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

THE IDEAL OF CONTEMPLATION In this chapter we wish to focus our attention on the notion of prayer prevalent among certain Eastern desert monks in the third and fourth centuries. We will concern ourselves with only one school of the spiritual life and one very limited style of prayer. What we are referring to is commonly known as the Origenist school. The name is taken from the great Origen, but the doctrine is not to be confused with his at all. Of the two groups within Egyptian monasticism, the Origenist-Alexandrians and the Copts; the former were far more influential than the more numberous Copts simply because they used Greek, the literary and scientific language of the whole eastern Mediterranean. The Origenist writings were widely circulated and have survived to influence almost all of later Christian spirituality. It will help us understand this movement if we have some idea of the intellecutal currents circulating in Alexandria in the third and fourth centuries. A fairly intelligent person at that time would have been acquainted with a conglomeration of Platonism, Stoicism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and Neoplatonism - all adding up to a certain dualism, spirit in opporition to matter. The spiritual human soul emanates from a supreme Intelligence, the One, and is imprisoned in the material, evil body. This imprisonment of the soul accounts for all the evil in the world; and so the soul must fight the body, overcome it, and strive to reach a state of impassivity where the soul is insensitive to all things of this world. The principal task of the soul is to escape, release itself, and reascend to its place of origin in the One. So the educated Alexandrian of this time might be involved in a struggle against his body in order to bring it under control, overcome it, and finally achieve that state which was called apatheia, a state of toal insensitivity, and oblivation to all material things, especially one's own body and its needs in so far as this is possible. This type of asceticism is directed towards controlling one's body, bringing it under submission, and transcending it. In additon to the ascetical practices leading to this state of apatheia, there is a final stage of contemplative life, a state of gnosis which is a special type of knowledge. This final state reaches a level of contemplation wherein the sould achieves total freedom from the body and fixes its attention solely on spiritual realities. The mind contemplates the One and thereby anticipates its state of reabsorption into the One whidh is its final destiny. the two processes of the asceticism, apatheia and gnosis, were both part of the intellectual milieu in third and fourth century Alexandria.

- To Be Continued -