Give Me a Word

Every now and then I will arrive a few minutes late to daily Mass. I make it a habit in these situations, when the Word of God is being read, to stand quietly in the back of church until the readings are finished. After that I take a seat. Why? Because when the words of scripture are being proclaimed, God is truly present, living and active. “When the Scriptures are read in the Church, God Himself is speaking to His people and Christ, present in His own word, is proclaiming the Gospel,” says the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (n. 29) Do you really want to draw attention to yourself while the King of Kings and Lord of Lord is present in your midst? Rude!

The Word Became Flesh

In the Gospel of John, the Word incarnate, the Divine Logos (Greek: λόγος), is so fundamental to a Christian anthropology that it sets the stage for everything that follows. God speaks life into existence in the very first chapter of Genesis, and so too in John’s account of the pre-existent Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

To ascribe finite language to the unknowable, unnamable, infinite Creator of the universe may seem strange to general Deists and agnostics. But the Christian God – God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – comes crashing through space and time to ransom His captive people: “And the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

Scripture, the Word of God, is not a series of dead letters on a page as in a history book – it is alive and powerful. Like a spore or a tiny seed carried through the air, it has the power to take root in a man’s heart and turn his life inside out when he is disposed to it. St. James was clear about this:

Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:22-25)

The Monastic Tradition

I have two icons on the wall on either side of the crucifix at my prayer station. On one side is Our Lady of Guadalupe, and on the other is St. Anthony of Egypt – ascetic, battler of demons, and the father of Western monasticism. The monastic tradition started with a word. Here is how St. Athanasius describes it:

Not six months after his parents’ death, as he [Anthony] was on his way to church for his usual visit, he began to think of how the apostles had left everything and followed the Savior, and also of those mentioned in the book of Acts who had sold their possessions and brought the apostles the money for distribution to the needy. He reflected too on the great hope stored up in heaven for such as these. This was all in his mind when, entering the church just as the Gospel was being read, he heard the Lord’s words to the rich man: If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor – you will have riches in heaven. Then come and follow me.

It seemed to Antony that it was God who had brought the saints to his mind and that the words of the Gospel had been spoken directly to him. Immediately he left the church and gave away to the villagers all the property he had inherited, about 200 acres of very beautiful and fertile land, so that it would cause no distraction to his sister and himself. He sold all his other possessions as well, giving to the poor the considerable sum of money he collected. However, to care for his sister he retained a few things.

The next time he went to church he heard the Lord say in the Gospel: Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Without a moment’s hesitation he went out and gave the poor all that he had left. He placed his sister in the care of some well-known and trustworthy virgins and arranged for her to be brought up in the convent. Then he gave himself up to the ascetic life, not far from his own home.

The Word took root in this fertile soil. Anthony would go on to be a great saint, and the father of Western monasticism, he would be catalyst for a “flight to the desert.”

Why a flight? The Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan (313 AD) essentially put an end to state-sanctioned persecution and the opportunity for martyrdom. The “radical” discipleship of Anthony was only radical in contrast to the comfortableness of status-quo Christians or CINOs (Catholics in Name Only) who enjoyed the benefits of the protection of the Emperor. Anthony sparked an unintentional movement of solitary (and eventually, communal) living apart from the world and devotion to the practice of prayer and asceticism.

The Desert Way

It was common for those coming to the desert seeking spiritual counsel to beg one of the Fathers to “give a word” to the seeker, much the way Lazarus longed even for the crumbs that fell from the table of the rich man (Luke 16:21). And so we see this theme again, of the word emanating from holiness and giving life, being alive and pregnant with the kernel of Truth itself. While the holy men and women in the desert lived on crumbs of bread, those who had yet to be mortified but were seeking a new way of life, lived on the utterances of sparse words, the utterances of wisdom from those who had merit.

The early Desert Fathers and Mothers were the first “self-selecting” group of believers. Until the Edict of Milan, Christians were minorities subject to persecution, who believed the Parousia (End Times) was imminent. When Christianity gained protected legal status, it had a “relaxing” effect on the practice of the faith – believers, in a sense, could breathe a sigh of relief but also seek social status and remain in a comfortable state. The early monastic communities were essentially an alternative Christian society for “serious” Christians who sought also an alternative martyrdom through asceticism, a “death to the flesh.”

Keeping Free of the World

What was their motivation? Some interesting notes from New Advent:

Besides a desire of observing the evangelical counsels [Poverty, Chastity and Obedience], and a horror of the vice and disorder that prevailed in a pagan age, two contributory causes in particular are often indicated as leading to a renunciation of the world among the early Christians. The first of these was the expectation of an immediate Second Advent of Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; 1 Peter 4:7, etc.) That this belief was widespread is admitted on all hands, and obviously it would afford a strong motive for renunciation since a man who expects this present order of things to end at any moment, will lose keen interest in many matters commonly held to be important. This belief however had ceased to be of any great influence by the fourth century, so that it cannot be regarded as a determining factor in the origin of monasticism which then took visible shape.

A second cause more operative in leading men to renounce the world was the vividness of their belief in evil spirits. The first Christians saw the kingdom of Satan actually realized in the political and social life of heathendom around them. In their eyes the gods whose temples shone in every city were simply devils, and to participate in their rites was to join in devil worship.

… But the difficulty existed for private individuals [that] here were gods who presided over every moment of a man’s life, gods of house and garden, of food and drink, of health and sickness. To honour these was idolatry, to ignore them would attract inquiry, and possibly persecution. And so when, to men placed in this dilemma, St. John wrote, “Keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21) he said in effect “Keep yourselves from public life, from society, from politics, from intercourse of any kind with the heathen”, in short, “renounce the world.”

The Modern Situation

Today we are entering a 4th century situation, but in reverse. Those Christians who “self-select”, who may be accused of being overzealous or “too-serious” Catholics share the same horror of vice and pagan disorder as well as a vivid belief in evil spirits, “the kingdom of Satan realized in the political and social life of heathendom around them.”

It is not necessarily solitude we seek in the desert and secluded places, but each other – those hidden believers to whom we can confide our “seriousness,” to whom living as if the Parousia was scheduled for tomorrow is not weird or extreme, but in line with how a Christian should be living all along.

Just as Anthony sought out Abba Paul, who sought out the cold comfort of the harsh desert life, so too do the Christians of the new age of martyrdom seek to separate themselves from the persecution of a pagan culture and be strengthened and fortified by those who “get it.” We “seek a word,” and wisdom is always appreciated; but it could be a word of encouragement to keep going when our own family or friends have turned against us (as our Lord tells us to expect), to not feel so alone, where many of us are forced – either by necessity or circumstance – to be in the world.

The Apostle Paul gave clear guidance to Timothy in this regard, words of wisdom that also apply to us:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Timothy 3:1-17)

The Word – the living Word – sustains us. As our Lord says, “man does not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4).

Not By Bread Alone

And yet bread alone is what the world offers. And not only the world, but fellow “semi-believers” and quasi-Catholics as well, who have the husk without the grain, the veneer without the engine, the Faith without belief. Yes, we are called to be a light of the world (Matthew 5:14), but we also must be fortified and strengthened for what lies ahead, and this may very well not happen among non-believers and CINOs.

It is this kind of new monasticism that is interdependent rather than independent, in the world rather than separated from it, clandestine rather than flying out in the open. It’s only because we know what is coming.