Aug 2003 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... Introduction Protest and Renunciation in the East When the period of martyrdom and persecutions was over - about the year 300 AD - how could a person reach the pinnacle of Christian perfection? Martyrdom had been the ideal, and now there were no martyrs. One had to search for another ideal. The life of the hermit soon became this ideal. The writings of the period show that going into hermitage was another way of reaching the same height of perfection as martyrdom. Besides this, we have the peculiar effect on the Church of the conversion of Emperor Constantine in 303. In a way the whole Empire became Christian with him, and when large groups of people flood into an organization, the original quality is bound to be diluted. The Christians were inundated by time-servers and half-converted pagans. At one time Christians had laid down their lives for truth, now they slaughtered one another to gain the prizes of the Church, and the Church became a vehicle for power. Now it was against all this that monasticism was a protest. It was not just against the world, but it was especially against the world in the Church. In this connection too, it is important to remember that monasticism was originally a lay movement. In fact, the monks were quite anti-clerical, as some of the Jewish prophets were anti-clerical; Amos and Hosea, for instance, condemned the merely cultic priests who did not preach justice and love, but became fully enmeshed in the power structure of the state. The monks were anti-clerical in this sense; it was part of their prophetic witness. They were protesting the world in the Church, and accordingly the monastic movement is to be seen not so much within the Church as alongside of it. Now monastic flight from the world was not a sudden thing; it evolved gradually. The early monks lived in the city, stayed in their houses more than their neighbours, and did not go out to the desert until somewhat later on. One of the reasons for eventually going out to the desert was the belief that there one could encounter the devil or God in pure form. At first individuals went out alone to the desert hermitage; but because living alone is very difficult and people with like interest naturally band together, in the course of time hermits united into cenobitic communities. We read that in the fourth century one might find as many as five thousand hermitages scattered over a single mountainside in Egypt.

- To Be Continued -