ESSAY ON THE SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE FIRST SIX CENTURIES.

By

JOHN BERNARD DALGAIRNS

 

The lives of the Saints of the Desert have ever exercised a wonderful influence over the minds, not only of Catholics, but of all who call themselves Christians; nor is it difficult to comprehend why it should be so now, more than ever. The age in which we live distinguishes itself above all others by a restless longing to realize the past. Men are searching bog and marsh, moor and river, the wide expanse of downs, the tops of mountains and the bottom of lakes to find out how our ancestors lived, and to reproduce the men of the age of stone, bronze, or iron. The same sort of yearning curiosity exercises itself on the early Christians. If we had only Eusebius and Sozomen, it would be utterly impossible to picture to ourselves what were our ancestors in Christ. The Catacombs tell us much, but they are comparatively dumb. In the lives of the Desert-saints, we have a most strangely authentic insight into the very hearts and thoughts as well as the way of life of men and women who lived hundreds of years ago. They are extraordinarily authentic, for the marvelous facts which they contain are couched for by writers such as St. Athanasius, who probably knew St. Antony and by St. Jerome. In most cases we have the account, almost the journals of men, who, like Cassian, Palladius and Moschus, travelled conscientiously to visit the marvelous population of Nitria and the Thebaid. Palgrave and Livingston tell us far less of the tents of the Bedouins and the huts of the negroes, than these writers tell us of the daily life, and the very gossip of the monastery.

There is a freshness and a bloom, a cheerfulness and a frankness about these monks and hermits, which has an inexpressible charm. It seems as if the men who had been trained to silence and contemplation, when they did speak, spoke like children, with their heart on their lips, so good humouredly did they answer the somewhat tiresome questions of inquisitive travelers. Such men as these are too real to be accounted for on any theory of myths, and, wonderful as are the tales told of them, they can hardly be consigned to the class of legendary literature, when vouched for by such men as St. Athanasius.

These monks look out upon us from the darkness of the past with a vividness and simplicity, which show that they considered that their existence in this busy world needed neither apology nor proof. The strangely beautiful virtues which they practiced serve as their defense even with the most unascetic. Even writers of a school, most opposed to mysticism, have forgotten its principles and been caught in the net of the charity and sweetness of these solitaries. Their usefulness has found favor for them in the eyes of the most hostile. It is impossible to find fault with a man who, like St. Antony, presents himself after years of silence, prayer and fasting, at the door of his cave with a bloom on his cheek, and a smile on his lip, and who condescends to use something like gentlemanly chaff with the philosopher who came to see him. There is at once a gull between him and a fakir. He fully vindicates his usefulness, who is the consoler and the confidante and spiritual guide of half Egypt. Even St. Simeon Stylites can hardly be said to be lost to the world when he converted Arabs and Barbarians of various races.

There is evidence enough in the following pages, that the cell of the hermit in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries was the refuge of the poor and the suffering and the outcast. The monk of the desert was a Carthusian, a Sister of St. Vincent of Paul and a nun of the Good Shepherd, all in one. Never were men less rigorous to others than these who were so rigid to themselves. No man of the world was ever less narrow-minded than those solitaries of the desert. At the time when the Church was most severe in her discipline, they are ever preaching that a repentance of one day is enough, if it be profound, ever singing hymns of joy over sinners, who instantly receive the Holy Communion, ever dwelling on stories like that of St. Pelagia who bears down all the canons which would delay her reception into the Church, by the fervor of her conversion.

Qualities, such as these, constitute the chief charm of the lives of the Fathers of the Desert; yet after all they by no means furnish the key to their marvelous mode of living. All this does not in the least explain their love of solitude. When St. Antony hid himself in the desert, he never anticipated that the mountain of Colzim would become one great monastery and resound day and night with the chanting of the Psalms. When Ammon left his virgin bride, he little thought that the wild solitude of the dark pools of Nitria would be peopled with five thousand monks, of whom he was to be the spiritual father. It was in spite of himself, that St. Hilarion was the founder of the monastic state in Palestine. When Abbot Paphnutius retired from the world, he certainly never anticipated that he would go to Alexandria to bring back Thais with him. All these actions were afterthoughts, but their greatest attraction, their original vocation was to the desert, where was their real home. This is the point which demands explanation and on which we will dwell. Their great work, that by which they have an influence upon us at this day, was the foundation of mystical theology.

Christianity appeared upon earth is an essentially social religion. It was planted in the world, says one of its earliest writers, as the soul is in the body, and if it vivified the dead mass, that body in its turn seemed a condition of its operation. “Christians are neither different from other men in country, nor in language, nor in manners. They have no cities to themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular life. They are scattered among Greek and barbarian cities alike, just as each has had his lot assigned him; in their dress, food and customs they are like the rest of the world, they marry and have children”. Their devotions seemed essentially social. It could not be otherwise with a worship the chief rite of which was Holy Communion.

The Catacombs prove that the assembling together was a necessity to them; in after times the Apostolical Constitutions make it one of the ten commandments of the new law, that daily the morning dawn should find the faithful in church, and that after their work, in the evening they should repair thither, as even now French villagers say their evening prayers together in the parish church. We know from St. Athanasius that they passed long nights together in their vast basilicas singing psalms and hymns. Their duties lay in the world; and as members of the Catholic Church they seemed planted inevitably in the very heart of the world. The proximity of priests seems a necessity to a catholic. Yet lo! a strange phenomenon. There is a rush towards the desert as now to the gold fields of California. Men and women go out from civilized life into the wilds. They are not misanthropes; they have met with no disappointments; no physical force drives them, for the time of persecution is over; they are not weary of life, for many are too young. Their apparent duty and their taste alike bid them stay in the city; yet some strong counter-attraction draws them into the solitude. Here is evidently some enthusiasm, which is not for their fellow-creatures. The love of man is not the ruling passion of Christendom. The secret of this mighty exodus is a passionate yearning for union with God.

Mystical theology is an essential part of the Christian religion, for it is nothing else but the science which regulates the intercourse of man with God. The moment that we know that God has come down from heaven and unites closely to Himself all who choose to receive Him, at once numberless questions rise within us, and crave for a science to answer them. Is this union sensible or not? Can we be conscious of it? By what faculty can we embrace our God? Is it intellect, or will, or both? or some unknown undiscovered power, not yet catalogued by psychology? Does He communicate Himself through some secret unknown channel, and set up His throne in some hidden depth? Does He manifest Himself to our feelings, and if so, which are real and which are false? Is His love equally distributed to all, or are there some who are called and attain to a closer union than others? All this evidently calls for a science, and what is more, its possibility is plainly its justification. If it be possible for the soul to be united to God, then evidently it is right for the soul to put itself into the requisite condition for that union, since it could not be possible unless God willed it. Unless God stoops to the human soul, it can never reach Him. Ho must make the first advances or it could not be united to Him; and as soon as He moves towards it, it becomes lawful for it to leave all to seek Him. If Christ calls Follow Me, on the seashore, then it is right to leave all to obey His call. The moment that intercourse with God is real, (which I am here supposing,) then at once it is lawful. If God is the bridegroom of the soul, then His bride may and must leave father, mother, brethren and sisters, and all to follow Him.

It is plain that this science must be an experimental one. It would be impossible to tell beforehand, how and how far God would please to manifest Himself to the soul. Accordingly, all definitions of the science refer in some way explicitly or implicitly to the experience of the individual. Take for instance the following descriptions from the course of Mystical Theology by Joseph of the Holy Ghost. “First, John Gerson thus defines it: It is an experimental knowledge of God through the embrace of unitive love: again, Mystical Theology is an experimental and gratuitous union of the mind with God. Denys the Carthusian defines it to be 'a most secret speaking with God'. Lastly, Valgornera frames this definition out of St. Thomas: It is a most perfect and high contemplation of God, and a love full of joy and sweetness re­sulting from the intimate possession of Him”.

All these point to feelings and states of mind which it would be impossible to describe in words till they were experienced, and about the frequency or rareness of which no one could pronounce, till time had told. There, if nowhere else, development was necessary. There also, as in all other developments of a revelation given once for all, is implied a very real idea apprehended from the first. The exclamation of St. Ignatius: “My Love, my Eros is crucified!” contains a whole Mystical Theology in itself. That thought, with which the mind of the early Church was perfectly possessed, that the steps of man's return to God correspond to the steps of his outgoing from Him, produced two fruits closely connected with each other, devotion to Mary and Mysticism, sometimes found together, sometimes apart.

In St. Irenneus we find the marvelous retrospective effect on Eve of the faith of Mary, the necessary channel of grace to her. On the other hand, in the epistle to Diognetus, quoted above, the author, a disciple of the apostles, holds out to his heathen correspondent the promise of a mystical state in which man returns to, nay becomes himself, the old paradise of God, for in his heart are planted the tree of knowledge without its poison, and the tree of life, a blessed place where “Eve escapes corruption, and a virgin shows her faith”.  

The foundations of all future mysticism were based by the author of the books of St. Denys the Areopagite on the same idea of man’s return to the unity of God by reversing the multiplicity which was his path of departure from Him. Whenever the author lived, and whoever he was, he certainly gathered together the Mysticism floating about the ancient Church, and can be adduced as a proof of its existence. But I find the best proof of the influence and the vagueness of early mystical ideas in the three treatises on prayer by Origen, Tertullian and St. Cyprian.

All show how thoroughly the necessity of prayer had seized upon the Christian mind, and how new was the notion to converts from heathenism. Their language proves that the conception of intercourse with God in the Christian sense was as new to the ordinary Roman, as it was to the Red Indian, who when the Jesuit missionaries appeared in his forests, called Christianity “the prayer”. All three show the same anxiety to make all Christians “pray always”, and the same elementary difficulty as to how this is to be made compatible with life in the world. All three are inferior in every respect to the commonest modern writer on Prayer, such as Rigoleuc or Segneri, whose books are in the hands of every one.

St. Cyprian, it is true, abounds in beautiful thoughts and pregnant principles. “Let heavenly reading be ever in your hands”, he says, “and the thought of the Lord in your inmost feelings”. Nevertheless, his direction has a regimental character about it, which belongs to the African church. If it could be carried out, we can only say that Christians at Carthage had very little to do. Origen however especially has left the impress of his mind on mystical as on every other theology. It is strange how few have noticed in that great man the same yearning after some state of perfection, as we have noticed in other writers; stranger still that controversy should hardly have noticed, how this is connected in his mind with that Mary, of whom elsewhere he had spoken so hastily.

The same application of the words of Jesus on the cross to St. John, which is so common in modern writers, and which to many may have appeared strained, is to be found in Origen. From these words he argues that every Christian, in proportion as he is perfect, is given to Mary as a son. He takes it for granted that every “perfect Christian no longer lives, but Christ lives in him; and since Christ lives in him, it is said of him to Mary, Behold thy son, the Christ”. In other words the life of Christ in us implies that Mary is our mother. So close is her union with Christ that no one can be identified with Him without being her son. The absolute union of Mary with Him is a necessary premise to Origen's argument, the very same as that on which Grignon de Montfort bases his devotion. “0 my loving Jesus, I turn for a moment towards Thee, to complain lovingly to Thy divine Majesty, that so few Christians perceive the necessary union between Thee and Thy holy Mother. Thou art, 0 Lord, ever with Mary and Mary ever with Thee, and she cannot be without Thee, otherwise she would cease to be. She is so transformed by grace that she no longer lives her own life. Thou, 0 Jesus, alone dost live and reign in her”.

In Origen's book on Prayer we find no longer indeed the same principles with respect to Mary, but remarkable anticipations of what we should have been inclined to call modern methods if we had not seen them in him. His division of prayer is nearly the same as that in the Brief way of mental prayer in Thomas of Jesus, and in that of Father Quental of the Lisbon Oratory. There are descriptions of states of prayer in him which are not unworthy of St. John of the Cross. Yet in this, as in everything else in this great man, notwithstanding his mighty gifts of intellect, and the magnanimity of his character, there is something disappointing, a promise which is not fulfilled. It is hopeless to expect any progress in prayer in one who uses language implying that prayer in the sense of petition can only be offered to God the Father, not to Christ. His hold on doctrine was too slippery, his grasp of dogma too feeble, his theological insight too vague and undefined to enable him to pray, like a man, who has a clear view of the Sacred Humanity as an object. There could hardly be a distinct image of Christ even on his imagination, since he seems to have held that the face of Jesus appeared to vary according to the mind and disposition of the beholder. Speculative and scientific theology was certainly not in his case favorable to contemplation.

Perhaps his Absolute God was too much of an abstraction, and at times his Supreme Being too metaphysical, and too destitute of attributes, to serve as an object for prayer. His stormy life of struggle and of controversy was not favorable to the peace of the Holy Spirit, especially when his strong passions are taken into account. Nor were the streets of Alexandria a help to prayer; the many-colored stream of life which poured down them, their motley groups and hubbub of dialects furnished his impressionable mind with pictures and sounds, which but too readily turned into those images of which, in common with all men of mystic tendencies, he complains with sadness. But I doubt whether the catechetical school was not even worse than the noisy thoroughfare.

I would speak most gently of one to whom the Church owes so much. Never was man, more raised above the bitterness and littleness of controversy than Origen, and there was a tender piety in him, which is not unusual in high-minded men, and which has placed his name by St. Bernard's side in the pages of medieval mystics. It seems to me that the Saint of Clairvaux must have read the Commentary on the Canticles, where Origen celebrates the marriage of the Word with the soul His bride. In one place he even anticipates the devotion to the Sacred Heart, and says that St. John sought in the depths of that princely Heart for the treasures of wisdom and science hidden in Christ Jesus. There is no doubt that he had a true personal devotion to the Eternal Word; and his very errors are owing to his attempts to give a scientific basis to the separate personality of Him, whom he knew to be true God. Yet there is no true mysticism without the sharp, clear outlines of the Manhood of Jesus, and the soul must ever have, living and moving before it, the scenes of His life and Passion. The movement of dialectics is but a poor substitute for the Stations of the Cross. St. Thomas and Suarez might be mystics, but I doubt whether the method of the De Principiis, its headlong plunges into bottomless depths of thought and bold looking with unwinking eyes into the furnace of burning questions, could ever have been compatible with even what we should call daily meditation. We can discern in Origen passionate cries of the soul to its God and Savior, exclamations probably in the language of Holy Writ, for strength in the fiery trial of martyrdom, approaching terribly near, and for help in the hotter fire of temptation.

Yet if we have read aright the life-battle of that noble soul, we should be surprised to find much prayer of quiet. The intellectual gymnastics, which form his excuse with St. Athanasius, were no help to contemplation. Three times a day we know from himself that he prayed, and he avows his predilection for a quiet corner of the house, set apart for prayer; yet he draws without disapproval an uncomfortable picture of Christians standing to pray in the open air over the impluvium of a Roman house or in the peristyle of a Greek one, with eyes fixed and arms stretched towards heaven; a position which, like the cruciform attitude of Tertullian, does not look as if the prayer could last very long.

From all this it follows that the mystical life existed from the very first, and, on the other hand, that few distinct rules had been given for it. It is held out to Diognetus by his Christian correspondent. It is the “most sweet rest” offered to Tryphon the Jew by St. Justin. Even the restless mind of Tertullian longs after “the school of quiet”: in that franticly savage pamphlet in which he bids a final farewell to the bar, and assumed the pallium for a cassock. Yet if we listen to the terms of boastful contempt in which he speaks, we augur ill for his vocation. “I owe nothing to the forum, nothing to the field, nothing to the senate house. I pay my respects to no one in the morning, I take not to the stump, I hang about no law court, I snuff up no stink of gutters in the forum, I fawn at no bar, I thump no benches, I throw no law into confusion, I roar out no pleading, I am neither judge, nor soldier, nor king; I have given up the world. My one thing needful is with myself. A man has more enjoyment in solitude than in public life”. If Ravignan or Lacordaire had left the French bar in this spirit, St. Sulpice would have suspected their vocation. It was not to Tertullian, nor to Origen, nor even to St. Athanasius, that God entrusted the task of being the Rodriguez of the ancient Church. There is hardly a page of the “Christian Perfection” which does not cite some story or some saying of a hermit of the desert.

It showed a tremendous consciousness of strength in the Church, and a confidence in the loyalty of her children, to allow them to go out into the wilds and lead a solitary life. The enormous majority of the monks were laymen, nor generally speaking were even the abbots priests; yet so secure was the Church that the necessity of belonging to her and obeying the one visible body was a first principle with them, that she allowed them to stray into the desert, and to plunge into all the dangerous depths of contemplation. It was not till long afterwards that the yells of the wild Egyptian monks, disturbing the propriety of councils, showed the necessity, which afterwards produced St. Columban and St. Benedict. Meanwhile the solitaries were left to win their own spiritual experience. The first pioneers in the wilderness, the pilgrim fathers of the wilds, communicated their spiritual feelings to each other, and instructed their successors. We ourselves in our daily life, our temptations, our struggles, our examination of conscience, our mental prayer, are following the lights held up to us by the saints of the desert. Not only St. Benedict and St. Teresa, but even ordinary Christians are living at this day on the record and experience of many a fight with the devil and many a lonely midnight prayer in the wilderness. Christian mysticism is quite different from any other, though mysticism exists everywhere in all races, however cold and matter-of-fact, in all religions, however false; and these peculiarities of Catholic mystical life are to be seen in all their essential outlines in the men and women whose lives are hero presented to the reader. A short account of their peculiarities will both show the amount of gratitude, which we owe to our forefathers in Christ, and how their lives bear practically upon ours.

As in Germany, while philosophy was runnig its course of speculation and mysticism from Kant to Schelling, the hands and feet of Catherine Emmerich, the Addolorata and Maria Morl were dropping blood, so while St. Paul, St. Antony, St. Macarius and Arsenius were leading their wonderful lives in the desert, in the same country and at the same time Plotinus and Hierocles were lecturing, and Hypatia was bewitching Alexandria with her eloquence and her beauty. There is, however, a much more direct connection between the schools of Alexandria and of Nitria, than between the mysticism of Jacobi and Schelling, and the ecstatic of Munster and the Tyrol. Neoplatonism was a doctrine of which the end and object was union with God; and though their God was impersonal, yet their system was a real mysticism, the climax of which was ecstasy. Porphyry declares that Plotinus often and especially four times when they were together was raised to a state of ecstatic intuition of the Sovereign Good. “As for myself”, he adds, “I have only been united to God once in my forty-eighth year”. “Eunapius writes”, says Cardinal Bona, “of Iamblichus, that he was sometimes raised ten cubits from the ground”. Porphyry, in his life of Plotinus, tells us marvelous things of his contemplation; Proclus also, in his books on the Theology of Plato, and Plotinus himself in many places, speak much of ecstasy and of abstraction from the things of sense, in a way not contrary to the maxims of Christian wisdom. Again, the author of the Heavenly Wisdom according to the Egyptians, thus writes of himself: “often, when engaged in mental contemplation seem to leave my body and to enjoy the possession of the Highest Good with marvelous delight”. Where did this system of union with God differ from that of St. Antony?