Читать книгу The Roots that Clutch - Thomas Esposito - Страница 6

To my dear abbot, gratia Benedictus et nomine,

Please consider me a son who has listened to his father’s instructions for a mere decade, and has tried, with small success, to incline the ear of his heart to them. What I cannot show by obedient actions, I can attempt to express in gratitude through these poor but fervent words. The centuries separating us have vindicated your wisdom and faithful insight, both of which are timeless because they guide time-bound souls to the eternal God. A desire to inquire deeper into your monastic wisdom has prompted me to write you today.

In your Rule, you regard the gyrovague monk, always restless and bound to no permanent home, as the most wretched creature on earth. I often think of the possible scorn you would heap on me for my frequent travels. When I joined my monastery, I did not foresee the great amount of roaming I would have the privilege to undertake (always with my abbot’s permission, of course!). In fact, I like to joke that I made my vow of stability on an airplane 30,000 feet above land (though considering your disposition against boisterous laughter, I doubt you would approve of such frivolity)!

I can assure you that I have but one monastic home to which I happily return after each voyage, but I have spent a significant amount of time outside the cloistered paradise of my abbey in Texas. I do not apologize for my travels, though, because among the myriad blessings I have received as a Cistercian monk on the go, standing in the places you graced with your presence rank among the highest. I have scaled the massive heights of Monte Cassino on multiple occasions, climbing switchbacks to venerate your mortal remains, as well as those of your sister, Saint Scholastica, who is buried next to you.

Almost 1,500 years after your death, the monks living there were forced to flee as the Nazi army took command of the majestic mountain on which the abbey stands. The American army, trying to reach Rome from the south, bombed the monastery to heaps of rubble in March of 1944, thinking that the Germans still occupied it. The dreaded Nazis had, in fact, evacuated just before the shelling began. Sadly, the church and monastic cells were pummeled and destroyed. Only the crypt, containing your remains and those of Scholastica, emerged intact.

Fortunately, the Americans eventually seized Rome, and the Allied forces gradually secured a total triumph over the Nazi regime in Europe. Thanks to the Marshall Plan, a strategic effort to rebuild the continent ravaged by war, Monte Cassino was restored to its former glory; the cornerstone of the reconstructed church has “1949 AD” inscribed on it. I once went on a tour of the grounds with a group of Cistercians from various parts of the globe. When the guide described the Allied bombing of Monte Cassino, everyone glared at me, the lone American, with mostly feigned anger. But one elderly Italian woman with sharp elbows nudged me and shoved a picture book depicting the devastation under my nose. Her face was contorted into an accusatory snarl; I translated her menacing glance as, “Look whatchya did, ya little jerk!” Sheer charity prevented me from reminding her to be grateful that she spoke Italian and not German.

This is not, however, the only Benedictine rebuilding project I wish to share with you.

Monte Cassino is undoubtedly a glorious and sacred place. It is a city set on a hill, and its white stones transmit inspired light to all who pass by. You finished writing your Rule for monks while guiding the community there as abbot during the last years of your life. My favorite place to follow in your footsteps, though, is the cave where you first found refuge from the noise and distraction of the world. The bus ride to Subiaco, east of Rome, takes about 80 minutes, and ends at the foot of the modern town. I always brought at least one fellow monk along with me when I visited. My confreres and I would amble up the gradual road to the base of the mountain where you made your first retreat from the world. The climb to Sacro Speco, your holy cave, is shortened by a rocky trail leading more directly upward than the winding road used by automobiles. Your humble cave was eventually engulfed by a modest monastery and church complex, but the silence you craved is still available today, in spite of frequent tourists and pilgrims.

I must point out a humorous example of the rivalry amongst your spiritual sons, one enshrined in the church above Sacro Speco. You have heard from the heavenly newsroom, I presume, that your Benedictine Order became rich and lax in the centuries following your death, and was reformed in the twelfth century by a group of men who came to be called Cistercians. One of the Benedictine monks decorating the Subiaco church in the fourteenth or fifteenth century got the brilliant idea to portray the enmity between his Order and the renegade reformers in paint. In the frescoes depicting scenes from your life lining the main nave of the church, that artist-monk put the black-and-white Cistercian habit on the wicked monks who tried to poison you. The distracted monk pulled out of choir by the devil also sports those same robes. The proud Cistercian in me objects to the roguish treatment we received at the hands of your black-robed children, not to mention the anachronism of Cistercians living during your lifetime!

My favorite spot in Subiaco stands below Sacro Speco, about halfway between your cave and the gorgeous waterfall and lagoon where you obtained water. A complex of ruined brick buildings lies beside the road. According to tradition, this was originally the site of Emperor Nero’s summer estate—the same Nero who unleashed a vicious persecution of Christians by scapegoating them for the fire which ravaged Rome in AD 64. By the time you arrived on the historical scene in the early sixth century, the place had been abandoned for many years. The story goes that when you began to attract disciples to share your solitary life, you realized that you would have to relinquish the peace of Sacro Speco, and a larger communal home needed to be found. You apparently did not search very far for such a place—you and your first followers inhabited the remains of Nero’s house, and requisitioned it for your prayerful purposes.

The magnitude of that historical fact struck me quite powerfully as I stood before those brick fragments. It prompted me to compose a poem when I returned to Rome that day. Though poor in form, it is rich in the zeal I tried to channel for your monastic house. The first part of the poem, which I simply titled “Subiaco,” treats of your moving in and the gradual explosion of monastic life inspired by your example:

The man of God removed himself once more.

The world was lost, now Sacro Speco too;

His dwelling with himself could not be kept

A secret light submerged in silent caves.

He took his heart, a bursting flame, and stood

Above; not far below, he found a heap

Which Nero, devil’s fire, once had called

His home and court in summertime retreat.

The man went there with other burning souls

Who built a school and torched the place with prayer.

How strange that one man’s blazing should ignite

A thousand matches striking pagan lands

With silent flint and scores of kindled monks

Who stoked this ember red in Caesar’s house.

The thought of you praying in Nero’s estate still captivates me, reverend father. A singular grace is available to those privileged to tread where saints have walked, built, and prayed, and I am particularly fascinated by the fact that you appropriated the relics of a pagan emperor for your own use. Were you aware that the previous tenant of those walled rooms was a martyr-maker of your fellow Christians? Did you ponder the beautiful irony of occupying his territory for the noble purposes of Christian prayer, long after he had gone violently to his grave? But you soon outgrew that space as well, due to the number of monks entrusting themselves to your care, and you migrated south to Monte Cassino, the hill that would henceforth be the heart of Benedictine life.

Your presence in Nero’s house, dear abbot, is a timely image for me to ponder as I survey the society around me today. An eerily similar sort of occupation is occurring in many parts of the previously Christian world. I have heard in recent years of glorious churches, built with the intent of magnifying the Lord and housing the presence of the bread of life, being sold on account of the shrinking number of parishioners engaged in the liturgy and Christian way of life. On your own European continent, the citizens of old Christian strongholds such as England, Germany, and the Netherlands have yielded, rapidly and shockingly, to a worldview that has absolutely no interest in matters supernatural. On the contrary, opportunists have seized upon the idea of purchasing empty churches and transforming them into everyday enterprises: from pizzerias with the main oven strategically placed on the very spot where the altar once stood, to discotheques, cafés, and bookstores, many ornate cathedrals have been reformatted to promote brazenly secular ends.

The fate of these churches linked up in my mind with your requisition of Nero’s ruins, and the contrast between them provided me with inspiration for the second part of my poem:

A nameless girl is whirled and tossed across

The space which once held pews for kneeling prayer.

As smoke and lusty steam like incense rise

Above the mass to stain the Gothic stone,

Orgasmic bombs are dropped from organ pipes

While stain’d glass sleeps amid the darkened din.

A pizzeria down the street now stands

Where schoolboys used to serve at morning Mass;

Upon the spot where bread was once made flesh

A forno sits and heats the pizza pies;

These feed the hungry mouths who like the charm

Of feasting in the empty space of faith.

The baker raises dough above his head

And winks at Jesus, statued in the niche.

The renovation of sacred places is simply a symptom of a sobering fact: the Christian faith, and the vestiges reminding us of a past rooted in it, are disappearing at an alarming rate. That Jesus himself foresaw such a situation is hardly consoling; his question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8), does not receive an answer.

What is a Christian to do in the face of such spite against the Spirit and anything associated with it, whether unconscious or aggressive? Just as you escaped the worldly snares of Rome and found refuge in a secluded life of prayer, St. Benedict, many Christians today are advocating a similar retreat from a post-Christian society, whether in Europe or the United States. Your life is hailed as an example to be imitated, but now by entire families and parishes. Just as your monastic revolution saved Western civilization during a time of crisis, so today many are crying out for a “Benedict option” of withdrawal from the world. The phrase has received a variety of interpretations. Some claim that small but creative pockets of Christians must break away from public society and move underground, in order to prevent the flame of the Christian faith from being extinguished by rampaging secular winds.

The comparison, dear abbot, is both apt and tempting. The very expression used to describe the retreat of the first desert hermits from the world, fuga mundi (flight from the world), springs naturally to mind in this context. Some people might even assert that monks such as myself have already abandoned the world to its own devices by taking refuge inside a monastery, safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous indifference and even vicious ideologies. Enflamed by Maccabean-style zeal for our traditions, we would be idealists bent on saving our precious pearls from the trampling of secular swine!

Yet I do not regard my own vocation in those terms, and I would urge caution on those who think that a mass exodus of Christians from public life is necessary to safeguard the faith for future generations. In appealing to your own withdrawal from the world as inspiration during this present crisis, many fail to understand that you did not intend to save Western civilization by living in a cave and forming monastic communities. You simply responded to an alluring call from God to dwell with yourself and by yourself in solitude, and in so doing you created a new form of life which became the bastion of Western civilization. I might call your withdrawal a happenstance event were it not clearly impressed by the fingerprints of providence. Rather than regard your move to the cave as a template for modern-day Christians, I would highlight how your way of life subtly traced out a solution to the pressing needs of your time. It is in this sense, I believe, that a philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, wrote of the urgency of a new St. Benedict for our day.6

My hunch, holy abbot, is that a widespread running for the hills is not a prudent move for most followers of Christ. It risks quieting the voice that people in the world, ignorant but still human and therefore open to the divine, desperately need to hear. While cold ignorance or open hostility can easily dismay even the most courageous of Christians, the words of the ancient “Letter to Diognetus” are resoundingly clear regarding the necessity of the Christian presence in the world: “What the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world . . . The soul dwells in the body, but does not belong to the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but do not belong to the world.”7

Am I thereby condemning monastic life, or claiming that monks and nuns have abdicated their responsibility to be the animating principle of a society ignorant of God? I don’t believe so, and I think you would agree with me. In my view, abbot Benedict, monasteries have a definite and essential role to play in the life not only of the church, but also of those Christians living and praying in this post-Christian world.

In chapter 53 of your Rule, you instruct your monks to regard guests arriving at the monastery as Christ himself.8 Most translations state that all “hospitality” or “goodness” should be shown to visitors; the actual Latin word you employ, however, is humanitas. The humanitas we monks must display to our guests startles me in connection with the topic I have been writing about. I regard my monastery, and ideally all monasteries, as refreshing oases of culture, where a weary soul may be rejuvenated by the quiet spaces, liturgical chants, and calm hope offered by the monks. If you would permit me to expand the meaning of your term “guests” to include all searchers for truth, and even the whole world, I think your injunction of humanitas can be an animating lifeline for all people, whether fervent Christians or secular seekers.

What do I have in mind? Only a tiny portion of men and women are called to dedicate themselves to the Lord in religious life. These have the humbling privilege of channeling the waters of wisdom and faith that nourish them in their monastic oasis to thirsty travelers, images of God who are disoriented by the mirages of happiness and hope which compose the world. Our humanitas is what we have been blessed by God to receive: the goodness of a mind capable of recognizing the imprint of its Creator, and a heart able to love someone other and greater than itself. The guests of our monasteries are seeking a retreat from an increasingly inhumane world which denies that beautiful link between creature and Creator, and they need to be reminded of their natural desire “to long for life, and to see good things” (Ps 34:13). What a monastery can provide such seekers, I think, is a refreshing way to approach their work within a world created good but distorted by sin and selfishness. Perhaps in the course of our liturgy, our learning, and our prayer, we can point them to the ruins of Nero’s house which need to be occupied by Christians and transformed into “schools for the Lord’s service” (from the prologue of the Rule).9 The world needs such souls to remind it of something more glorious than ego-centered feelings and fleeting pleasures; those souls, in turn, need to be supported as they face battering and hostile winds.

The value of a monastery for the broader culture certainly extends beyond its humanitas and hospitality. The medieval monasteries served to domesticate the barbarian hordes with agricultural techniques. Your monks preserved the great ideas of pagan and Christian culture through the copying of manuscripts, which were often works of stunning artistic genius. Their life of work and prayer, as the title of Jean Leclercq’s famous book illustrates, harmonized “the love of learning and the desire for God.”10 The unparalleled beauty of Gregorian chant—taking its name from St. Gregory the Great, your biographer—unites angelic psalms and human voices, and even today calms souls listening with the ear of their heart. As Gregory’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, said so eloquently in a speech during his 2008 visit to the former Cistercian house of studies in Paris,

The monastery serves eruditio, the formation and education of man—a formation whose ultimate aim is that man should learn how to serve God. But it also includes the formation of reason—education—through which man learns to perceive, in the midst of words, the Word itself.11

From our monasteries, that word, studied and contemplated in lectio divina, should be dispersed through spiritual direction, education of the young, and writings.

Despite my biased hope that monasticism can contribute to the rebuilding of a more Christian (and therefore more human) culture, holy father Benedict, I have no rosy illusions about the future of American and Western civilization. The final section of my “Subiaco” poem reflects a certain pessimism of mine regarding our secular culture:

Tomorrow boasts of godlessness and ghosts

Which walk in mem’ried quarters, telling tales

In ruined stone, in silent bells, in church;

And we alone are left as reliqued souls

To note the setting suns and Christian shades.

But must we make our graves of hallowed space,

Exchanging fire for frost, the pearl for dust?

For I am not a dying man, not yet,

And we have stood, still stand, on living ground,

Convinced, with proof, that death can yield a dawn

And Love still dares to sow in arid earth.

When places pass, and hearts aflame grow cold,

Please grant us now a faith begot of hope,

Assured that we have not believed in vain.

I wrote those lines several years ago, before I came to think of humanitas as the great gift monasticism can offer souls ignorant of their own glorious humanity. They present a bleaker outlook than the one I hold now, but their sobering perspective is still instructive. Christians must not abandon their ship to the stormy waves simply because they cannot control the winds or waters, and I consider monasticism a rudder steering the ship of the church (indeed, of all humanity) on a Godward course. I take very seriously my privileged duty to share with our guests, and channel to others through them, the rivers of living water which I have found in my monastery. Saint Gregory the Great wrote that you once received a singular grace in contemplation: the whole world was presented before your eyes as if it were collected in a single ray of the sun. May your illuminating example and powerful prayers intercede for me, and all the monks and nuns living under your patronage, that we might be faithful collectors of your inspiring rays and refreshing aqueducts to all who come to us seeking God.

5. Saint Benedict of Norcia (ca. AD 480–ca. 540) lived as a hermit for a short time before establishing a cenobitic community of monks at Monte Cassino in Italy. He is considered the founder of Western monasticism, and his Rule is still the governing document of many monastic orders, including the Benedictines and Cistercians. He is also one of the patron saints of Europe. The opening greeting is a play on his name: Benedictus in Latin means “blessed,” and therefore he is “blessed in grace and in name.”

6. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 263.

7. “Letter to Diognetus.” In Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, 218.

8. Fry, Rule of St. Benedict, 258–59.

9. Ibid., 164–65.

10. See Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 1–7.

11. Benedict XVI, “Meeting with Representatives from the World of Culture,” para. 3.