"With God all things are possible"

"With God all things are possible."


A rich man asked Jesus what he must do to share in everlasting life. Jesus answered him: "You know the commandments:

'you shall not kill;
you shall not commit adultery;
you shall not steal;
you shall not bear false witness;
you shall not defraud;
honor your father and your mother.'"

The man then said: "Teacher, I have observed all these since my childhood." And then Jesus replied: "There is one thing more you must do ... sell what you have, give to the poor ... after that, come and follow me."


Reflecting on this gospel passage in the context of discerning God's will is important for understanding the vocation to follow Jesus. St. Francis de Sales, who wrote the classic Introduction to the Devout Life, mentions in his writings that there are four options in life that need much prayer and discernment. The first and most important of these four, is choosing one's vocation in life. The rest are: when choosing to do something very costly, when moving on to a new house and neighborhood, and when choosing the friends you are called to have. The rich man in the gospel was given the option to choose something very important. He can follow Jesus where Jesus is and going, or he can obey God's commandments where he already is. Where Jesus is, is the direction to perfect charity; and where the man is, is the opportunity to sanctify the very realities wherein he can steward his riches responsibly and justly.


The man in the gospel was invited to a life of charity. And a charity that is truly radical. This is the vocation of the clergy and the religious. But St. Francis de Sales teaches that charity can be practiced in all walks of life: as soldiers, craftsmen, statesmen, and servants; as widows, or married, or unmarried. It is a very priceless privilege and gift to be called to following Christ in the priesthood, but there are situations and environments in which lay people can be more effective witnesses - especially in the very secular realities of marriage and work, a profession or business. Perfect charity is indeed a great ideal, but to practice charity in the midst of the world of family and work, as the Second Vatican teaches, is also a following of Jesus. The life of the lay faithful is also a vocation. The canonization of many lay saints during the pontificate of St. John Paul II attests to the fact that in truth, charity can be practiced in all states of life. And even in the lay state of life, God can also make all things possible.

Monastic Reform in the 10th Century

Monastic Reform in the 10th Century

Beginning with the founding of the monastery at Cluny, there arose and developed a spirit of reform in the Church. This reform movement was led by such serious reformers and leaders like St. Romuald and the Camaldolese, St. Bruno and the Carthusians, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians.

The strong influence of Cluny
A strong reform spirit had been rising in the Catholic Church beginning in the end of the ninth century. The reform movement influenced the monastic spirituality started by St. Benedict of Nursia in the West, and St. Basil in the East. This religious tide continued to rise with the founding of the monastery of Cluny in France (908-910 A.D.).

The Benedictines who began Cluny reformed monasticism and went back to the original spirit of the ideal monastery - one that is independent from worldly control and influence. Cluny characterized itself by strict adherence to the rule of St. Benedict: involving severe asceticism, absolute obedience to the abbot, and special attention to liturgical worship. Under the leadership of great abbots such as Berno (909-927 A.D.), Odo (927-942 A.D.), Aymard (942-954 A.D.), Majolus (954-994 A.D.), Odilo (994-1048 A.D.), Hugh (1049-1109 A.D.), and Peter (1122-1156 A.D.), Cluny grew into the strongest religious force in the Western Church. It became a force for good that influenced many monasteries.

New forms of monasticism and ascetic life
Cluny increased the vitality of monastic life and intensified the desire for perfection in the Christian life. Religious men and women of all classes turned to monasticism in great numbers. Not all however were attracted to the Benedictine rule and so sought the ideal life known as vita apostolica - a guide to living in poverty and voluntary renunciation. These men and women who lived the vita apostolica either became hermits in the wilderness, (either isolated or in colonies), while others became wandering preachers and penitents.

St. Romuald (951-1027) and the Camaldolese Order
One of those who lived this new spirit of monasticism was St. Romuald of Ravenna, Italy. A biographer reports of St. Romuald wanting to inspire the world with his sense of contrition and "to change the world into nothing but a hermitage".

Beginning his life as a wild youth, St. Romuald converted and tried living in a monastery at Classe. Then he lived under the school of the hermit Marinus. After this training, he entered the monastery at Cuxa. Finally, he decided to return home to Ravenna, to find his own ideal life in imitation of the ancient desert fathers. His life of solitude, prayer, zealous ardor for God, the care of souls, and preaching penitence, would eventually spellbound many of the people. His way of life and prayer attracted even great leaders such as Emperor Otto III, Adalbert of Prague, and Bruno of Querfut.

As for the numerous young people who followed St. Romuald, he founded Fonte Avellana, Vallambrosa (1012), Camaldoli (1023), and other monastic establishments. These communities contained a mixture of hermits and cenobites. But it was the five hermitages St. Romuald built at Camaldoli that soon developed into the mother house of the Camaldolese Order - a monastic order with a spirituality combining eremitical and cenobitic life under a modified Benedictine Rule. From the monasteries that St. Romuald founded came the most ardent zealots for reform in the Church. One of these ardent zealots was St. Peter Damian (1007-1072), who eventually became a doctor of the Church. St. Peter Damian was a Camaldolese.

St. Nilus the Younger
Serious reformers in the Church continued to lead this reform movement in monasticism. In Calabria, Italy, it was St. Nilus the Younger (c. 910-1004) who led the reform in that part of Europe. St. Nilus secured a grant of land from Count Gregory of Tusculum to found a Basilian monastery at Monte Cavo (Grotta Ferrata) near Rome. St. Nilus had a reputation for holiness and spiritual wisdom that attracted many to ask his spiritual advice and consolation.

St. John Gualbert and the Vallambrosans
Another serious reformer was St. John Gualbert (d. 1073) of Florence, Italy. While St. John Gualbert was at the hermitage of Camaldoli, he decided to found a monastery of his own, which he did at Vallambrosa (Vallis Umbrosa), near Fiesole. His monastery followed the primitive rule of St. Benedict. His followers came to be known as the Vallambrosans. Their school of religious life stressed charity and poverty. The Vallambrosans spread all throughout Italy, particularly in Tuscany and Lombardy.

Blessed Robert of Abrissel and Blessed Vitalis of Savigny
In the north of the Alps, we find two more serious reformers in the persons of Blessed Robert of Abrissel (c. 1047-1117), and Blessed Vitalis of Savigny (c. 1063-1122). They too lived the vita apostolica as an example to the people to whom they preached penitence and religious revival.

Blessed Robert of Abrissel first became a hermit in the Craon Forest in 1095. In the following year, he founded the La Roé monastery for the many disciples he had attracted with his holiness. He was appointed "preacher" by Pope Urban II and in 1099 founded the double monastery at Fontvrault for the many postulants that could not be accommodated by the La Roé monastery.

Blessed Vitalis of Savigny was said to have been chaplain to William the Conqueror's half-brother Count Robert of Mortain. In 1095, he became a hermit. He too, like Blessed Robert of Abrissel, attracted numerous disciples and soon founded in 1112 the Savigny Abbey on the border between Normandy and Britanny. Blessed Vitalis became known and famous for his preaching.

St. Bruno of Cologne and the Carthusians
St. Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030-1101) was the founder of the Order of Carthusians (1084). After his ordination in 1055, St. Bruno became a canon at St. Cunibert's. Then he became a professor of theology in Rheims (1056). It was at Rheims that he soon received a chancellorship through an appointment given by the Rheims archbishop, Manasses. However, political disputes and strife led him to the decision to pursue an eremitical life. So he became a hermit under Abbot St. Robert of Molesmes (who later founded Citeaux), and then moved to Grenoble with six companions in 1084. At the Grand Chartreuse, a wild mountainous area near Grenoble, St. Bruno and his companions built an oratory and individual cells, and roughly followed the Rule of St. Benedict. This became the Carthusian Order. The fame of St. Bruno of Cologne and the Carthusians spread so greatly that in 1090, St. Bruno was brought to Rome against his wishes by Pope Urban II (who was St. Bruno's student at Rheims) and made papal adviser in the reform of the clergy. St. Bruno however persuaded Pope Urban II to allow him to resume his eremitical state.

St. Bruno and his silent Carthusians were few in number but they always preserved a spirit of genuine religiosity and inner strength through prayer and introspection. The Order survived the late Middle Ages and the Reformation without any loss.

St. Robert, St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Cistercians
Even within the ranks of the school of Benedictine monasticism, the penetrating spirit of reform also arose. It was the Order of the Cistercians who instigated this reform.

In 1098 A.D., St. Robert of Molesmes (c. 1024-1110), together with twenty companions, founded a strict Benedictine monastery in the wilderness of Citeaux, France. Emphasized in their school of monasticism was apostolic poverty, solitude for prayer, and regular manual labor. The Cistercians rejected the traditional feudal order in the monastic sphere because of the wealth that accompanied it. And the man who would be effecting all these ideals in its fullness was St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 A.D.).

St. Bernard in April 1112 A.D. brought 30 companions with him to Citeaux - many of whom were his relatives. St. Bernard's influence in the monastery gave impetus and strength to expand the ideals of Citeaux. In 1115 A.D., St. Bernard moved to Clairvaux with 12 companions and established a new community. He was so active that during his lifetime he founded about 68 monasteries. And at his death, the Cistercian Order had grown to 350 monasteries. Though St. Bernard of Clairvaux is noted as a great reformer, theologian, and doctor of the Church, he is best and fondly remembered as a monk, saint, and mystic.

Conclusion
The spirit of reform in monasticism was born because of the ecclesiastical decline happening between the ninth and tenth centuries. Monasteries were becoming dependent on both worldly and spiritual magnates. But it was the monastery founded at Cluny that began the foundation for the reform of this situation. After Cluny, many serious reformers and leaders followed in its spirit. It was the influence of these great spiritual reformers that the quality of monastic life was brought to a better level. Monastic spirituality is soon to be known not so much according to the number of visible achievements (such as the founding of many monasteries), but rather by the inwardness and depth in which the life of Christ is imitated.

St. Anthony of the Desert, Hermit and Abbot

St. Anthony of the Desert, feast January 17

The Age of the Hermits

Introduction

For the majority of saints in Church history, prayer is always the mainspring of action. All their actions follow from their way and life of prayer. In St. Anthony of the Desert, we find a way of life and prayer that began a movement of Christians to the desert. And for the first time, we meet a saint who is an unmixed contemplative - one absorbed in pure prayer and contemplation (the stage of prayer considered to be the highest: after lectio, meditatio, and oratio). We discover in St. Anthony, a movement from the city in Egypt into the solitude of wide empty spaces in the desert, and occupying an abandoned fort (or castle in some translations). Christian art often depicts him always in combat against the Evil One - the devil. However, the world of the eighteenth century, does not believe in the devil, and have often treated St. Anthony in secular history as a fanatic who gives up the joys of life to get in return nothing but a dream. Now in the modern world, where some do not believe in the devil, there is a gradual perception of some social significance to the life of St. Anthony and his monks (he also founded a community). Modern scholars know that most men stood in the mainstream of history. They got involved in the world, and have succeeded in diverting its direction. But there is a difference with St. Anthony Abbot and his followers. They stood outside the mainstream of history, uninvolved, and not even trying to influence the world. What is surprising is that with their noninvolvement, they still were able to unexpectedly divert civilization powerfully! For with St. Anthony and the movement to the desert that was increased after him, the institution of monasteries and religious life slowly and gradually evolved into a stable system in the history of spirituality in the Catholic Church.

The First Half-Century

Anthony's conversion

The Life of St. Anthony was first written by Athanasius the Bishop, that great saint who twice joined St. Anthony in his desert exile, and returned to Alexandria strengthened to fight against the Arian heresy. According to Athanasius and other sources who wrote his biography, St. Anthony was born in Egypt of Christian parents in the year 251 A.D. - the same year Origen the theologian died. St. Anthony passed most of his youth in a period of peace for the Church. There was persecution in the Church in his early childhood and again in his middle years, but not as he was growing up. Literacy was not universal in the Roman Empire and it seems unlikely that St. Anthony went to school. St. Anthony's parents passed away when he was only eighteen or twenty, leaving him the guardian of an only sister. St. Athanasius, who also is his biographer, describes how Anthony walked one day to church, with his mind on the calling of the Apostles and the way Christians had all things in common. As Anthony entered the Church, he heard this text of the gospel being read: "If thou wilt be perfect sell all thou hast and give to the poor and come, follow Me." From then on, Anthony gave away to the village the three hundred acres of fertile land that were his, sold all he had, and gave most of it to the poor, keeping back only a little for his sister. On his next visit to the Church, he heard the words, "Be not solicitous for the morrow". So, parting with the rest of his inheritance and patrimony, he put his sister in a convent to be educated. Anthony then started to practice the ascetic life in front of his own house, "for monasteries were not yet numerous in Egypt, nor did any monk yet know the wide desert". However, there were already men living a life of solitude, prayer, labour with their hands, and almsgiving in their own neighborhoods. Anthony visited them and in all humility studied the special excellence of each: the graciousness of one, the intensely prayerfulness of another, how others observed long vigils, and still others the eager love of reading, but in all he saw the reverent love for Christ and mutual affection for one another.

The temptations from the devil

As St. Anthony tried to carry out in his own life all that he had seen and learned from others, he worked steadily and prayed much. Of what he read, he forgot none of it, and his memory later served him in place of books. He always kept his mind steadily away from his inheritance and would not think about his relatives. As the devil saw Anthony pursuing this path to Christ and holiness, the devil soon began in his turn to advance upon St. Anthony. The first temptation of the devil was to tempt Anthony away from the ascetic life by bringing before him thoughts of his property, of anxiety about his sister, the companionship of his kind, greed for money and fame, the pleasure of rich and varied foods and the other delights of a luxurious life. The devil pressed on Anthony, disturbing him night and day. Anthony fought the devil by driving him away by prayer; by fortifying his body with faith and fastings. By these means Anthony was able to put out the flame of temptation. As Anthony won in the battles against the devil, all the more the devil re-furbished his weapons and prepared new attacks. Anthony however watched and prayed longer, often through the whole night. After some years spent in this fashion, Anthony, preparing for the supreme combat with Satan, left the village and went away to the tombs which lay at some distance. At the tombs, he asked a close friend to bring him bread at intervals, shut himself in and stayed there alone. And his prayer was always with a mighty shout, "Here am I, Anthony. I am not going to run away from your blows, for even if you beat me again nothing can separate me from the love of Christ."

Intensifying the severity of his life

After these first combats with Satan, Anthony intensified the severity of his life. He intensified his solitude, deciding to make his way into the desert. Athanasius describes to us the spot chosen by Anthony in which he dwelt for the next twenty years: "He found beyond the river a fort long unused and full of reptiles - he crossed over to it and there dwelt. The reptiles left at once, as if someone were chasing them. He closed up the entrance and laid in bread for six months (the Thebans of Egypt do this and the bread will keep unspoilt for a full year). There was water inside. Anthony went down as though into a shrine and there lived alone. He never went out nor would he see those who came to see him. There for a long time he worked at asceticism, twice a year only receiving bread that was lowered to him from above."

Many came to seek his counsel

Many came seeking Anthony in his solitude. Monasteries soon were growing up in the desert. The monks required the help of Anthony, and his friends could no longer be avoided. After all, twenty years is quite a period. It is a small wonder the world became impatient for the sight of this solitary. He had shut himself up a young man of thirty-five; he was now fifty-five years old. Few could have guessed he had another half-century of life before him. As his friends smashed the doors, Anthony came forth, like one initiated into the Mysteries of Christ, and breathed upon by the Godhead, coming from a shrine. As he was seen for the first time by those who sought him, they marvelled at how unchanged he was in body: neither grown fat through want of exercise, nor thin and gaunt from fasting and battling with devils. He looked exactly the same as before his retirement to the abandoned fort.

The Second Half-Century

Persecution upon the Church

After St. Anthony came forth from his solitude, persecution broke once more upon the Church and Anthony was seized with a great longing for martyrdom. Though he did not think it was right for him, he ministered instead to the confessors (those who suffer because of persecution) in the mines and the prisons. He accompanied those condemned to martyrdom and upheld them until the end. Together with other monks, they made their presence in the courts, and burned with divine courage in support of those to be martyred. As Roman law would think it not worth while to fill the prisons with these "ragged, starving fanatic monks", St. Anthony returned reluctantly to his desert. But he took back with him many who had, by seeing and hearing him, become inspired with the wish to lead the same life as his.

Dwelling in a monastery

The next period of St. Anthony's life was spent more in the eyes of the world. He dwelt in a monastery, visited other monasteries and was himself visited by great numbers. He was "guide and father" to many other monks and influenced many to take up a solitary life.

Longed for a deeper solitude

Anthony was longing for a deeper solitude. So he finally decided to go further into the desert, where he might once more be alone. Through the help of some Saracens (nomad Arabs) he found a very small patch of land that could be tilled. So he dug and sowed it, "having more than enough water for its cultivation". Later he added a few vegetables wherewith to refresh any visitors that might arrive weary with the journey. St. Anthony was ninety years old when there came the meeting so celebrated in medieval art, between him and the first hermit, Paul. St. Athanasius has no account of this meeting. It is St. Jerome who has an account of it but he wrote it in poetic style. What is piously told of the meeting is that a crow had settled on a branch of a tree, and softly flying down, deposited a whole loaf before the two hermits. Paul exclaimed how the Lord had a hand in this meeting since he always received a half loaf everyday of his solitary years.

A ripe old age and death

St. Anthony lived to the age of 105, seeing under the Emperor Constantine the beginnings of Arianism. It was finally in his old age that he won his coveted crown of martyrdom. The Arian Constantius had sent an officer to set out towards where St. Anthony was dwelling. A horse however turned on St. Anthony and tore up his thigh. When he knew he was dying, he left his monastery and returned to the stronghold in the inner desert where two monks lived with him. He bade them farewell and told them: "With every breath you breathe draw in Christ...And now God be with you, my children; for Anthony departs and is with you no more."