An Introduction to the Desert Fathers. Jason Byassee

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An Introduction to the Desert Fathers - Jason Byassee


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so individualistic as it often sounds. The monks did write down their exploits for others to read after all, else we wouldn’t have The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and other texts. Readers of these works become themselves a certain sort of “community” of those who find the monks worth reading for whatever reason. Further, the “desert became a city” to such a degree that monks often complained about the difficulty of finding the solitude they sought. It also made for opportunities for gracious service to others—as when the Cappadocian fathers turned what was once a desert into a city that provided hospital services and affordable housing—unheard of in the ancient world.2

      One guess is the parallel between the political climate now and in the fourth century. We live in a time in which the church has been extraordinarily pliant in the hands of an imperial political regime that demands absolute allegiance. Christians unhappy with that dark alliance, and uninterested in trying to take over the wheel themselves and steer the church’s political commitments in another direction, may find solace in the Sayings. Another reason may simply be that anti-Catholic bias among Protestants has waned considerably in the last few generations. This may be for bad reasons—if we’re all consumers of religious feeling, what do our religious differences matter anyway? (We might as well attend to monasticism instead of to our own, say, Lutheranism, as we would decide on McDonalds instead of Hardees). All the same, the chastening of antagonism is something churches should celebrate. For good reason or ill, Christ is preached, and the church is closer to a demonstration of the “oneness” of which he spoke (John 17:21).

      The liturgical space is breathtaking. It’s a bare room with white walls and wooden ceilings, but those ceilings are stories high, leaving ample space in which light and shadow can play, inviting the imagination toward prayer. The altar is a great stone slab in the middle of a circular apse, around which the monks gather for adoration during the Eucharistic liturgy. It looks like something you could sacrifice someone on—a not-inappropriate image for Catholic mass. The baptismal font is a similarly granite colored and massive structure, shaped like a diamond, set to bubble occasionally to remind us aurally of baptism. It needn’t do so, as monks and visitors alike are constantly touching it and crossing themselves to remember their baptism and give thanks. The monks face one another in their choir stalls, attentive more to the prayer books in front of them than to the people across the way. Those books are extraordinary—hand-written copies of the Psalter, done by monks from a sister abbey in Massachusetts, lovely in every letter. The silence in the space is beautiful, interrupted as it usually is only by the sound of baptismal water dripping off fingers or monks’ robes as they shuffle to their stalls. By contrast the bullfrogs and cicadas of low-country South Carolina roar to life outside, audible easily through the walls.

      The liturgy is at times beautiful beyond words. The monks’ voices sound at once sad and exultant, as befits the psalms they sing. The Eucharistic liturgy occasionally approaches ballet in its beauty, as priests preside who wear the mass as comfortably as I do an old sweatshirt. My favorite moment is at once Catholic and Pentecostal: when the celebrant raises the host and chalice and says the words of institution, all those present who are ordained lift their hands; it is a glimpse of an undivided, sacramental and Pentecostal form of worship! Even the various prayers about and to Mary, on which Protestants occasionally must swallow hard, eventually wear down opposition by their beauty. One can see, even if fleetingly, how liturgy can suffice in place of worldly ambition, money, sex, and family.

      The monastery has its characters. One, brother Joseph, is the “liturgical guestmaster,” as I call him, for he totters over and turns the pages of the library of prayer books, so bewildered guests can find their way. He joined Gethsemani Abbey in Bardstown, Kentucky, in 1944, when he was seventeen and had just graduated from high school. The love of God is quite physically chiseled into his face. Father Aelred, the guitarist whose voice angels envy, reminds me more of an athletic camp counselor than my stereotype of a cloistered monastic. His kind and wise hospitality to outsiders would shame any evangelical. Abbot Francis Kline was a Julliard-trained musician who presided both at organ and at table until his death in 2006 of cancer. His spirit of gentleness pervaded the place, and in truth,


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