Nov 2004 Christian Spirituality      Continued from previous issue By George A Lane SJ

Continue from ...... THE MENDICANT TRANSITION Within this context the Franciscans quite early in their history experienced an internal conflict over the interpretation of their poverty. A split developed between the Spirituals, who wanted to follow a very strict poverty, and the Observants who later became known as the Order of Friars Minor. In 1322 the pope condemned the Spirituals, but the split continued. From the Observant branch sprang several new reform movements, the best known of which was the Capuchins. The number of mendicant friars grew so rapidly that by the early fourteenth century there were fifteen thousand Dominicans and thirty-five thousand Franciscans who together with Augustinians and Carmelites constituted an army of more than eighty thousand mendicants at work throughout Christendom. More important than the early history of these orders was a theological problem which underlay the whole mendicant movement. The friars were intensely involved in apostolic activity, more so than any other religious group before them had been. And yet they still had the traditions of monasticism deeply inscribed in their religious institutes. The ambiguity we are trying to describe shows up clearly in the life and writing of Thomas Kempis. The Imitation of Christ, a compilation from various sources, reflects the religious thinking of an entire age. In one place Kempis tells the reader, "Never be idle or vagrant. Be always reading or writing or praying or meditating, or employed in some useful labour for the common good." This "common good" is no longer restricted to the monastic community, a Kempis and the Brothers of the Common Life were engaged in teaching. But in spite of this, we also find this warning in the Imitation, "Fly from the tumult of men as much as you can. We seldom return to silence without prejudice to our conscience. As often as I have been among men, I have returned less a man. It is better to lie hidden and to take care of oneself than to neglect oneself even to work miracles." This theoretical ambivalence between flight and involvement is characteristic of the spirituality of the age and forms its most pressing problem - the need for an understanding and articulation of the spiritual life that does not merely allow for apostolic engagement, but sees that very engagement as a source of holiness. The ambiguity in Kempis is also found in Thomas Aquinas. For St Thomas, the contemplative life, absolutely considered, is better than the active. This thesis reflects the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius and the Origenist spirituality. But later on Thomas says that actually the mixed life is the highest form of life. An apostolic life which is derived from the fullness of contemplation belongs in the realm of the contemplative life, but it rises above pure contemplation insofar as others are given a share in the overflowing fullness of one's own light. "Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so to pass on what one has contemplated (contemplata aliis tradere) is better than merely to contemplate." But we notice here that the active life is appraised from its contemplative element (which is higher) and not from the intrinsic worth of the apostolic work itself. So the problem remains and is heightened through this period of the mendicant transition - can active apostolic work by itself promote union with God; can it be justified on its own intrinsic worth; when the monk leaves his prie-dieu is he necessarily farther from God; is there no theory which will esteem and justify the active life on its own merits alone? Until the sixteenth century no satisfactory answer to these questions would appear.

- To Be Continued -