Quotes About Monasticism

As the wise, old Abbot Moses said when a brother came to him for a good word, "Go, sit in your cell [a monk's room], and your cell will teach you everything.

What avails monastic aspirations when, as Mark had said, religious geniuses were born and not made? Could not renouncing the world be a form of self-indulgence? Was not monasticism, in the end, as much an act of cowardice as courage?

First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.

celebrated Cistercian intellectual and

He questioned his monastic vocation as much as he embraced it. He desired solitude as much as he craved attention and affection from his brothers. He sought intimacy with others as much as he treasured his chastity. He battled with his religious superiors as much as he hoped to follow his vow of obedience. Most of all, he wished for fame and influence as much as he saw that humility was the foundation for a healthy monastic life.

The Seven Storey Mountain,

But are you finding monastic history a very compelling reason to live?" "I'm not human," he said. "I don't require a reason to live. Living is my default condition." I couldn't help it; I laughed, and teas weleld in my eyes. That answer was quintessentially Orma, distilled to his elemental Orma-ness.

Then are they truly monks when they live by the labor of their hands.

Erlend also thought that he would undoubtedly make Father Henri very happy with this story, and that his industriousness and exactitude in carrying out this task might also shorten his wait to be admitted as a full brother in the Cistercian order.

The pathetic representations of Prudentius were less effectual than the generous boldness of Telemachus, an Asiatic monk, whose death was more useful to mankind than his life.

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: My vow of poverty has given me an hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince. — I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.

This needed work is indeed "spiritual warfare," as the desert monks called it, since it takes conscious and sustained struggle to be aware of the shadow self—which only takes ever more subtle disguises the "holier" you get.

Being a monk was the strangest and most perverted way of life imaginable. Monks spent half their lives putting themselves through pain and discomfort that they could easily avoid, and the other half muttering meaningless mumbo jumbo in empty churches at all hours of the day and night. They deliberately shunned anything good—girls, sports, feasting and family life.

Desfrânat?? întreb? ea, tare. Dar tu? C?lug?rii aceÈ™tia nu È™tiu c? e nevoie de doi oameni ca s? comiÈ›i preacurvie?

He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence. I

He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence. I think this is probably a very good way to become a poet. Or to become anything, really, that calls to your heart and brings you to life.

I grew with it, and I used to go to see the monks, who had no possessions, even more extreme than my mother.

He was a monk in an order of one.

Monks, nuns, long-term spinsters and bachelors and permanent homosexuals are all, in a reproductive sense, aberrant. Society has bred them, but they have failed to return the compliment.

Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious." The world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life, and was once more making havoc. The monk's attempt to flee from the world turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.

The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.

I've just come across this in the Imitation of Christ: Custodi diligenter cellam tuam, et custodiet te ('Take good care of your cell, and it will take care of you'). – May God keep us in faith.

Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists

A visitor asked the old monks at Mount Athos what they did all day and was told: We have died and we are in love with everything.