Strangers to the City

by Michael Casey

  My ownership of weakness will probably never be complete unless I take the step of declaring it in the presence of another person. I am not thinking here so much of the anonymity of sacramental confession, as of the more open disclosure of my fragility to another equally fragile human being. Trusting another sufficiently to reveal my secret will make it more difficult for me afterwards to deny it or reinterpret the evidence in a more favorable light.

  c) Acceptance of Discipline

  Have I got to the point of saying, “I don’t know about everybody else, but I have to be a bit careful in the area of sexuality”? If so, I am probably ready to recognize the need for a discipline of life that will enable me to move towards the ultimate goal of my life. As a follower of Benedict I have come to the monastery seeking God: I need to be serious about countering anything that gets in the way of that primary purpose. Disordered sexuality is not going to help me on my way. This means, as we have already noted, admitting the necessity of asceticism in our lives as a general principle. It is not only a matter of trying to be careful about specifically sexual occasions of sin; common sense dictates that we attack the roots of sin as well as its branches.40 “For as long as we are tempted by carnal delights, it is necessary for us to tame the flesh of the body by vigils, fasts, and labor.”41 Chastity is impossible without some supporting bodily observances. The means that we use indicate that we are aware of the need for vigilance, the ability to refrain from or refuse the satisfaction of bodily appetites, and the necessity of being proactive in implementing whatever measures seem necessary. Along with at least a symbolic degree of bodily mortification, there is need for vigilance and care regarding our thoughts. Again, Aelred has something to say about this.

  Our flock is made up of our good feelings and our good thoughts. Over these flocks it is necessary for us to be vigilant, lest our enemy prevail over us and take them away from us, scattering and dispersing them. They are vigilant over their flock who carefully guard all their thoughts, words and works lest in some way they are led into falling. The same is true of those who keep guard over their senses.42

  Chastity does not just happen; especially for us who have vowed it, it is a task to be done. “If you really want to be celibate, celibacy must be among the most important elements in your life.”43 This means that in response to God’s grace we need to spend time, use energy, and employ both intellect and will in making it happen.

  d) Patience

  We are not going to become chaste overnight. That is not God’s plan. The spiritual warfare that is involved in avoiding defeat at the hands of unchastity is near enough to lifelong. It is the labor of wrestling with unchastity that gradually makes us chaste, growing in experience of the enemy’s tactics, motivated by the pain of our wounds to avoid exposing ourselves needlessly to attack, building up confidence in the resources that are available, and, above all, learning to trust in the promise, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).

  Sexual temptation can come from within ourselves or from outside. Sometimes it seems to come from nowhere. Temptation tempers the spirit. Without it virtue is slack because it has not yet learned where the boundaries between good and evil are located, how to restrain itself from heedlessly crossing those boundaries, and how to be strong when confronted with the urgency of contrary attractions.

  Patience is the greatest of all the virtues…. It can be divided into two parts: temperance and fortitude, since it possesses the soul both in prosperity and in adversity. It makes it sober and strong against the filthy pruritus of the flesh and the surging of interior vices, as also against the exterior enticements and cruelties of the world.44

  There is a lot of virtue involved in accepting the slowness of the process of becoming chaste, living with patent imperfection, and feeling pain at the distance between cherished ideals and actual performance. The discontent generated by our temptations and infidelities is probably the most effective teacher of chastity. More often than not our compromises are due more to the wobbliness of our will and the strength of our instincts than to any fully free personal choice. As St. Augustine notes, “Often sins occur because of ignorance or human weakness, and, in fact, many are committed by people weeping and groaning in distress.” As a result the precariousness of the virtue of chastity is more of a burden than a sin. It is a constant reminder of the uncertainty of our perseverance in the life to which we have been called and an effective incentive to prayer for help. Especially, since many people in monastic life are natural high-achievers, their lack of tangible progress in this area serves as a good reminder that not everything depends on talent and energy. Some things come only by way of gift.

  e) Hope

  Patience is animated by the theological virtue of hope. “We know that troubles bring about patience, and patience serves as a means of probation which leads to hope” (Rom. 5:3-4). There is an eschatological character about all Christian virtue, but especially chastity. No other virtue is so other-worldly, having little recompense in the here and now. That is probably why Jesus speaks of those who have committed themselves fully to the kingdom as eunuchs (Mt. 19:12). Despite the promise of the hundredfold, they receive few collateral benefits in this life for the sacrifice they have made; their hope is for the future.

  Chastity makes no sense at all except on the basis of faith in the promise of eternal life and on the validity of our call to monasticism as a way to that life. The Suscipe sung at the moment of solemn profession can serve as a lifelong motif for prayer with special reference to chastity: “Sustain me, O Christ, according to your promise and I shall live; do not disappoint me of my hope” (58:21). How many people support their efforts to reduce their appetite for food by jumping on the scales to check out their weight loss! Each success motivates them to continue with the program. There is nothing comparable with chastity. We can’t measure our progress, nor can we afford to be too pleased with ourselves. And, in our culture, we find it hard to persevere in a discipline that does not yield tangible results or any prospect of immediate gratification. Something extraordinary is required.

  As we shall see later, chastity cannot exist in an affective void. The hope that makes chastity practicable is not just a matter of waiting without any evidence that the situation will improve. It is much more like eager anticipation of something that is certain—like the end of winter and the burgeoning of better days. Monastic life is based entirely on faith; if there is no future life it loses its specific meaning. “If for this life only we have hope in Christ Jesus, then of all people are we the most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Our efforts to become chaste are one means of putting into practice the otherwise disembodied virtues of faith and hope—and they can become a very sincere expression of the love that binds us to God and to other people. It is not for our own benefit that we practise sexual restraint: It is because the kingdom of God is active within us, and it is for the sake of the kingdom that we accept to struggle with the task.

  There is a certain sense in which the experience of chastity is one of being suspended between heaven and earth, having separated ourselves from the pleasures of earth but not yet having attained to the joys of heaven.45 In another sense, as Bernard insists in his teaching on Advent, we are occasionally fortified for the onward journey by anticipatory experience of the spiritual world. There is some continuity between Christian experience now and what may be expected in the hereafter. And so, it has to be said that it is through prayer that chastity becomes feasible. Conversely it is because of ongoing struggle with unchastity that many are led to prayer, according to Augustine’s maxim: “Because we are human we are not strong. Because we are not strong we pray.”46

  The psychologist Richard Sipe, who has done more than most to expose the fragility of religious celibacy, sees prayer as an essential component in its practice. “It is the connection with the Ultimate Other that undergirds, infuses and crowns the celibate quest.”47

  In studying religious celibacy for thirty-five years I have neve
r found one exception to this fundamental rule: Prayer is necessary to maintain the celibate process. A neglectful prayer life ensures failure of celibate integration…. No matter at what point in or out of the celibate process you find yourself, if you really want to be celibate, you can begin today by praying.48

  Without prayer celibate chastity is hopeless; without hope it must lead to desperation and even degeneracy.

  f) Community

  In the monastic tradition chastity is lived in the context of a community. There are two aspects that may be considered here. In the first place a communitarian existence is necessarily organized independently of transient personal preferences. In most cases a general finality stamps itself on structures and activities so that once a common goal is recognized and chosen, no more is needed to progress towards that goal than to go with the flow. In a compatible community it is not necessary continually to stop and take sightings, and then to realign one’s trajectory. Others are making the same journey as we. European monks conscripted into the army during the Second World War suddenly found it necessary to fight for their chastity on a different front when they moved from the monastery to the barracks. Only then did they realize how much help they received by living among brothers equally committed to becoming chaste: bene instructi fraterna ex acie—they were well taught by the fraternal ranks (1:5).

  The community not only forms us in beliefs and values but also provides us with boundaries. It tells us how far we can go and when our behavior is beginning to move toward becoming either dangerous for ourselves or provocative and scandalous in the eyes of others. Since we ourselves probably are not fully aware of when we have wandered too far from the prudent and the ideal, we resent these limitations of our liberty and regard them as inapplicable. Beware. The very strength of the resentment is usually a sign that a word of caution was indeed necessary. Community standards can sometimes seem narrow but, even in that eventuality, they can serve as checks on our otherwise unexamined initiatives. Sometimes a willingness to conform to stricter expectations can save us from ourselves and from an unwilled disaster.

  If we consider the monastic community as the Church in miniature, then our adherence to its principles and practices can carry with it something more than the rewards of conformity. There is grace to be found in the company and communion of believers. Here is a little story from a thirteenth-century handbook for Cistercian novices, putatively ascribed to Abbot Stephen of Sawley:

  One of our brothers, sitting alone and apart from the others during the rest period [at work], began to be gravely beset by temptations of the flesh; he heard a voice saying to him, “Go down to the camp.” When he joined the others the temptation ceased.49

  In the experience of many, difficulties with chastity begin with behavioral or affective separation from the community. This may be concealed for a time, and the living of a double life goes undetected, but eventually everything that is concealed is proclaimed from the rooftops. If the aberration is a momentary lapse from an otherwise honest life, then it can be rectified and the end result of the incident may be beneficial. If, on the other hand, the difficulty is compounded by years of compacted deceit and willfulness, there is little hope of a creative solution.

  A good monastic community, however, does more to sustain chastity than provide us with rules and regulations to prevent its opposite. It is a place of acceptance, affirmation, support, friendship, and even some degree of intimacy. It is not meager with its celebration of gifts and its admiration of persons. It provides for all appropriate outlets for generativity. This is the ideal context in which to become chaste. Not a rigid impersonal system, nor an affective desert nor a riot of immature sentiment, but an atmosphere of solid adult mutuality, acceptance, and love. Paradoxically such ease in interpersonal existence is not easily gained. Nobody need think that such a fully affective community is easy to create or to live in. We arrive at such a state only by years of disciplined effort. Curiously enough, the undisciplined man or woman cannot survive in such a community; their own inner chaos will be projected upon the others to the extent that the goodness and holiness of the majority will not be apparent. To the affectively immature even the best community will seem seriously deficient.

  There are numerous ersatz forms of intimacy that a genuinely affective community will not encourage or permit. Many people who enthuse about Aelred of Rievaulx’s treatise On Spiritual Friendship have never grasped its message. The great gift of an intimate friendship is not the same as un grand amour. Aelred continues Cicero’s theme that true friendship presupposes a high level of maturity and belongs especially to the mellower decades of life. Combined with the lightness of spirit that friendship confers, there is a certain gravitas of behavior that does not permit the relationship to degenerate into adolescent folly or antisocial exclusivity. Much less does it lay the foundation for genital interaction.

  Over the years one who is in the process of becoming chaste will probably notice a burgeoning capacity for intimacy. With some more than others, certainly, but never with just one. Self-knowledge and a greater truthfulness brings with it an increased self-acceptance and a greater willingness to take the risk of self-exposure. An enlarged level of freedom from unconscious motivations makes us readier to do what we may never have done before, to reach out to other people, to welcome them into our inner space, and to be less afraid. This is why the saints had that quality of instant contact that politicians dream about. To meet someone who is genuinely holy is to have the impression of being both known and loved; no barrier is placed between persons. Heart speaks to heart.

  Every step we make in the direction of inclusive intimacy is going to help us persevere in the practice of chastity. The monastic community can help us acquire this art: This is why the twelfth-century Cistercian unabashedly referred to the monastery as “a school of love.” If our observance of the Rule does not carry us in this direction, there is something radically wrong. Community and chastity go hand in hand. We come to the monastery in order to learn to love, to put aside infantile narcissism and preoccupation with self, and to give scope to empathy and self-giving. One who lives thus is going to have comparatively few problems with the living of celibate chastity.

  g) Personal Devotion to Christ

  The early monks saw themselves as the successors to the martyrs. Because they had the misfortune to miss out on the possibility of shedding their blood in testimony to their faith in another sphere of existence, they were compelled to find other ways of pursuing otherworldliness. Monastic life may seem easier than being eaten by lions, but there are added hardships. To begin with, faithfully following a monastic call involves decades of fidelity to grace under changing circumstances. Instead of a once-and-for-all acceptance of a cruel fate it is death by a thousand pinpricks—felt all the more keenly because of the relative absence of compensating gratifications.

  An important element of the spirituality of the martyrs, as revealed in the early narratives, was their passionate and personal devotion to Christ. It was this warm love rather than cool and calculating reason that helped them endure the hideous torments to which they were subjected. Both men and women eagerly looked forward to their death as a means of being united with Christ, whom they loved and ardently desired. This attitude flowed into the Rule and other early monastic texts to build up a conviction that the only appropriate motivation for embracing the rigors of monastic observance was a personal love for Christ and the sure and certain hope that this love will find its consummation in heaven.

  Later we will have more to say about the centrality of this aspect of monastic spirituality. Let us concentrate here on the area of chastity. Since unchastity is habitually the effect of immature or disordered affectivity, it follows that harnessing the whole spiritual life to the task of growing in love—with the person of Jesus as an initial object of that love—is going to make the journey to love of a single piece with the other aspects of our spiritual endeavor. The dynamism of monastic life depends on our
deciding the relative priority of different love-objects. This was referred to by the medieval Cistercian authors as the ordinatio caritatis. On this basis, fulfilling Benedict’s injunction of placing nothing before the love of Christ (4:21) necessarily impacts on every other act which has love as its driving force. Our personal attachment to Christ becomes more important than any other relationship. As long as it flourishes it makes sure that no other relationship supplants it or gets out of control.

  h) Purity of Heart

  John Cassian cited purity of heart as the most appropriate object of monastic striving. By this expression he intended to convey the importance of simplicity of will. If the heart is divided in itself, then we cannot love God or our neighbor with our whole heart. We are not the masters of our own inner domain. The monastic endeavor is ultimately incompatible with half-heartedness. Hence the need, especially during the first decades of monastic striving, to bring some unity to our choices, progressively eliminating every inconsistency that has the potential to result in our leading double lives. We should be constantly asking ourselves why we entered the monastery and verifying that we are still animated by those initial desires. The more this basic finality governs our attitudes and choices, the more progress we make and the happier we are, despite the hard and rough patches that we encounter on our journey.

  Purity of heart involves investing all our energies in a single venture, not allowing ourselves to become fragmented and confused. I cannot afford to be a part-time monk—this would mean that my monastic labors would never reach a critical mass, and the end result would be flatness and stagnation. Alternatively it would involve my attempting to live a double life, sometimes being a monk and at other times either a non-monk or an anti-monk. There may be an inherent excitement in such an attempt, but there is little permanent happiness. Monastic contentment usually depends on an attitude of “What You See Is What You Get”: an attitude of sincere transparency that hides neither assets nor liabilities.