- 2016), vol. 3, FMS Studia No.3 (Rome: General House, 2017), 372–76, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/ Studia/03_History3_EN.pdf.

~ 240 ~

Appendix A those that he brings to the initial steps of the process, but also those issues that arise out of the relationships he has in the process of discovery in each new situation.

[Accompaniment] … is first of all an apostolate of listening to and acceptance of this specific individual who is trying to reveal himself in total trust and openness and to discover the mystery of his own human condition. This is how he comes to see himself more clearly, and the areas of himself which are not yet sufficiently healed, and which are at the root of his blockages. This is also how he is led to appreciate better the positive aspects of his personality and to discover what he is called to be: a person in communion with other persons, with creation and with God (FG 1:56). Accompaniment is therefore a delicate task where the formator needs to listen as much to himself as to the person he walks alongside. He is firstly both a collaborator of the Spirit and a catalyst for God’s grace at work in the heart of the person. His aim is to affirm what is best in the candidate, fostering the latter’s human development, the necessary ego-self, while also enabling him to uncover blockages to growth or, in Merton’s terminology, assisting him to wake up to his false self and in the process discovering, or at least glimpsing his potential to be his inmost self-in-God. The catalyst for the candidate is the community in which he lives,1044 through which he learns to relate with others, sharing faith participating in common projects (FG 1:175). The variety of experiences of the candidate, novice or new brother affirm and challenge his perception of himself and lead him inwards to discern what is of God and what is ego; external experiences and the periods of reflection built into the schedule enable him to further discover in a developing interiority the illusions that keep him from the very purpose for which he entered into the formation process in the first place.

Discernment The search for God’s call requires discernment, a gift of the Spirit which St Ignatius has refined in the movements of consolation and desolation, bringing a certain rationality to the inner experience, in the context of prayerful reflection together with ‘the confirmation of one’s decision by the appropriate authority’ (§60).

1044 At the time this Guide was produced, there was a presumption (and still is in parts of the world where there is a strong presence of the Church within the culture) that a 'formation community' comprised young men of a similar age. In those areas of the Marist world where brothers are aging, candidates for brotherhood may need to go beyond the borders of their homeland, living interculturally with others of a similar age, while still maintaining friendships they established in their adolescent and early adult years in their countries of birth. ~ 241 ~

Appendix A Initiation into the world of the Spirit, The programmes and experiences fostering prayer and the spiritual life, are something new for a candidate because it is initiation into the world of Marist spirituality, rooted in the Christian Tradition. The Guide notes that this is a gradual and ongoing progression that involves teaching, catechesis and education in faith.1045 That education and formation in prayer and spirituality occurs in a variety of ways within the Church; it is based on solid biblical, theological, Marist and pastoral sources. The constant return to the sources makes for a sound formation in Marist consecrated life as a brother.

FG 1:65 puts prayer in the context of faith, aligned with what Champagnat looked for in a candidate for brotherhood and what Br François wrote in his circular on the ‘Spirit of Faith.’ Prayer requires a spirit of faith which is likely to awaken a person to a more honest self- awareness and, depending on the freedom the candidate feels with the one accompanying him, greater self-acceptance in the company of the Spirit. Learning the art of reading the Scriptures contemplatively (lectio divina) teaches the person to have that same contemplative attitude to creation, appreciation of others (which sometimes requires greater determination), to God and even to self; less of an obstacle when one senses himself growing more authentic and therefore, more sensitive and compassionate towards all (FG 1:26, 65).

Sandra Schneiders notes that people looking at religious life in the second and third decade of the present century are often at a loss as to how to give a reason for the faith they profess because they lack sufficient knowledge of that faith; yet they are proposing ‘to live a highly specialized’ form of that faith as vowed religious.1046

Studies: professional and religious Ongoing are professional studies for ministry in harmony with the needs of the Church and not for furthering one’s status over others (DF 65). The Guide places professional studies either before novitiate or the stage immediately after novitiate, and throughout the life of the brother. The Guide does not touch so much on professional studies since they are conditioned by local circumstances. However, the Guide operates from the presumption that most men

1045 Schneiders, “Rethinking Religious Formation for the 21st Century,” 5–6 of 10, "Cohort;" in parts of the world where candidates came from situations where the Catholic Church and Christianity itself was losing influence, already clear in the mid-1990s, that loss is even more noticeable in the 21st century, with the resulting ignorance in faith, exacerbated by the fallout due to the abuse scandals at every level of the People of God and the increasing lack of identification with Church at the local or even global level. . 1046 Schneiders, "Rethinking Religious Formation for the 21st century," 7 of 10.

~ 242 ~

Appendix A thinking of vocation to Marist brotherhood are either in their last years of adolescence or in their early twenties. In the developing world, this is not unusual. Regular professional development is an expectation of organisational bodies of Church or governments in whatever field (for example, in teaching, administration, counselling, pastoral care or social work).

With fewer young men joining the brothers in late adolescence, it is likely that those who invest in the possibility of Marist consecrated life in community are already qualified and competent in their professional field. While special attention ‘should be given to Marist pedagogy and its integration into the overall formation process’ (FG 1:68; 4:226-31; 5:332-33; 7:419, 435), it seems reasonable to wonder about the rich mystical heritage that is emerging through recent scholarship and what place it might have, and at which stage in the formation for interiority and integration. However, FG is just that, a guide which is its purpose and not an exhaustive index of subjects and topics to cover. The Guide that comes out of the Rule of Life of the Marist Brothers and the new canonically approved Constitutions (yet to be published) will need to suit a much-changed demographic of older men taking those initial steps in religious life.1047

Insertion Formation for interiority in Marist apostolic religious life is made concrete through insertion into community; into apostolic ministry which varies at different stages of life, into the society in which one lives, especially to those who are poor young people, living simply alongside and in solidarity with them. That means, in the context of faith, insertion into the local Church and not in isolation, nor in ways that separate brothers from the rest of the local church. Insertion requires a detachment from the familiar, whether that pertains to being in a different culture or national setting. It also requires a readiness to learn the language – though this depends on the length of time for which one is missioned. Insertion, the preferred term of the Guide, demands an enculturation on the part of the candidate or brother living in a cultural setting other than his own. On the part of the candidate in a Congregation with a global mission, it means two kinds of enculturation: into his Marist identity and into assimilating as closely as

1047 At a conference on the renewal of religious life hosted by the Sisters of Mercy in Auckland, NZ, in December 29, 1993, the American Barbara Fiand SND posed the question about what kind of a formation programme does a Congregation provide for a person entering religious life who has a professional life having gained higher qualifications as a theologian. ~ 243 ~

Appendix A possible into the cultures in which he is inserted. Inculturation, a theological demand, is the task of the receiving group.1048

In the highly personal domain of the formation of persons for interiority that leads to transformation, there is a danger of regarding such a list as a set of boxes to be ticked. Conversion is an ongoing journey, though it is not usually a smoothly linear, but one that follows the law of graduality (FC §§9, 34). The continuing dynamic of formation entails the recognition that there is a call (implying One who calls), which involves dying so as to bear fruit (Jn 15:5).1049 It is dying to self which is the basic demand of following Jesus (Lk 9:24; FG 1:78-80). With Christ at the centre of one’s being, the person is guided by the Spirit who brings to birth the new man in Christ (Eph 4:23), bearing fruit in all his other relationships (Gal 5:22- 23). One lives a life of integrating the self in and through the external experiences of living out the missio Dei in the Church locally, regionally and globally. Of particular interest for this thesis is what the Guide has to say about the formation for interiority.

Essential tools of interiority

To allow oneself to be led by the Spirit calls for ‘a certain degree of solitude and a great deal of inner space’ (FG 4:196). One also needs the experience of silence on a regular basis, for silence is the language of God (Ps 46:10).1050

Silence The 2010 edition of the Constitution and Statutes has only three references to silence, the first article situating silence in the context of a community meeting naming it a value opening brothers to the mystery of others (C&S §60). The second reference occurs in the context of prayer being drawn ‘into the intimate life of the Trinity’ (§65), suggesting that recollection and ‘interior silence are essential to live attentive to the Spirit who dwells in us and prays in us’ with references to Paul’s letters (1 Co 3:16; Rom 8:26). How this is to happen is through the statute §60.3 where times of silence are decided by the community, ‘to encourage the interior life and foster a spirit of charity,’ but it is immediately linked with how best to use the mass

1048 Dobbyn, “An Inculturation of Marist Spirituality,” 22–31. 1049 Ibid., 29, §76. 1050 Meister Eckhart and Maurice O’C Walshe, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, 43; Paulo Coelho, quoting “Rumi’s Wisdom,” - "Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation," see Paulo Coelho, last modified October 1, 2015, accessed October 30, 2019, https://paulocoelhoblog.com/2015/10/02/character-of-the-week-rumi/.

~ 244 ~

Appendix A media.1051 In the process of moving away from what was regarded as too ‘monastic’ an approach to Marist apostolic life and spirituality, too little has been made of the necessity of silence for the formation of interiority.

Solitude Unlike the Vatican documents (PC §7; DF §§28, 37, 50; VC §§ 8, 38, 71) the Constitutions and Statutes mention solitude only once, linking it with chastity in terms of the ‘love relationship with the Lord’ (C&S §25). If solitude is only about being alone, then to be constantly engaged in social networking, or in the distraction of television or film viewing is not to know the depth and purpose of silence. In its opening chapter the Guide first links silence to the renunciation of the self (FG 1:20) and awakens one to the meaning of human existence and one’s liberation in faith (PC §2), the attentiveness to God’s presence and love in Christ, revealed in God’s Word and recognized in the poor.

The Guide, however, has all but two of its references to silence in its chapter on the novitiate, the first appearing in the first chapter mentioned above, and the last in the chapter on the preparation of formators. At 4:215 silence is linked to prayer and meditation, to abandonment to the Spirit, to simple bodily prayer, to Eucharistic adoration, lectio divina and other types of prayer and inner silence. At 4:234, as in the Vatican documents above, it is linked with solitude in terms of finding a suitable setting guaranteeing that silence and recollection. Candidates may have their own rhythms, but they also need clear guidelines about times of silence fitting with other areas in their lifestyle (4:237) where it should be built into one’s daily schedule (4:280). In the chapter preparing formators the inclusion of a testimony showing that Champagnat was first to show example in keeping silence implies that formators should do likewise (4:490).

The references to solitude in the document, again all focused on the novitiate chapter, is about ‘a great deal of inner space’ (4:196). Solitude’s most significant dimension is its link with one’s sexuality (4:210). Being at ease with solitude frees a person to sublimate sexual energy into the gift of self in friendship and care for others, thereby growing in affective maturity in all one’s relationships from the standpoint of consecrated celibacy whose sole purpose is a total commitment to all-inclusive Love.

1051 Marist Brothers, C&S §§59, 56. ~ 245 ~

Appendix A Both silence and solitude contribute in the most crucial way to the goal of greater interiority in which one is at home with one’s true self-in-God, summed up in what the Guide names as the ‘three axes of maturity’ (7:460-64): knowing one’s real self, psychologically, affectively and spiritually. The maturity of one’s identity is reached when a person has discovered their strengths and the wealth of their personality, is at home flaws and has transcended their flaws, and able to ‘stand on the solid ground of [their] deepest being’ (7:461). It is at that point when wonder almost overwhelms one in the discovery of something within, while aware at the same time that this something does not come from oneself. This is the deepest solitude one can enjoy because there is no longer fear or anxiety. The spiritual maturity of a Marist brother is one in which he is faithful, available, more and more docile to the promptings of the Spirit, in complete self-surrender.

If Merton is an example of one who took solitude and silence seriously, without losing his gregarious sociability and humour, then ‘keeping a spiritual journal’ (FG 5:330) is also a useful means for valuing one’s inner experience and developing a necessary interiority. But in the Guide it rates only one mention with no explanation of how journaling may be a valuable tool to foster interiority. There are other dimensions of the formation for inner experience that could be either given more emphasis or included in such a guide: the imagination and its creativity, as well as dreams of the sleeping consciousness or visions of alternate moments of consciousness; the interchange of a more conscious experience of other religious traditions can add to the richness of one’s inner experience.

~ 246 ~

Appendix B

Humility and nothingness in contemporary Marist texts Since the two sessions of the General Chapter of 1975-76, several significant documents have been published that express the charism and spirituality of the Institute of the Marist Brothers: the Constitutions and Statues (2010 online edition), the Formation Guide (the 1994 edition {its 2006 reprint}), Water from the Rock (2007) and Wherever You Go: The Marist Brothers’ Rule of Life (October 2019).1052

François’s concept of the ‘nothingness’ of human beings, of creation is a concept foreign to 21st century ears, though Merton used it freely. It is also a concept in Zen Buddhism which is interpreted as ‘no-thing-ness,’ an aspect of Zen to which Merton was attracted, since he saw links with the mysticism of Eckhart. Thich Nhat Hahn sees nothingness as ‘emptiness,’ as the work one must do to enter into satori or the state of ‘no-mind.’1053 It is the work of self-emptying that both François and Merton intended; for François it was through obedience and self-abnegation entirely in terms of one’s relationship to and growing friendship with God; for Merton self-emptying is what is required of one who seeks union with God in waking up to the false self so as to allow for the true self-in-God. Both take their cue from Paul for whom God emptied Godself becoming embodied in the human-divine being, Jesus of Nazareth (Phil 2:7). Jesus invites those he calls to follow him to deny themselves daily (Lk 9:23; Mt 10:38).1054 To deny the self is to be transformed into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29) and to stand firm in faith (1 Cor 16:13) to have Christ dwelling by faith in one’s heart (Eph 3:17).1055

However, a word-search through the documents listed above has no mention of ‘nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ or even, from the Gospel of Luke, any sense of the denial of oneself. Such an absence could mean the neglect of what is an essential dimension of Marist spirituality

1052 A document on Marist pedagogy, a Marist vision of education was published in 1998, but this thesis focuses in particular on the interiority and its formation in the brother. See International Marist Education Commission, “In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat: A Vision for Marist Education Today” (Institute of the Marist Brothers, August 15, 1998), accessed September 17, 2019, http://www.champagnat.org/e_maristas/Documentos/ missaoEducativaMarista_EN.pdf. 1053 Thich Nhat Hanh, “(59) Emptiness Is NOT Nothingness -,” last modified June 23, 2015, accessed June 4, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA2c7ViZx-I; cf. Bernadette Roberts, The Path to No- Self : Life at the Center (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), x–xvi. 1054 Brother François, “Spirit of Faith,” 10–11. 1055 Ibid., 11. ~ 247 ~

Appendix B that has yet to be addressed. An investigation into the language of these documents may reveal that lack or, perhaps, an alternative insight.

In the Constitutions and Statutes Neither ‘nothingness’ nor ‘emptiness’ or their directly related words appear in the text, though several articles (§§ 5, 7, 18, 23, 28, 31, 44, 49) hint at the idea of what François and Merton put forward as an essential attitude in the relationship of the creature to the Creator and therefore the starting point of an interiority based on experience-in-faith. In §18 of chapter 2, Mary is the ‘model of our consecration’ for ‘she surrendered herself in love and joy to the workings of the Holy Spirit, giving herself totally to Him.’ Marcellin is seen to be ‘always our model of complete self-gift to God,’ In the subsection on the evangelical counsel of chastity it is Jesus who ‘sets forth clearly His total self-gift to God and the universality of his redeeming love’ in §19. The expression comes close to establishing the connection with God; nonetheless, it can be asked what ‘self’ is being given totally, if the ‘self’ is directing the giving.

‘Abandonment’ and its derivatives appear closer to the meaning implied by ‘nothingness’ or better, ‘emptying’ where §31 under the subheading ‘Dependence, self-abandonment’ expresses more closely the meaning François intends:

Spiritual poverty keeps us in a relationship of total dependence on the Father. It shows itself in our recourse to Superiors, in the acceptance of our limitations, and in our willingness to receive help from others. Spiritual poverty leads us to make continual use of prayer, which re-kindles courage and trust. It creates in us the peace of the poor man who has abandoned himself to God’s care. (C&S p.36) The article bears direct relation to what François intended, because the abandonment does imply an emptying of the self as ‘the poor man,’ albeit somewhat ideally, but it is an emptiness and abandonment and total dependence on God who is Father. It also denotes a deeply personal loving relationship. To accept one’s limitations with a willingness to ask for help from others does mean trusting faith in the goodness of God, which is usually experienced through others. Obedience is seen as abandonment to God’s will mediated through Superiors, which François was insistent upon.1056

1056 Ibid., 17; cf. Marist Brothers, Constitutions and Statutes, 1986 with amendments. (Rome: Marist Brothers of the Schools (Little Brothers of Mary), 2010), §52, p.50; the 21st century mind would challenge this attitude even as it is expressed in the amended Constitutions of 2010; the proposed Constitutions following the General Chapter of 2017 are still to be published at the time of writing. Those brothers who reviewed the 2010 document in preparation for the 22nd General Chapter suggested that each brother of the community represented Jesus Christ, not just the superior; the circular of Br Basilio Rueda on Obedience (1975) is a theological treasure in a contemporary understanding of the vow, still largely untapped, but whose explication and application are beyond the scope of this study.

~ 248 ~

Appendix B

Water from the Rock There is no mention of nothingness or self-emptying in this document. However, ‘abandonment’ appears as part of the clothing of the humble fidelity of God as in §22:

At the foot of the Cross, we are in awe of a God who loves us without reserve. We find a God who shares the physical and psychological suffering, betrayal, abandonment and violence experienced by humanity, and transforms these experiences. There we enter the mystery of redemptive suffering and learn humble fidelity in love. The crucified Christ is the sign and deepest expression of a God who is love.1057 In a most embodied way it expresses the theology of François, which in the fourth part of his circular becomes more Christocentric in focus.1058 That ‘we are in awe’ of God expresses the magnificence, the immutable and the infinite glory of a God who abandons divine being to become human, becoming one with the creatures who spring from God’s creative love. The short paragraph gives a clear sense of the transformative power of self-abandoning, self-emptying love given flesh in the crucified Christ. It is in Christ, that one is to learn humble fidelity, that is, the truth of one’s faithful response in love. Humility now takes up and includes the notion of solidarity with those who suffer; humility shifts to the divinisation or Christification of one whose interiority is to be soundly based on experience-in-faith.

Humility lived in the spirit of faith shifts to a more horizontally relational dimension of solidarity in the more recent documents with an anthropological emphasis, rather than the theological starting point of François. While not a Founder’s or his successor’s exhortation to his brothers, the most recent document, Wherever You Go (RL) expresses the spirituality of the Brother of Mary as one of solidarity, acknowledging that the vocation of brother is one that is received – as pure gift of the Spirit; it is one that is shared – in its supportive community; and it is one that is given away – in its extension to others and especially the poor and those on the peripheries.1059

Wherever You Go: The Marist Brothers’ Rule of Life (RL) This document also does not contain the words ‘nothingness,’ or ‘emptiness;’ the one use of ‘abandon’ refers to Champagnat being confident that God would not desert him (RL 83). But there are several sections in which humility reflects to a certain degree what François intended, though expressed more horizontally, retaining the idea that humility is connected to the all-providential

1057 Marist Brothers, WfR, 29. 1058 Brother François, “Spirit of Faith 4,” 87–88, 93–98. 1059 Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, “Identity & Mission of the Brother.” ~ 249 ~

Appendix B loving God. It is especially clear when the speaker, in the person of the Institute, reminds the brother that ‘your consecration as a brother is a unique act of love. It invites you to surrender your life, living out your fraternity each day in the here and now’ (RL 11). It is the experience of evangelical obedience that brings about true humility that entails a profound sense of one’s own limitations,1060 the place where gospel ‘wisdom challenges the human values of individualism, expediency, and the search for success and recognition’ (RL 17). It means, continues the Institute, living the virtues of humility, simplicity and modesty, together with the ‘little virtues’ recommended by Marcellin (RL 56);1061 to be a brother is to be ‘an example of the possibility of conversion rather than of perfection. With humility, recognize your own limits and your need for others’ (RL 91). This contrast of conversion with perfection challenges the pre-Vatican II spirituality which assumed that vowed religious life was a ‘state of perfection’ at a time in the history of the Catholic Church when priesthood and consecrated life was seen as a ‘vocation’ which single or married people did not have.

Being an example that conversion is possible means living out the ‘experience of total surrender to God and others’ (RL 21), which expresses the notion of total dependence on God, the recognition of the utter creatureliness of the human being. This feature of early Sulpician spirituality became more ordinary and wholesome by the warm familial relationships fostered by Marcellin and François, and according to his novices, no less so by Merton. This makes for a formation in Marist interiority that is spelled out in practical ways in RL 20:

Be aware of your limitations. When you are in need, rely on your brothers and curb any tendency to reserve things for your exclusive use. Sometimes an excessive desire for security can cause you to accumulate possessions or to become attached to certain places and works. On other occasions, you can become selfish about sharing your personal time, wanting to reserve it for your private use alone. … In following the poor Jesus, you must, as he did, continually engage in the process of emptying yourself (cf. Phil 2:6-8). Doing so, you begin to grow in inner freedom and evangelical integrity and to let go of tendencies toward activism, consumerism, and the need for power. Appearing under evangelical poverty, RL 20 is a definite challenge reflecting François’ questions at the beginning of his circular. Notable is the link between poverty and humility which marked

1060 Merton, SL, 72/115. 1061 Furet, ALS, 235–242.

~ 250 ~

Appendix B the beginning of the Institute.1062 But it does not mean avoiding the responsibility of earning a living and contributing in a whole-hearted way to the life and mission of the Institute. More importantly, to grow in inner freedom and a deep interior life is to be drawn into the process of self-emptying; that course involves total trust in and surrender to God, which means letting go of (abandoning) those parts of the self, the false self, that hinder one’s journey on the path of humility to the goal of complete transformation of the self (FG 78).

A later article adds emphasis to the challenging nature of walking such a path. Headed by the speaker’s advice, ‘Reconcile with your inner self,’ RL 46 states:

Along with your personal qualities that lead to love and help you to build fraternity, you, like all of us, have tendencies that can give rise to individualism and rivalry. You are called to heal your wounds, accept your limits, purify your desires. Work to overcome selfishness; purge resentments from your heart (cf. Mt 5:23-24). The Lord walks with you on this journey of conversion reminding you: “My grace is sufficient for you; my strength is shown in your weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). It could be argued that there is a Pelagian element here when the listener/reader is called to heal their wounds, though quoting Paul counters such an argument. It does imply taking some responsibility in the creative, healing work of the Spirit. The work of exposing the false self to allow the true self-in-God the freedom to be is a work of love; not simply that natural love as part of one’s human qualities, but the Love and grace of God, that in weakness reveals itself. This becomes apparent when one’s true self emerges and leads beyond one’s family, friends and community of Champagnat Marists as noted RL 68:

Within the fraternal community that welcomes us, we experience the presence of the risen Lord as an annunciation and a call to mission. Like the Lord, you are called to put yourself at the service of others and to offer them a tender and self-giving love, particularly those who are poor and needy. In following Jesus, we are meant to love not only those who treat us well but to wash also the feet of those who disappoint us, hurt and betray us (cf. Mt 5:43-48; Lk 6:27-36). As the Institute speaks to the candidate and the brother, the link with the original inspiration in the affection and warmth of relationship a founder and a formator should have, is apparent in a phrase

1062 Furet, Life, 61. ~ 251 ~

Appendix B such as ‘tender and self-giving love. Being part of such a fraternal community is the necessary context for building such an inner life because of the almost tangible presence of the risen Lord, a dimension that members take seriously Champagnat’s final exhortation to constantly take up the practice of the presence of God, ‘the soul of prayer, of meditation, and of all the virtues.’1063

The Formation Guide There is similarly no mention of the kind of creaturely nothingness of the human being in relation to the immutable transcendence of a provident God in all creation. However, as with the Constitutions, ‘abandonment’ portrays the sense of the inspirational ‘spirit of faith’ François intended in the formation of interiority, as did Merton for those who were serious about knowing their true selves in God.

Two examples will suffice: among the criteria for admission to vows on the part of the novice is that ‘he has given assurances of his willingness to abandon himself totally and joyfully to the will of God’ (FG 4:246). The same article supposes that the novice has come to a deep, realistic understanding of his human life, that he is at home with solitude and has ‘a genuine, responsible, personal prayer life,’ each of which is given strong emphasis by Merton through an anthropological theology outlined in Chapter 3. A realistic understanding of one’s humanness is understood by François in his judgment of motivations of some brothers living the spirit of faith; his theological anthropology is evident when he suggests that seeking God within the depths of one’s heart is the ‘inner cell’ where a person is in and with God in God’s sanctuary.1064

Another section from the chapter on the preparation of formators (FG 7:464) states that one has reached spiritual maturity:

when a person lives his relationship to God with an attitude of fidelity, availability and docility, in the abandonment of his deepest self. This docility extends more and more to everything in one’s life. And more and more, the various aspects of the person also stop resisting the motions of the Holy Spirit … this is the sort of balanced maturity toward which every person, every Brother, and with all the more reason everyone involved in formation work, should be tending. The person’s very reason for existence is none other than what François insists upon throughout his circular and what Merton understands to be essential when he argues that it is experience that counts, but it is an experience-in-faith that requires retrospective reflection in the formation of interiority.

1063 Marist Brothers, C&S, p.167. 1064 Brother François, “Spirit of Faith 3,” 52.

~ 252 ~

Appendix C

Principles and Practices of Dream Work

What follows is a bare outline of how working with dreams can lead to greater self- awareness and can become the threshold of deeper interiority in living contemplatively the mystical life. This outline is necessarily sketchy and will eventually need filling out. In the field of dream studies there is a developing scholarly research in the multi-disciplinary field that includes psychology, transpersonal psychology and religious studies, including mysticism. A very basic bibliography is provided at the end of this appendix E together with a bibliography of journaling since dream work and journaling often go hand in hand. This will read better if addressed to the reader, and demonstrated with actual dreams.

Principles As mentioned briefly in the thesis itself, the dreams of the sleeping consciousness are a specific dimension of alternate consciousness, but as amply demonstrated in the Scriptures themselves, both First Testament and the New, they contain, if we take the time to notice them through noting our experiences-in-faith, messages that in the Christian Tradition can be interpreted as messages of the Spirit.

When a dream is remembered, what causes it to be remembered is often its vivid or bizarre nature; the memory of dreams is helped by keeping pen and paper next to the bed so that when waking the dream can be jotted down in just a word or a few, or even in simplistic sketches of the image or the narrative.

There are three general principles:

1. All the elements of the dream are important, some more significant than others.

2. Generally, they are all aspects of the dreamer’s personality.

3. The dream is a call to deeper insight, and ongoing conversion and growth in self- awareness.

When a dream is shared it is crucially important that the dreamer is listened to and allowed the freedom to speak as the dreamer wishes without the listener interfering with the narrative. Once

~ 253 ~

Appendix C told, then remembering the respect one owes another, questions can be asked that are open-ended and once both listener and dreamer come to an understanding of the content of the dream, it may be pertinent to ask about when the dream occurred, what was happening in their life experience, what emotions are involved. Although, the emotions occurring in the dream itself are important to notice. The open-ended questions can include queries about the associations this or that image may have for the dreamer. There are some dream theorists who suggest saying, if the dream is inconclusive, ‘If it were my dream… and so on.’ This is a most unhelpful technique and a sure sign that the listener has not only not listened but has trampled on the sacred garden of the dreamer’s inner self. If the dreamer is particularly sensitive or has low self-esteem then they are likely to ignore their own reality and opt for the ‘expert’ who listens to them.

An Example of Practice in Dream Work One need not be a Jungian analyst, but some knowledge of metaphor and symbol will help. If one is reading and deeply reflecting on the Scriptures on a regular basis, then one should have a basic knowledge of the significant truths that can be found through metaphor, symbol and parable and myth. An example will illustrate how a dream can lead to greater self-awareness.

The round table Carlos (a pseudonym) is a man in his late twenties. After spending an unsatisfactory time studying, he went working and developed considerable proficiency in skill in the IT field. He had been feeling his way in a new working environment in a large well-established company. He recounts the following dream:

I am sitting in an office with my boss who is talking to me and I am very nervous. We are sitting at a round table. He is talking and I am listening, and I know he doesn’t quite understand what my skills are, but I sit and listen. Then we both stand up and go our separate ways. Then I wake up. When asked about how he feels in the dream he answers that he feels like a child in a classroom, waiting to be told off, he feels nervous and unsure of his place and of himself. He feels bound to keep in good with the boss because he does not want to lose the job, and at this stage he is temporary with a view to becoming permanent.

The elements are all aspects of his inner self: the boss who does not understand; himself, better expressed as the ‘dream ego;’ that they are sitting; the round table (at which he was puzzled because there were no such tables at his work); the skills the dream ego has in his field; standing up and going separate ways.

~ 254 ~

Appendix C

It can be useful to ask what elements one thinks most significant. When asked, he mentioned the round table. The following questions enhanced the process and did not interfere with the dreamer’s inner world. In this case it was a little bit of fun to ask him if he would like to be the table. Because over time we had developed a level of trust, he felt safe to try this game, as knew me well enough to know that we both wanted the best for his growth and development. To do this it was important for Carlos to shift to another chair in order to be the table. It was safe to begin with functional questions such as: What are you made of? Where were you made? How long have you been in this office? Do you like being a table? And so on.

Then one can move to questions that may elicit greater connection with his inner self. When asked what his function was as a round table, without hesitation he answered, ‘I make all people equal.’ His whole visage changed, his eyes lit up and there was a bodily recognition that the insight he had received had made its impact. Back in his original chair he was able to recognize that he had been relating to others in the office like a child to an authoritarian teacher or parent and that he had been denying his own talents and field of expertise. Two weeks later it was clear that he had gained better insight and great confidence in his relationships with other work colleagues.

The example above is a sketch of how valuable dreams can be in terms of a deeper insight into self-awareness. It is one aspect of sharing dreams with trusted others that can advance one’s growth and movement toward not only greater self-knowledge but also greater interiority when one is, as Carlos was, committed to growing in faith.

Dreams and Dreaming: a preliminary list Adams, Kate, B. J Koet, and Barbara Koning. Dreams and Spirituality: A Handbook for Ministry, Spiritual Direction and Counselling, 2015. Barasch, Marc. Healing Dreams : Exploring the Dreams That Can Transform Your Life. New York: Riverhead Books, 2000. Barrett, Deirdre, and Patrick McNamara, eds. The New Science of Dreaming. Vol. 3: Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives. Westport, CT.: Praeger, 2007. Berne, Patricia H, and Louis M Savary. Dream Symbol Work : Unlocking the Energy from Dreams and Spiritual Experiences. New York: Paulist Press, 1991. Bogzaran, Fariba. Integral Dreaming: A Holistic Approach to Dreams. SUNY series in dream studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012. Bowater, Margaret M. Dreams and Visions : Language of the Spirit. Freedom, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1999. Bowater, Margaret M. Healing the Nightmare, Freeing the Soul: A Practical Guide to Dreamwork. Auckland, NZ: Calico Publishing, 2016. Brueggemann, Walter. “The Power of Dreams in the Bible.” The Christian Century (2005): 28– 31. ~ 255 ~

Appendix C

Bulkeley, Kelly, Kate Adams, and Patricia M. Davis, eds. Dreaming in Christianity and Islam: Culture, Conflict, and Creativity. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Bulkeley, Kelly. Big Dreams: The Science of Dreaming and the Origins of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bulkeley, Kelly. The Wilderness of Dreams: Exploring the Religious Meanings of Dreams in Modern Western Culture. SUNY series in dream studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Clift, Jean Dalby, and Wallace B Clift. Symbols of Transformation in Dreams. Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1989. Condon, Gerard. The Power of Dreams: A Christian Guide. Blackrock, County Dublin; Chester Springs, PA: Columba Press [U.S. distributor, Dufour Editions], 2008. Davis, Patricia M. “Discerning the Voice of God: Case Studies in Christian History.” In Dreaming in Christianity and Islam, 43–56. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Driscoll, Jim, and Zach Mapes. Dreams: A Biblical Model of Interpretation. [North Carolina?]: Orbital Book Group, 2010. Fontana, David. Learn to Dream: Interpret Dream Symbolism, Enhance Inner Life, Remember Your Dreams. London: Duncan Baird, 2004. Griffin, Joe, and Ivan Tyrrell. Dreaming Reality : How Dreaming Keeps Us Sane or Can Drive Us Mad. Chalvington: HG Publishing, 2006. Haden, Robert L. Unopened Letters from God: A Workbook for Individuals and Groups. [Flat Rock, NC]: Haden Institute, 2010. Hamilton, Nigel. Awakening Through Dreams: The Journey Through the Inner Landscape. Karnac Books, 2014. Hartmann, Ernest. The Nature and Functions of Dreaming. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Hoss, Robert J. Dream Language: Self-Understanding through Imagery and Color. Ashland, OR: Innersource, 2005. Johnson, Robert A. Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. Kelsey, Morton T. Dreams: A Way to Listen to God. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. Kelsey, Morton T. God, Dreams, and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams. Rev. and Expanded ed. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991. Kilroe, Patricia. “The Dream as Text, The Dream as Narrative - Patricia Kilroe - ASD Journal Dreaming 10(3).” The Dream as Text, The Dream as Narrative. Last modified 2000. Accessed December 21, 2014. http://asdreams.org/journal/articles/10-3_kilroe.htm. Koet, B. J. “Divine Dream Dilemmas: Biblical Visions and Dreams.” In Dreaming in Christianity and Islam, 17–31. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Koet, B. J., ed. Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas. Studies in the history and anthropology of religion 3. Leuven ; Paris ; Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2012. Krippner, Stanley, Christophe Jaeger, and Laura Faith. “Identifying and Utilizing Spiritual Content in Dream Reports.” Dreaming 11, no. 3 (2001): 127. ~ 256 ~

Appendix C

Lyons, Tallulah. Dreams and Guided Imagery: Gifts for Transforming Illness and Crisis. [S.l.]: Balboa Pr, 2012.

A list of journaling resources

These resources are placed here because dream work and journaling are related. Absent from the list are the more famous journals and writings of saints and mystics listed in the main bibliography. The highlighted authors are my recommendations.

“Journaling | The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.” Accessed December 26, 2019. http://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree/journaling. Calhoun, Adele Ahlberg. Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us. Westmont: InterVarsity Press, 2009. Cameron, Julia, and Inc Recorded Books. It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again: Creativity In The Golden Years. e-Book. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2016. Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York: Souvenir Press, 2012. Cepero, Helen. Journaling as a Spiritual Practice: Encountering God through Attentive Writing. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008. Conner, Janet. Writing down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within. EBook. San Francisco, CA: Conari, 2008. Dofflemeyer, Trina. “How to Practice the Spiritual Discipline of Journaling, Part 1.” Accessed December 27, 2019. https://www.rzim.org/read/rzim-global/how-to-practice-the-spiritual- discipline-of-journaling-part-1. Holder, Jackee. 49 Ways to Write Yourself Well: The Science and Wisdom of Writing and Journaling. Brighton: Step Beach Press, 2013. Martin, Jim. “Journaling as a Spiritual Discipline.” Leaven 2, no. 4 (1992): 25–28. McNiff, Shaun. Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go, 1998. Oppong, Thomas. “The Life-Changing Habit of Journaling (Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Many More Great Minds….” Medium. Last modified July 10, 2017. Accessed June 25, 2020. https://medium.com/thrive-global/start-journaling-54ea2edb104. Pennebaker, James W., and John Frank Evans. Expressive Writing: Words That Heal. Enumclaw, WA: Idyll Arbor, Inc, 2014. Pennebaker, James W., and Joshua M. Smyth. Opening up by Writing It down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain. Third edition. New York: The Guilford Press, 2016.

~ 257 ~