Quotes About Monasticism

Robert Masello

Thus it was that, beginning in about the ninth century, the growing monastic estates came to resemble well-organized and stable firms that pursued complex commercial activities within a relatively free market, investing in productive activities involving a hired workforce, guided by anticipated and actual returns.

The Holy Scriptures do not know any distinctions. They enjoin that all lead the life of monks.

nothing is more insidious than spiritual pride; nothing is more impervious to identification. No, the monastic mind0set says, spiritual development is not an event. Spiritual development is a process of continuing conversion. "What do you do in the monastery?" an ancient tale asks. "Oh, we fall and we get up. We fall and we get up," the old monastic answers. In monastic spirituality, we never arrive; we are always arriving.

I told you you could hang around and work for food, she said, if you don't mind sleeping in that car yonder. Why listen, Lady, he said with a grin of delight, the monks of old slept in their coffins! They wasn't as advanced as we are, the old woman said.

If you are going to put down spiritual roots, taught Benedict, you need to stay in one place long enough for them to go deep. The Rule requires monks to take a vow of "stability"—meaning that barring unusual circumstances, including being sent out as a missionary, the monk will remain for the rest of his life in the monastery where he took his vows.

El papa emérito Benedicto XVI augura un mundo en el que la Iglesia vivirá en pequeños círculos de fieles comprometidos que viven su fe intensamente y que tendrán que desgajarse de la sociedad de algún modo para aferrarse a la verdad. Lee este libro, aprende de la gente que te presento en él y déjate inspirar por el testimonio de los monjes. Deja que te hablen al corazón y a la mente e involúcrate

The genius of Saint Benedict is to find the presence of God in everyday life.

ANACHORETE  (ANA'CHORETE)  ANACHORITE  (ANA'CHORITE)  n.s.[sometimes viciously writen  anchorite;Greek] A monk, who, with the leave of his superiour, leaves the convent for a more austere and solitary life. Yet lies not love dead here, but here doth sit,Vow'd to this trench, like an  anachorite. Donne.

A busy monk is besieged by a single devil but an idle one is destroyed by spirits innumerable.

The fact that monasticism preceded the identification of greed as a primal sin is an important reminder that our very ability to name sin is a theological achievement.

Theology is endlessly interesting in that you can study it without believing in anything. I do believe, but you don't have to. I got very caught up in the 11th-century monasticism and the Cistercians. My dissertation was about Aelred of Rievaulx and one of his books.

There is a basic problem that a lot of Western monks and nuns become ordained without really understanding or appreciating what the monastic life is all about.

It was given to Abba Anthony to see a doctor in Alexandria who was simply and humbly doing what God had given him to do. His inner being stood in the presence of the Lord as he worked and prayed. According to the literature of the desert, this is the goal of our life in this world as it is set out for all Christians, a goal that the solitary monk tried to attain through his special vocation.

Some parents live more like reclusive monks than like first-century Christians who were famous for their love for and service within their cities, cities that in many cases were more overtly wicked than cities found in modern-day America.

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

I wanted to be a monk at some time in my life, or a priest, so there was a kind of reflex quite early on not to be attached to anything that might be taken away.

Wie ein Eremit war er des Lebens überdrüssig und er- wartete nichts mehr von ihm: reif zur Einsamkeit; und ebenso war er gleich einem Mönch unendlich matt; er wollte sich sammeln, nichts mehr gemein haben mit den Weltlichen, die für ihn die Utilitaristen und Dummköpfe waren.

Suppose I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the house life into homelessness?

In the fourth century, John Cassian described a condition among his fellow monks that he called "acedia": a "weariness or distress of heart . . . akin to dejection" that took "possession" of unhappy souls and left them lazy, sluggish, restless, and solitary. Later, acedia became widely translated as sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, and blended with melancholy in the popular mind. Both required, at the very least, confession and penitence.

The great twentieth-century monk Thomas Merton encountered precisely the same spiritual exhaustion partway through his life. The chief source of this exhaustion, he writes, "is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a sparkling

Master Linji used language that was particularly harsh and strong to remind the monks in clear terms that the only role of a practitioner is to live simply, as an ordinary person, and not to put on airs. This is still a fundamental challenge for us today.

People often ask if it is difficult to be a celibate monk or nun, but to practice mindfulness as a monastic is in many ways easier than to practice as a layperson. To refrain from sexual activity altogether is much easier than to have a healthy sexual relationship.

Part of the beauty of the monastic life lies in the ability to live simply with few desires and to consume only what you need.