Remember, we've noticed different concepts, and there's outer history, which is something that anyone can verify about you, when you were born, what town, what years of school you did, the name of the parents, all that, but then there's this mysterious inner history that can only be arrived at by a kind of a personal revelation, that is a personal opening out of your heart to another. Now, in this kind of spirituality class, we're more about, focused on that inner history of the Christian community, other distinctions between secular history, Mao Tse-Tung and Shun-Lai and President Ford and all this, and salvation history, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, right up to our Lord, and then St. Paul, the Acts of the Apostles. Now we feel there's, in this current, it's discussed among theologians, the relation

[01:07]

between this current and all the rest of history, but certainly this current, for us, in some sense is salvific, and it goes right through the life of the Church, right through the Apostolic Fathers, the Early Fathers, the Medieval, right up to our own time, we feel that there is this, God has come down into our history, which is where we really live our human life, he's present there, and he's transforming it from within, divinizing it, and that's what we want to focus on. So history. Now we're talking about, again, not any kind of history, but Christian history, and this qualification is decisive, and Christian spirituality. So it's not just spirituality in general, and then we give kind of Christian trappings to it, but we could take away the trappings in the language, and for the same substance use Buddhist trappings in language, or Muslim, no, somehow Christianity from within makes this very special. We want to work that through. How is Christ decisive for spirituality? If the basic things are prayer, well, every religion has prayer, meditation, every religion

[02:12]

has meditation techniques, asceticism, eat more, eat less, there's all sorts of things that are shared by all the great religions, and we should rejoice in that, but what makes Christian spirituality very unique, somehow decisive also for the others, we want to remain on that level of the uniqueness of Christianity. What is the relationship, if we're going to study, then, the history of Christian spirituality, what's the relationship, for instance, of spirituality with other disciplines, like theology you might study, dogma, these sort of things. This is also discussed. Is it that the church announces a dogma, and then in light of that we live our spirituality? The church proclaims Christ is the Son of God, and then we shape a spirituality that reflects this centrality of Christ, or the resurrection of the body, or transubstantiation, therefore we focus, this is one model, that first comes dogma, and then comes spirituality.

[03:17]

First comes theology, thinking through our faith, and then spirituality. So in this model, spirituality is rather secondary, it's derived, it comes in a second moment. Now there's another model for which spirituality is primary. If you mean by spirituality, not just pious repetitions of formula or something, or one taking soup or something, but if you mean living the Christ mystery, if this is true, then these dogmas don't just fall out of heaven, sort of pre-packaged in the third heaven or something. They're thought through, worked through by theologians, by church authority in council, through the lived experience of church members. Now this lived experience is spirituality. So in this model, you see, they come eventually to define Christ is the Son of the Living God, because they've lived this in their prayer, in their faith, in their hope. So in this model, spirituality would be primary, and from lived spiritual experience would come

[04:25]

theology, would come dogma indeed. Athanasius can be so committed to the full Christology against some kind of Aryan delusion, because he has this profound lived experience that Christ is our Savior. He must be truly the Son of the Living God, truly God of God, light of light. So I don't know if you see the primacy here of lived experience, which is what we mean by spirituality, and sort of theology and dogma follows upon this. So this is a different, for instance, of Agrius says, if you are a theologian, you truly pray. And if you truly pray, you are a theologian. He was stressing that theology then would come out of a lived experience. This is the way the early fathers saw it. Later, in the kind of decadent later scholastic period, not the early scholastic period, but called the neo-scholasticism, you get theology as a kind of an intellectual game and playing

[05:29]

with syllogisms and things, and rather arid. And you can get your doctrine in theology without being too committed to prayer even, which is a different thing. And then you distinguish between dogmatic theology here and spirituality there, and it's very nice to get them together, but you can do the one without the other. And then the reaction is anti-intellectualism, and you want to live your spirituality without ever looking into a book, because books are simply full of arid notions that throw you full of pride, or they distract you from prayer or something. So at a certain point in the later Middle Ages, you get a split there, and spirituality goes one way, and theology and doctrine go another. And that gets a little dangerous. But the earliest heritage is to keep these together. The first theologian is John the Theologian, John the Evangelist, because his gospel is theology and his gospel is this lived experience of the risen Christ.

[06:32]

It would seem like when you had the real thing, when you have them both together, it's almost, it's very hard to say which comes first. It's like the chicken and egg. It seems like Athanasius would first be taught, you know, his catechism, whatever, and then he'd live that, and then he'd be able to produce profounder insights into doctrine. It seemed like one would work on the other. It's certainly a self-nourishing thing, and it's hard to come up with the witch-keepers. But you said he was taught his catechism. By whom? Well, I mean, he would have been taught as a catechumen, wouldn't he, if he had been instructed in the faith? But the full theology of Nicaea, you see, was being debated, and someone had to work it out. Church authorities had to work out explicit terms which hadn't been formulated in those terms before. There's a time when the Church proclaims, for instance, transubstantiation, and two centuries before, the term might not even be known. Now, where does that term come out of? Now, in this view, it comes out of the lived experience. So you can make a kind of a case that the one precedes the other. But I think you're right, essentially.

[07:33]

At least get them together, and at least, and once you get the doctrine, then it certainly sustains, guides, nourishes spirituality, if it's good theology. Again, one of the dangers of later theology is it doesn't always seem to nourish that much spirituality. The theology we got, it'd be hard to preach it, for instance. Very, very technical, scholastic categories of one thing or another that don't seem that related to much of the lived Christian life. Now, that's a kind of a danger one can get into. But Thomas Merton, for instance, writes, faith is, and here, I think he uses faith in the kind of lived thing of, as he makes clear here, living the Christ mystery. So it is faith here is equivalent to spirituality. Faith is the presence of God's truth in us by our response, by a kind of wedding of wills

[08:36]

and hearts in which he has revealed his love to us and his saving action. And we have responded saying, yes. So this wedding of wills and hearts. So this is spirituality. He says, this is deeper than a conceptual idea. It goes deeper than the theological truth. It is rooted in life itself. Now that's a little ambiguous. I think it goes deeper than theological truth. It's one truth, and theological expression is one expression of it, and kind of lived commitment is another. But in any case, it's clear where he's at in this thing. But I wanted just to bring up the issue of where to situate Christian spirituality relative to other disciplines and studies and things. I think you can at least, the minimal case is that it's very important. It's important for Catholic Orthodox faith. It's also very, very important for the really gutsy heresies. If you look at the really challenging heresies right through the life of the church, they're

[09:40]

usually focused not on some abstract idea, but on some form of spirituality that's gone slightly amok. Anastasism in the early church was essentially, we'll see in this history, essentially a wanting to live spiritually all the way. And here was someone over there who said, yeah, it's nice to read the Bible and believe in those doctrines, et cetera. But there's a deeper truth that perhaps you haven't penetrated, and it's a little secret. And if our group that's more committed Christians with deeper insight and experience, we know these truths. Now, if you'll join us, we'll tell you them. So Anastasism is essentially a spirituality proposal. We'll see that later. It's not erudite theology. Pelagianism, which comes out of monastic life, is essentially an anguish to fully commit myself in all my actions and efforts to living Christian spirituality seriously.

[10:43]

And this got slightly, quietism much later, is again essentially a spirituality of God is omnipotent. It is God who takes the initiative. It is God who must purify me, not me myself. And it gets, Jansenism is essentially spirituality. Comes out of a monastery convent that was extremely severe and austere and ascetical and contemplative, et cetera, essentially spirituality. And we're still suffering that one. But so that Catholic theology in its orthodox comes out of a authentically lived spirituality, I think you could argue that, and also heresy comes out of a partially lived spirituality. But spiritualities are decisive. And if you're going to debate people into partial spiritualities or partial theology, often you've got to start at this deeper level. In the past, one of the problems with our so-called apologetics, we would throw syllogisms

[11:44]

at people, very clever syllogisms, but it didn't hit the people where they were living. If you find a hippie on the road who's thumbing and he drops through here for a few days and he's probably into a little Zen and into a little yoga and a little John of the Cross, et cetera, if you're going to talk to him, it can't be on a level of abstract theology. It has to be on this primal level of lived. And that will then maybe straighten out the theology if he gets his spirituality right. Anyway, something to work through. We have all sorts of the Munis. It's essentially a proposal for spirituality, a very, very demanding proposal. This friend of mine who studied the Munis in depth and wrote a book on them, he says it's basically a weird form of monasticism, of global monasticism. Every member of the Munis, he gives every minute of his day, all of his money, all of his time, full obedience. We have a kind of a comfortable Catholic Christianity of the parish.

[12:46]

You go in Sunday morning and you put in a dollar in the plate and so forth, and then you go back to your own family, lie there. This is full commitment all the way. And these people go there and they want it, and they want authority, and they want a very rigid ascetical and moral life, et cetera. It's a quest for spirituality. And if they're going elsewhere and not to us, we've got to ask why. I was with Bernard coming up here, I guess about a year ago, and there was a guy thumbing, and Bernard immediately pulled over and picked him up. Very interesting guy. And he was into all sorts of things, Buddhism and Hinduism. He was a born Catholic, had been sort of traumatized in his early parochial school years, and had left it, convinced that Catholicism is simply bingo games and very rigid, moral things that can't really be lived anyway, and kind of nasty, angry sisters and things. And if you want to get really deep wisdom that permits you to live in serenity with

[13:51]

all the cosmos and in a nonviolent... Also Catholics are marines who go out and kill people and things, and crusades and things. But if you want a serene, loving, nonviolent, holistic union with the all, you go away from Christianity. So there again, not primarily starting with, I don't believe that doctrine that was affirmed by the Council of Nicaea, about which they know nothing. But I don't like the way this particular way of living Christianity was presented to me, and it's not where I'm at in my deepest spiritual aspirations. So that's the challenge. So what I'm suggesting is, when we work through the history of Christian spirituality, it's not terribly secondary or derived, but it's pretty crucial at all levels for us and for dealing with others, etc., questions, comments, objections. So we're going to do a history of Christian spirituality. If we were going to do a history of the Republic of the United States, we might begin at the

[14:58]

end of the Revolution with the Constitution, but we'd start in that area. We know where we're beginning. Or if we wanted to start a history of the Ford Motor Company, we'd start with Henry Ford I. Where do you start a history of Christian spirituality? Did we discuss that last time? Where does it really begin? Well, in what sense is it Christian then? Christ is decisive, and Christ certainly is the son of David. Christ is the Messiah expected. So I think both of you are right. Now, there are books around that don't start in either place. I don't know if you know that book, Gannon and Traub, The City in the Desert. It's an interpretation of the history of Christian spirituality.

[16:00]

It says, Christian spirituality begins with the Desert Fathers. Before that, you don't have really spirituality. You have proclaiming of the good news and visionary efforts. But spirituality is a kind of reflexive effort to live in a holy way. This begins with the Desert Fathers. And there are a couple of others who say this. They say, Christian spirituality begins, one says, with Clement of Alexandria. Now, our thesis would be absolutely with the Word of God, and with Christ, and as Christ is preceded by and prepared for by the Old Testament in the Old Testament itself. And this is very, very important. Spirituality is a very, very demanding thing. If you're going to do it all the way and be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect and take up your cross and follow me, et cetera. And I think the ultimate foundation for all this effort on our part can't be

[17:01]

Abbot Paphnutius, or it can't be Abbot Moses, or it can't be Clement of Alexandria, some wise teacher who's helping us become more holy. It can only be the Word of God that really saves us. So if we were wanted to do this course in a rigorous way, we'd want to go all through the Old Testament, the New Testament, all the different currents of spirituality that are there in Paul and there in John and there in the epistle of Peter, et cetera, et cetera. Now, we're not going to do that simply because, hopefully, you do that every day with the hearing of the Word of God in the office of the proclaiming of the Word of God in the homily, et cetera. This is the roots of our Christian spirituality and of all the history of Christian spirituality. And the early fathers and the later fathers especially saw it this way. When they wrote books on prayer, they were primarily, we'll see, meditation on the Word of God. Origen talks about on prayer.

[18:03]

What he does is he sees what Jesus says about prayer in the Gospels, and then he goes into a long meditation on the Our Father. And Tertullian does the same, and Cyprian does the same. This is what Christian spirituality is about. It's going back to the Word of God, which is decisive, which is salvific, which is nourishment. Remember what Scripture itself says about itself for us. Psalm 118, a lamp to my feet is your word, O Yahweh, a light to my path. So spirituality is this journey to the Father, and we need a light and we need a lamp, and that is God's Word. Hebrews 4.12, for the Word of God is living and operative, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So the depths of the heart, I think Bruno's talked a bit about that category, that we

[19:06]

live our spirituality. Now, Abbot Paphnutius may say a great deal, it'll help me, but to penetrate right to the discernment, which is decisive, that's the living Word of God. We need light, we need a guide, we need nourishment to journey. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, says Jesus. So Scripture, the Word of God, as nourishment, as strength to go on, as foundation for our whole spiritual edifice. He who hears my words and keeps them is like a wise man who builds his house on a rock. The rains came, the winds blew, etc. So many, many other texts about the Word of God, which guides us, nourishes us, founds us, and fulfills us, restores us. Of course, the Word of God is Christ, and as the Fathers say, this one word sums up all the words. And so it's going through those words we get to Christ, who is the cornerstone, the

[20:10]

axis, the Alpha and Omega of our spirituality. So, if we're going to do a history of Christian spirituality well, we've now spent several years on Scripture, but you have other Scripture classes. Just so what I'm trying to do now is raise your consciousness to perceive what we're doing here in relation to that, that that is the real foundation of this. And if we don't do that, it's simply because you're getting it elsewhere, and presumably too much repetition isn't that helpful. There's a sister in my course of History of Christian Spirituality up at Berkeley, and she told me she'd taken another course just like this, History of Christian Spirituality, and it was a year's course and two hours a week, etc. And the professor, at the end of the year, still hadn't gotten out of the New Testament. He wanted to, but there were just too many. So, we're going to get out of the New Testament today, but I did want to stress that point. Then the Council also is very, very emphatic in bringing this back to our attention.

[21:13]

The whole beautiful document on Revelation, Chapter 6, Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church. The Church has always venerated the Divine Scriptures, just as she venerates the Body of the Lord, since from the Table of Both, the Word of God and the Body of Christ, she receives unceasingly and offers to the faithful the Bread of Life, and this is special in the Sacred Liturgy. So, here's this food that nourishes us, the Eucharist and the Word. I'm dropping down a little. And the force and power in the Word of God is so great that it remains the support and energy of the Church. We need strength to do spirituality, not just someone telling us, do this, do that, do that in meditations, but we need the inner strength to do this, and this comes to us from the Word of God. Support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul,

[22:16]

the pure and perennial source of the spiritual life. So, here it's quite explicit. The perennial source of our spiritual life is the Word of God. It's not Clement of Alexandria. It's not Evagrius. It's not the Desert Fathers. They will help us, but the source is the Word of God. So, if we want to do a history of Christian spirituality, we start with the source, and you've been doing that since you've been here and since you've been Catholics and Christians. Consequently, these words are perfectly applicable to Sacred Scripture, for the Word of God is living and efficient and is able to build up and give the inheritance among all the sanctified, in Bruce 4.12 and Acts 20.32. So, having said that, and urging you always to go back to this source, why don't we then move on to a first phase after the Word of God, which is so-called Apostolic Fathers.

[23:20]

A few more introductory notes. Spirituality or spiritualities? We're doing the history of Christian spirituality. Should we add an S there and make it a plural? Because we talk about spirituality of the desert, spirituality of Benedict, spirituality of Basil, Franciscan spirituality, Dominican, Carmelite, lay spirituality. Today, they've got women's spirituality, liberation, all these things. So, presumably, there's some sort of distinction between Franciscan spirituality and Camalgolese spirituality. So, maybe we need a plural there. And this is also debated among the experts. So, if you take everyone here at this table, everyone's spirituality will be different. You would ultimately get to that point. That is, a certain group needs their spirituality, but if you look very carefully at everyone in that group, everyone is unique and has his own particular gift, his own particular

[24:22]

qualities and weaknesses. So, the ultimate of this theme of the pluralism of spiritualities gets to that point. There's as many spiritualties in this room as there is... And I suspect this is true. If I were to ask you each to take a sheet of paper, without looking at the other person, write the primary elements of your spirituality, what comes first, what comes second, what comes third, I think the papers might be different. So, there's that... Still, though, I think the teacher, when he's going to hand out the papers, would say, we're going to write about spirituality. He wouldn't say, let's write about our spiritualities. Now, why would he say that? It's just... It's just the One Spirit. That's One Spirit. Even though we maybe have different experiences. The One Spirit, the One Lord, the One Savior, One Baptism, says St. Paul. So there's this paradox. But then why do we talk about Franciscan spirituality is distinct from Camaldolese, is distinct from Jesuit?

[25:23]

Are we Jesuits, then? Well, we're all in One Spirit. In One Spirit. But there is a diversity there, isn't there? Jesuits, for instance, are forbidden, or they were by their founder, Ignatius of Loyola, to say their office together. Now, monks habitually say their office together, just as an example. Different ways of doing it. Right. Part of the explanation would be the same spirit. Right. That's the basic dialectic. It's right back there. So to solve this, you go back to Scripture, noticing. Right. One body, many members. And each member, St. Paul says, is quite different from the other. The eye is not the hand, it's not the foot. But there is the One Body. So you can stress either one. So the way some theologians talk about it is, objectively, there is the One Christ who

[26:27]

has saved us through the One Spirit. There's the One Faith. We are incorporated in Christ in the One Baptism, et cetera. So you could talk about this One Perennial Spirituality. And, for instance, Louis Boullée pushes this very much. Danielou stresses that, for instance. So on the objective salvific, as a kind of font of our redemption, there is the One Spirituality. It's basically the One Spirit who sanctifies us, that's presented us. But on the level of the way each of us assimilates and receives and lives that, according to our own unique gift, limits, possibilities, personality, there, St. Francis of Assisi is very different from Thomas Aquinas. And even in the St. Franciscan family, Francis of Assisi is very different from Bonaventure. And they're both saints. St. Romuald is very different from St. Peter Damian. And they're both Camaldolese, this sort of thing.

[27:30]

So, ultimately, as Ephraim says, everyone has to work out his own spirituality. But in the one family of the One Spirituality, so one way you can do it is if you focus on the level of origin and font and fulfillment and content, sort of the objective, that's the One Spirituality. And if you focus on the level of our own personal, intimate assimilation of that and living that, then one person will want to stress good works with the poor, and another person will want to stress solitude, etc. And then you get the real pluralism. So we need both the unity and the plurality. And in doing the history of Christian spirituality, we must be prepared to come to grips with great variety, incredible variety. But also insist that we're not ultimately 200 million little churches or something like that. But it's the one church, the one faith, the one salvation. There's a note on the board from Bouyer about what is the monastic spirituality.

[28:38]

It's very interesting, on the board outside the church. And he's very rigorous and linear, and some things are definitely monastic and other things are definitely not monastic. And the cenobitical is directly in function to the eremitical, and this is the way St. Benedict conceived of it. Fine. But that's the way he sees it. Now you can go to all sorts of other... He's not, by the way, a monk. He's never been, which is interesting. But he writes a good deal about the monastic life. But you go to other theologians of monastic life, they'll see it quite differently. And he says some things rather dogmatically there. But you can get some great towering saints in Basil, who is sort of the doctor of all of Eastern monasticism in a certain sense. He has some positions that are absolutely 100% different from what Bouyer is writing there. So, I think one of the things that going through the history of Christian spirituality challenges us with is plurality, is diversity, is that Pacomius is in one place and Antony is another

[29:43]

and Basil is in another. And we can't just force them into the same little box. We've got to come to terms sort of serenely with a certain love for pluralism with this variety. Now, certainly our commodity's position is that that's quite wrong. And the whole Benedictine heritage is that that's quite wrong. He is coming out of a certain way of theorizing monasticism where it's anti the whole concept of family. The answer to that would be, I think, you can't make a case for the rules of Benedict because the whole concept of the brothers is too strong.

[30:45]

So, he pays your money and he takes your choice. You can certainly come up with all sorts of church fathers and all sorts of monks who would be in agreement with him. You can come up with all sorts of monks and fathers who would absolutely not be in agreement with him. Now, to some extent, sooner or later, you'd have to come to terms with the word of God. This is the point. Now, it seems to me difficult because the whole concept of brothers and koinonia, communion and community, lived also in solitude, by the way, but to look upon the category of family as somehow dangerous, it's difficult to do that and still be in dialogue with the New Testament. You know, what we are presented by is the family of God, brothers of Jesus and sons of the living God, etc. So it's just so. Hopefully, what a course like this does, again, is makes us wrestle with different positions,

[31:46]

quite, quite different. Basil, quite frankly, will argue that the Christian monk cannot be a solitaire because the Christian monk is a Christian and Christianity comes out of the gospel and gospel means fraternal service, charity, one supporting and sustaining and loving the other. So for Basil, bouillé is absolutely unthinkable. And Basil does write the rule that is the rule of the East. Now, the East plays with that rule, but we're not family because you can't do that. But our own cluster of solitaries here feels more attracted to bouillé than to Basil. One may eventually make that kind of decision, but I think it has to be a decision made in the serenity of knowing that it's an option among many other possible options. And it should be done in the light of where the Church is going and where maybe the Benedictines and the Carnavales are going, etc. But it can't be done, I think, with saying, this is it, this is the pure monastic spirituality

[32:51]

and the others are not pure because that's hard to do in the light of this incredibly varied and rich and dynamic Christian spirituality. So, any other questions, comments? We'll see some of this variety, I think. Okay, so, spirituality or spiritualities both? And what is the relation of these different spiritualities? What is the relation of Basil and Anthony, for instance? Or Arsenius, who stresses, absolutely flee any other person, you know? And Basil or Benedict, for which the strongest type of monk is this person who lives with others, this sort of thing. Or Ignatius of Loyola, where his people should not say the office together. And the Benedictine, for whom prayer is de per se where two or three are gathered together.

[33:55]

Liturgical prayer is essentially community. That's, in fact, what the Council would say, because it's ecclesial. What's the relation of these different stresses and things? One non-theologian has offered the Trinitarian image of circumcession, where the father is not the son, and the son is not the spirit. They are distinct. We're not Unitarians, we're Trinitarians. And yet the father is fully present in the son, and the son is fully present in the spirit. The father isn't in rivalry with the son, but the father is father precisely because there is a son. These are relational categories. That is, the only way you can be a father is if you've got a son. If there ain't no son or daughter around, you're not a father. So the father is that whom he is precisely because there is the other, and in this loving bond, which is the loving spirit. So here you've got the ideal, eventually.

[34:56]

The ideal would be that you need solitaries, and you need community monks, and you need maybe this type of monk and that type of monk, et cetera, et cetera. And you may even need Christians who aren't monks. How staggering that thought is. You might even need married Christians, and even maybe Jesuits and Franciscans, et cetera. Now maybe this is... Now ideally, you see, each would complement the other and fulfill the other. Now, it doesn't work that way because we have too much limits in one. But that's the ideal towards which we're moving. And this is also ecclesially the case. Eventually, what if we do get to that ideal realm of the reunion of the churches? What will be the relation of the churches? Will the Orthodox churches simply drop their old heritage and icons and Greek and simply adopt the Roman rite and the whole bit? And what about the Anglican communion, et cetera?

[35:57]

Now the Pope has called the Eastern churches our sister churches, and the Anglican communion our beloved sister. Eventually, the model there again would be unity in diversity. Now, sister churches, as we'll see, doesn't exclude that one might be the elder sister and guide the younger sisters. That may be. But it's a different relationship than the one church to which the other simply must conform, or the one spirituality to which all others must conform. There's the Bouillée spirituality traced very linearly there. You can go out and trace all the implications for asceticism and for the apostolic mission. It's very linear. And you say, everyone who does not conform to this is not a real monk. You can go really radical and say he's not really Christian, even, eventually. This is where some early monks are at in their zeal. They look upon the married state as a kind of a tragic concession that God makes to sinners.

[37:00]

Okay, that's one way you can work it out. But another way is to see different spiritualities and different ways of conceiving even the monastic charism. And that's a little more challenging, but I think also it's the only way to serenely do history of Christian spirituality. Otherwise, you're going to have to constantly be tearing out pages of history and pretending that they didn't really happen and this sort of thing. Questions? Comments? Go ahead. I was thinking, too, that I have to keep in mind myself that various spiritualities, for instance, they're not static. Music can be a static flux. So that one can sit in a park and enjoy it. It can be really distorted. I don't think there are changes going on all the time in all the different spiritualities,

[38:03]

especially right at this time. Indeed. There's incredible variety. And especially if you start looking at the centuries and centuries. I think a careful look at history shows us there's always been incredible variety and flux and dynamism. The Franciscans, for instance, they have periods of renewal and people going on to live just as solitaries. And then people who want to go and live in poor little huts in the inner city. And the Franciscan family has incredible variety. So you have one little stereotype of the Franciscan. And they have their little stereotype of the monk, or the Trappist, or the Camaldolese, etc. And usually the thing is incredibly more varied. It could be. We were talking this morning about the ideal Christian community, that you would have hermits and then community monks, and then in a circle, then families, and then monks who would go out and come back. It seems like in these times I could very easily have them, or there won't be spiritualities.

[39:06]

Because we're just getting so... Like there's non-solitary communities who are having people going out into solitude and say, we're in aramidical order and we're getting more cenobitical, not excluding others who are going to be more solitude later. Maybe what will develop is just Christian communities with great pluralism. Right. Eventually we're all Christians, so it would hopefully in some sense be that. And it is the case that the Trappists started having their little hermitage out there, and the Benedictines, many of the Benedictines, that big abbey up there where Fr. Francis was staying, having their... And then we'll see when you look at the life of St. Romuald. It's not as if first he was in the abbey and then he said, I want to be a solitaire, and he went out and built himself a cell and stayed there for the rest of his life. An incredibly varied life. Just one hermit who happened to be our founder, by the way. But he spent years on the road.

[40:07]

He wanted to get into mission work. He spent years in reclusion. He spent years reforming monasteries, also urban monasteries. There's been long periods in our history where the great majority of our houses were cenobitic. And many, many, many urban houses, sometimes we think we've been hermit up to this point, and now things are sort of going cenobitic. But it's always been incredible dialectic in our own order, talking about unity and plurality and plurality. But we've had houses right in the middle of the cities, right? Some of the oldest monasteries are urban monasteries in our order, in the world, this sort of thing. So there's always been this incredible dialectic in different... The desert, talk about the Desert Fathers. Incredible variety there, from an Evagrius, who's one of the great towering scholars and theologians of his time, to Moses, who's a thief, who sort of doesn't have that much book learning, maybe, this sort of thing. But incredible, and the way both are living out their spirituality, the difference between

[41:12]

them, between Procomius and Anthony, etc. So, we like stereotypes to simplify things, but usually things are very, very... I think there is more inner communication now between one spirituality and another, and it's good. The idea of sister churches and everything, seems like there'd be... I mean, I can see how that could really happen, but it seems like wherever you have Christians who get together and realize there's some kind of authority, how would you manage the authority? Well, we'll see that also through the history of the Church. Many, many models. We'll see the early Fathers, one of the earliest writings we'll be looking at is Clement of Rome, who's Bishop of Rome, and writing from the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth. He's already presupposing the sister churches model, but he is intervening there, not to say you're excommunicated because you're doing what I want, but saying, I'd like to

[42:12]

exhort you to do this, urge you to do that, and there is authority there. One of the things is, how is it to be utilized? What is the model? There are many, many different models and theologies, for instance, of papal authority, and there have been throughout the life of the churches, for instance, many Orthodox and many Anglicans say they don't deny the primacy of Peter, etc. The only question is, how is that to be exercised? Is the primacy to be conceived of as absolutely, so the Pope is up there on his own in the clouds, and an idea comes to him, and zap, he zaps the church in Chicago because it's doing differently from the idea that just came into his head. He said, I don't know, dream lit now, I want that everyone wear blue stones, and zap. Anything that comes into his head, is this what Roman primacy is all about? Is it a kind of an arbitrary, individualistic, detached, kind of monarchical authority?

[43:14]

Absolute monarchical. This is one model. It was very, very big in the 19th century because absolute monarchy was very big, trying to fight off the French Revolution and the American Revolution, etc. So there was a kind of a secular model of the absolute monarch, and it influenced some theologians. Wouldn't it be great if the one man who decides all questions is our absolute monarch, who's the Pope? But if we get back to the earlier documents, we'll find that that ain't around until you get into the Middle Ages. So, certainly you're going to have to have authority, and it'll be very varied. Theology of authority talks about the magisterium, that's a type of authority. Theologians are a type of authority. The prophets are a type of authority. One of the early documents we'll be reading, we'll be talking about the prophets that are wandering around. They have their own kind of authority. On consulting the laity in questions of dogma, that's one of the great tracts of Cardinal Newman. There were periods in the history of the Church where the only hope for keeping the Church

[44:19]

out of heresy was the faithful. Most of the theologians, most of the bishops had gone over to Arianism, and the faithful, the laity, held on tenaciously to orthodox Catholic doctrine. And then the bishops swung back through the... So, the laity had their own authority. So, it's different. It's not that only one person in the Church has authority and no one else does. Every person here has authority, just as in this community. Bruno has a special authority, but everyone here has an authority. If someone here starts saying, I'm terribly worried about... I don't know. I've heard of selling fruitcakes when people are starving. And he really makes an issue of this and keeps stressing it and brings up quotes from Scripture. People are going to have to at least listen to him. The rule of St. Benedict says, you gather the community and you listen to the youngest first, because often the Holy Spirit speaks to them. So, there's a charismatic authority. So, that's rushed. Certainly, the coming great Church will need authority, but how to work it out?

[45:21]

Other questions? Come on. We could almost take a ten-minute break. Oh, one last thought, and then we can go actually into the apostolic fathers. Christian spirituality, and because I think we're Catholics, I think we do want to wrestle with the whole of Christian spirituality. Obviously, we can't do it here, but the ideal is to be very focused on the 4th century, but also on the 3rd, on the 16th, on the 19th. We are not... Heretic means to choose, to choose out one part and to want to overlook the other. It comes from the Greek meaning to pick out that which pleases you and you leave the rest. Now, Catholic means universal, means the whole kit and caboodle. So, there's not this little group that has the esoteric truth and all the other people are... But it's the way the Holy Spirit has been working throughout all the ages in all countries. This is ultimately which interests us as Christians, as Catholics especially.

[46:31]

So, this is the challenge of going through the whole history of Christian spirituality. One might say, but I'm particularly interested in the 4th century. Good. One can be. But I think as a Catholic, one also has to be concerned about the 17th century, the 19th century, the 13th century, etc. One might say, I love 12th century Mount Athos, or I love 17th century French spirituality, or I'm really into 13th century English, which are great. Everyone needs his focus. But as Catholics, not cutting out all the rest, because then you don't any longer have Catholic spirituality, which in some way wants to come to terms with the whole. Why? Because God wills the salvation of all humanity, and this willing is not just a kind of a passive daydream, but an operative willing. So, the Holy Spirit is operative in all of humanity, and certainly in all of Christianity in a special way. And we are attentive to the Spirit speaking to us through a Francis in C.C., through some

[47:37]

Dominic, through a Newman, through an Augustine, through a whatever. And this is the great symphony. This is a model the Fathers use. It's the whole that glorifies in a particular way God, just as in, it's the whole body of Christ, not just the hand, not just the eye. So, if you're going to focus just on one element, it's a little like saying, I love the symphony of Beethoven's Night, but just the piccolo part, and I'm going to follow through the whole symphony, or just the trumpets or something. It's that whole, when you've got trumpets and bassoon and piccolo and drums, and you put it all together, that is the great symphony of the Holy Spirit playing. So that's sort of the theology behind this course. And now we can take a break and then come back and jump right into the Apostolic Fathers. Oh, we're going now.

[48:39]

We're going into the Apostolic Fathers. This is a phrase that's not that ancient, Apostolic Fathers, it just, just as a kind of detail, comes back from the 17th century. There began a real interest in the Fathers and different eras, different periods of the patristic era, and they started a distinction of the Apostolic Fathers, who were those who knew the Apostles. So they're the first generation after the Apostles who saw Jesus. This is the idea. And there were certain writings traditionally gathered in the Apostolic Fathers. Do you know this collection, for instance, early Christian writings? And he's got here Clement's Letter, Ignatius, Polycarp, Diognetus, Barnabas, Didache. These are the classical, with one or two other Hermes, the other, the Apostolic writings. Now we know that some of these, in fact, it's not clear at all that they did know Apostles,

[49:42]

but some of them apparently clearly did. And the ones we'll try to look at today certainly did. Clement of Rome, New Peter and Paul, Irenaeus tells us, and Polycarp of Smyrna, New John, the Apostle. So there's this beautiful tie-up, this beautiful continuity. Here were, in their writings, in the kind of fresh springtime of Christianity. And I think it's beautiful to read these writings. Some of these writings almost ended up in the New Testament. You know, it took centuries for the Church to decide what are canonical works, what are not canonical works. Apparently the Letter of Clement of Rome was written inside the first century. And he's writing this letter to Corinth. How many, has anyone read this letter? You, yes, yes? Part? No? Who hasn't read it? Well, anyway, it's not in some respect.

[50:46]

It's the only one I didn't. Oh, well. You got something against Clement? Yeah, it's not unlike letters of St. Paul to Corinthians. The Corinthians always had the same problems and had to be treated in the same way, sort of. So, just as an example of the closeness to Scripture. On the other hand, there is a different tone to it, and some have bewailed that. Others have said this is a necessary development. But in any case, it's this first link between the Apostles who had experienced in a first-hand way Christ, the earthly Jesus and the rich and Christ, and the more structured, stable, institutional Church that will follow. And it's a very key link, this. In evolution, we have some missing links, but we don't. We have this very key links that are explicit here between the one and the other. And this, for theology and doctrine of the Church, it's very, very, very important.

[51:51]

And Protestants and Anglicans and Romans and Orthodox all read these people and fight over what every phrase means, etc. But it's very, very decisive also for that. Now, these writers are writing not primarily, I think you saw, to enunciate dogmas or to spell out scholastic theologies, but to encourage the spiritual life of their readers. These are basically spiritual readings. So, often they're approached when you do your studies for the priesthood in a dogma class or theology, theology of the Church or theology of Christ or whatever it be. But their primary intention of the writers themselves was spiritual. So, I think it's good to go back to them in this term. An incredible fact about it is that it's so full of Scripture. It's just heavier, more Scripture than anything. It seems like it's so part of Scripture.

[52:53]

Right? This is characteristic of the early fathers and some of the later fathers. Origin is just one chain of Scripture after text after another. Now, that's typical of a monastic, as we understand it, view of spirituality, that it's simply meditating upon, assimilating the living Word of God, which is inspired by the Holy Spirit. So, if I get that inspired Word inside of me, that Spirit in the Word is going to transform and spiritualize me in the full sense. So, that is real spirituality. Now, these letters are letters. This is very, very important. These are not tracts that they're writing. They're not a section of a systematic theology on the Church, or they're not a history of the Church. They're letters written to specific churches for specific problems. They're what are called occasional writings.

[53:55]

It's not that you do it occasionally, in the sense that there's a specific occasion, a concrete occasion, that provokes and inspires these. The same with the letters of St. Paul, as distinguished from the Gospel, for instance, of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. An entirely different literary type. And if you're going to read these carefully, as you'll find in your Scripture studies, you want to see what is the type of writing, and then see what is implied in that. Now, a letter has certain virtues and certain limits, and you've got to know them all if you're going to fully evaluate these writings. For instance, it's an occasion that provokes them. Suppose you've got a mother and a brother, and the mother is here, and the brother is out east, and Mother's Day comes, and the brother doesn't send anything, and the mother is very angry, and you're angry, so you pull out a sheet of paper and write an angry letter to your brother. Why didn't you send anything for your mother? Don't you love her?

[54:56]

He's really frank, and kind of angry. And then he gets on the phone, and he explains that he did send something, but he sent something through someone who was coming, and that someone lost the address, so it wasn't his fault, it was someone else's. Then you get down, you write another letter apologizing, and bringing up other things, etc. So if later scholars find just that first letter, full of anger and wrath, etc., you see, they might misinterpret your whole relationship to that brother. Maybe it's a very deep relationship, maybe you've always been together, and precisely this familiarity permits you to write down angry phrases, etc., and be quite upfront about it, as they say. But if you judge the whole relationship just from that one letter, you can go wrong if you don't do a very subtle reading, remembering that it's one occasion that provoked that letter. And then if you get another letter that balances it out, then you get a slightly fuller picture. If you get ten of the correspondence letters, then you get a much fuller picture.

[55:58]

And if we have letters by that person written when he was ten to his brother, and then when he was twenty to his brother, then you get the whole flow of the relationship. But again, if you have just that one angry letter, you've got to be very careful, because a letter presupposes a great deal, and often more is not expressed, but that's very important, than is expressed. For instance, all the deep fraternal love, and all the experiences shared, etc., etc., all those are presupposed in that angry letter, but they're not explicit. So sometimes you really have to read behind and between the lines. So that's the problem with a letter format. And it's to be kept in mind. So, for instance, we have just one letter of Clement to the Corinthians. We have another, but it's not authentic. And that makes things difficult.

[56:59]

Now, some people have lamented there are some things that aren't in the letter. The letter seems awfully moralistic, awfully focused on that one little problem of this group that's giving the bishop a bad time. What about all sorts of other things? What about Mary, and the Eucharist, and the happy joys of Christian life, and all sorts of other things? That's not what a letter is all about. A letter isn't written to kind of serenely sum up the whole of Christian life. There's nothing in there about contemplation techniques or asceticism. It's focused there on that problem in the Corinth church of divisions. Well, now that's what a letter is all about. So, again, it's very important to try to focus out what is the literary genre, as it's called, of what you've got in front of you, and then remember the limits and the virtues and the good aspects. One good aspect of a letter is extremely personal. The person comes through. St. Paul, that person, comes through with all his ups and downs and emotions and angers

[58:05]

in a way that, for instance, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, for instance, which isn't really a letter, but it's more a theological tract, or the writer of the Gospel of Mark, for instance. That's more mysterious. Who was Mark? Was he that lad who ran away naked when they grew up? Maybe it wasn't that at all, et cetera. But what did Mark feel and think, et cetera? We know, again, a lot more about Paul. We know a lot more about Ignatius than we do about the author of Mark, as far as the personal, in many ways. So that's one disadvantage of a letter is it can be very limited to that one issue. So it's partial, and it presupposes a great deal. What's strong about it is it's a very direct, immediate kind of close-up of an interpersonal thing going on. So these letters presuppose a lot. They presuppose the whole of Christian faith.

[59:05]

They presuppose Christian communities existing, the Eucharistic life, prayer, charity, all the things shared, this whole bit. So that is to be remembered. What is the value of Clement? What's the value, later, of Polycarp, et cetera? Again, this link up, this mysterious continuity, which isn't just a kind of an outer juridical thing, like a kind of passing a baton. Peter passes the baton to Clement, who passes the baton to Irenaeus, say. But no, it's not that. It's this Peter knew Jesus, and he knew the risen Christ. And this is not a speculative knowledge. This is this true Christian gnosis, true Christian experience of Christ. And it's this that he shares, you see, with Clement. That's the beautiful continuity.

[60:05]

And this is the kind of ecclesial expression of that great Christ promise, I am with you always, not simply with you locked up there in the tabernacle. I'm with you inside your experience. And this is expressed also through Christian history, through this passing on of lived experience. This is what the Abba, what the Staritz is all about, passing on a whole lived experience of Christ. And this is not just in one generation, but we feel it goes right down the history of the church. So that's what this beautiful continuity is all about. Has that been a kind of kernel of tradition, when they speak about tradition? That's right. Tradition isn't just something, some arid list of doctrines. It has nothing to do with Scripture. It is the experience of Christ that we find in Scripture that's personalized, that's handed down from Clement to Irenaeus and from Irenaeus to Augustine, etc.

[61:11]

Augustine said, I wouldn't even know that there had been a Jesus had it not been for the church. Now the church in this living way of this shared experience of Christ, and that again now here we share with each other this experience, but also right through time, this is our Catholicity, universal geographically, so to speak, and universal in time. And we can be universal in time because there is this continuity, as there's a kind of a later neo-scholastic theology that isn't the best. So there's a later neo-Lutheran theology that isn't the best, that just talks about a kind of a leap. There was the true New Testament times and Scripture times when the gospel was lived. Then things just went right down the tubes, as they said. For 15 centuries. Then Luther comes and renews the whole thing. So if you're going to live in the Spirit, what you have to do is jump over about 14 centuries, right back to the New Testament, and Luther helps you do that. Now that's not where Luther is at even, but that's a kind of a bad Protestant theology.

[62:18]

Well, we can't accept that. We can't do these leaps over centuries because I am with you always, and there's always that lived experience, which we want to share, to have again that fullness of the symphony. Irenaeus tells us that there was... Irenaeus, have you read Irenaeus? He lists the lists of the bishops of Rome. He's doing this against the Gnostics, because the Gnostics are saying, if you want real authority, you've done this through, you know, you know that the real truth is in our little group, and we'll share it secretly, and it's a hidden truth. And Irenaeus says, not at all. The real truth is in the visible church that you can see through the years in the continuity of bishops. And he says, I'll just take one church for you as an example,

[63:19]

the Church of Rome, the oldest and the most prestigious, and he lists this list of bishops, and Clement is the third after, or the fourth if you like, Peter, Linus, Anacletus, Clement. So, here we've got Clement, and Irenaeus has a whole section in his sub Against the Heresies where he says, this Clement knew Peter and Paul and was instructed by them. This is very, very beautiful. So, this Clement didn't just get his experience of Christ, not even just mediated through Linus, Anacletus, but he got it directly from, as it were, Peter and Paul. Now, he wrote this to the church in Corinth. Now, remember, the church in Rome and the church in Corinth had always had quite a close rapport, right from Paul, who was writing the letter to the Corinthians, angry about things that had happened there, and then he goes on to Rome. But there's always this kind of close.

[64:22]

Now, this is a very special document, obviously, for Roman Catholics who want to stress the primacy of the pope. Here we've got one of the earliest, maybe the earliest of the apostolic writings. By the way, Clement seems to be around 90 to 91 to 100 in his, we would say, papacy. By the way, Clement seems to be around 90 to 91 to 100 in his, we would say, papacy.

[64:42]

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