In our last table discussion on monasticism and the rite of tonsure, we discussed the difference between a rite and a sacrament, and the preparation of becoming a monk, what it means, and its similarities to the mystery of marriage. Metropolitan Hilarion puts theological and dogmatic teaching in context of the liturgical texts, its wording and meaning, and the overall structure of the services and its historical development.
A rite, as we talked about, puts some emphasis on the outward way of performing a sacrament or blessing. Metropolitan Hilarion briefly explained what a rite is in chapter one. A sacred rite is a mystery of salvation where the Holy Spirit is beseeched and asked to be present within us and bless the outward world around such as water, oil, wine, and bread. It’s something that can be done once or repeatable in our lives. Tonsuring can happen once in a person’s life, but the rite of blessing water and oil is needed yearly in the life of Christians.
Rites are not random ways of worshipping as some Christians might think. Rites also aren’t some magical ways of controlling God, since all the prayers are about beseeching and “asking” the saints, the Most-Holy Theotokos, and the Holy Trinity to help us. Some speak of religious rites as if they were modes of fashion and not important in the participation of the mysteries. But they are important in the understanding of typology and the local development of a church within a certain region or city. A sacrament can be a rite but not all rites are sacraments, according to some opinions. A rite is sacramental if the Holy Spirit is asked to be present and to help us. For example, the formulation of the service of orders for baptism, chrismation, eucharist, unction, and confession have both an Old Testament passage and New Testament application that is fulfilled in the mysteries of the Church. Likewise, marriage, holy orders and monastic tonsure have types that are fulfilled in the Church. The cutting of the hair of the monk and catechumen have symbolic and typological meaning in the Old Testament, and Christian monastics fulfill that ritual action by renouncing the world and entering a community of monastics for progress toward unification with the Holy Trinity. The prostrations that monastic candidates make represent humility and obedience – Christian virtues that we clothe ourselves spiritually and equip ourselves for spiritual warfare. So, monks and nuns wear specific clothing to fulfill and remind ourselves of who we are and what we are doing in the physical and spiritual worlds. Name change is another major Old Testament practice and type that is fulfilled by monks who receive a new name from their spiritual father and guide in repentance.
A rite is not merely a man-made custom or religious observance in a certain culture. But some still think that rituals and rites are a part of “organized religion” controlled by huge, impersonal, and powerful institutions rather than communities and individuals that form an organized whole under the practice of Christian love. The different ranks and robes of monasticism have varied by custom, place, and time. But the inner calling of monastic tonsure is a way of life, love, and total freedom. While the Orthodox Church agrees with the seven sacraments decided on by Roman Catholicism, there is not only seven sacraments in Holy Orthodoxy. The numbering and way of coming to that conclusion is somewhat artificial. It limits the way in which our needs are really met by the holy mysteries and the Book of Needs, which contains many rites and orders of blessings and sacraments.
Typology connects with the sacred rites of the Orthodox Church. The word ritual conjures up Old Testament practices that we tend to think are no longer necessary. Or they are seen as dangerous, syncretistic influences from Roman paganism that have crept into the Church. The typology of monasticism can be found in the Old Testament and with St. John the Forerunner who preached repentance. He opened the way for people to come to Christ. Monastics do much of the same in the structure and way of life in solitary sketes, hermitages, and cenobitic communities. St. Dionysius the Areopagites and many other Church fathers have taught that monastic tonsure isn’t only a rite, but also sacred rite or mystery. It has many connections to being a sacrament. The rite involves baptismal-like renunciations unto death of one’s former life (celibacy, poverty, obedience, family), a betrothal to Christ, a eucharistic union with Christ during the service order, they are sealed in holy oil, and a monk or nun receives a new name like a Christian baptism from their abbot or abbottess.
Instead of starting with the historical patterns of the period between the 4th c. – 5th c. in and around Egypt and Palestine as the starting point of monasticism, Metropolitan Hilarion begins from the inside-out by investigating the monastic spirit within the service order itself. But he touches on the historical aspects of monasticism and differences between East and West. The Parable of the Good Samaritan teaches that love is boundless. It is what we do and say right now with whoever is in front of us. It makes a person truly free in mind and spirit. It is a totally free and radical way of interacting with people who cross our paths. Only then does the monastic life become a beautiful, burning desire for love unlimited by national institutions, commerce, and politics. The modern philosopher Ivan Illich describes this philia kind of love for all people in a way like St. Silouan the Athonite. That all should be loved ought to be our only thought in whatever place and situation we have found ourselves. Even St. John Chrysostom criticized having hospitals too close to churches because these public institutions had taken the place of everyday Christian love for one another and limited our freedom to love, supposedly, anyone whom we wish. Contrary to the common complaint that we live in a “post-Christian world,” Ivan Illich viewed our times as apocalyptic and the unique time of Christianity’s illumination to the world. Modern institutions are all based on Christian ideas and originals, but they have become the corruptio quae optimi pessima (the corruption of the best is the worst). The legalization of Christianity was a proof that the Cross of Christ was victorious. But the mystery of iniquity has been working since Christianity was born. This age is a revelation to the world that what we have created in our institutions that seek and claim to solve mankind’s problems and ills have turned out to be dangerous and sometimes outright evil. Politics, nationalism, the university system, ubiquitous technology, and medical practices are but a few examples of what has become the mystery of iniquity in our times. At the point of darkness, however, Christianity’s light beams all the brighter to the world in its love and true life, because life isn’t a resource or economic commodity, it isn’t an idol that we can make with our hands; life is a person that was preached to be Jesus Christ by the holy apostles and bishops and martyrs of the Church. Monasticism believes in the old Christian way of changing the world individually and within communities, not by imposing law or institutions on the people of the world to solve our problems. These institutions tend to betray what they seek to be. The modern funeral industry, for example, has completely taken over how Christians used to care for the departed person’s body and loved ones. Instead the modern embalming process does major disrespect and violence to the person’s body, and for those who choose cremation, there is nearly complete disintegration and disposal of the body like garbage down the drain. Orthodox Christians, like Jews and other eastern religions, take special care of the body of a Christian and pray for that person. They are arranged peacefully to return to the earth naturally and dignified. But today’s funeral home business doesn’t have to replace this ancient rite of Christian burial.
The artificiality of the Latin definition of seven sacraments with other rites placed under a non-sacramental category misleads Christians in an unintended way. Why don’t Orthodox agree exactly with Protestants and Catholics on the number, meaning and practice of the rites and mysteries? Between the 9th and the 12th c., western European Christianity began translating the works of Aristotle and other Hellenic writings from Jewish and Arab texts into Latin, and learning flourished among the western monastic communities where they wrote manuscripts at their scriptorium – a wonderful and beautiful flowering of Christianity. In western Europe, there was no complete, approved Latin Bible like the Septuagint in use until St. Jerome. He compiled the Latin Vulgate from various and separate local traditions and translations. Some translations came from the Septuagint. The Latin Vulgate became the official standard translation of Latin Christianity at the Council of Trent in the 16th c. Scholasticism is a method of finding the truth by applying a kind of dialectics. It opposes one view over another until you reach a conclusion. But more specifically western monks began applying Aristotelian principles and the Greek tradition of disputation and dialectics to the holy mysteries to make sense of contradictions. Scholastic training was a kind of schooling in Aristotelian grammar, logic, and natural philosophy. It was not so much a negative event that Greek philosophy was introduced into monasteries. But the way in which some of the monks of the West began to use this method began unintentionally to divide the heart and the mind. Monastics had always taught that the mind must live in the heart, and that is a scriptural teaching too. Rufinus and many other European monks visited Egypt and Palestine, collected their desert wisdom, and applied it back home. But instead of that monks began to be taught how to hold positions and argue for beliefs that they didn’t believe. In this way, mysticism in the West is generally separated from the mind. Scholasticism didn’t study poetry or hymnography, literature, or history very much. So, typology and the mystical, noetic, ascetical teaching of the East were exchanged for schooling and an increasingly institutionalization of all spiritual life. Typology seems to be more related to discourse, hymnography, and it incorporates a synthesis and harmonizing of the mysteries from the types into the antitypes – the reality in the sacraments. Scholastic monks created some of the most basic and enduring institutions that are still influencing the western world today.
The university was an essential place of learning. It’s a place where scholasticism, humanism, and other Enlightenment philosophies flourished and fought with each other. The university seems to have replaced the original monastic institutions of sketes, cenobia (communities), and hermitages, and eventually the idea of the divinely ordered monarchic ruler. There were disputations between the Dominican and Franciscan monastics so tense that it shook the foundations of the Pope of Rome. The scholastic method followed this pattern. First, there was a lectio or lesson and reading of a text that had contradictions or disagreements with another text. They look for these discrepancies and called them sententiae. They collected these sententiae and ordered these contradictory statements so that the dialectical method could be applied. They meditated, called meditatio, on the contradictions. Already the word meditation means a something like a purely logical and mental exercise separated from the heart. Dialectics requires two opposing sides to argue until a resolution of contradictions is reached. Before arguments are presented, words are analyzed and arranged by the study of grammar, and the author’s intent is scrutinized. Aristotle’s Ten Categories begins with an analysis of grammar and then logic to be mastered. The result seems magnificent and the process beneficial. But this practice, if overemphasized, leads to a separation of the mind from the heart that is the one of the major goals of monastic life and renunciation, and really the goal of every Christian. This scholastic method was tragically and originally applied to trinitarian theology. The Orthodox Church already had a system and institution for dealing with “contradictions.” The Christian emperor or empress – whoever the legitimate ruler was – the clergy, the monastics, and the monastic clergy met and held a council, and they prayed, listened, spoke, and studied attentively, and sometimes vehemently disagreeing with each other. An example of resolving such conflicting theology is the Council of Nicea. Scholastic universities didn’t give us, as it seems, the Nicaean Creed or our definitions of the two united natures of Christ, or the dogmas of the Holy Trinity, and ecclesiology. Much of the learning of the Middle Ages seems to have been very much inspired by Aristotle and Neo-Platonists, as it happened also in Byzantium, but also by writers from the Middle East like Ibn Sina and Maimonedes. In central and eastern Europe around the 9th c. and 10th c. when scholastic learning began growing, Sts. Cyril and Methodius and St. Rostislav of Great Moravia (The Church of the Czech and Slovak Lands today) began to baptize all the Slavs of Europe. They served liturgies in Old Slavonic that was understandable to the Slavic peoples. The Glagolitic alphabet was used instead of Greek or Latin or Hebrew that led to the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet in use by many Slavic countries today. Martyrdom and manuscripts can work together, and they often do as in the case of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.
We discussed marriage as a path to martyrdom that was symbolized by the crowning and betrothal. Monks and nuns too are betrothed, and there are many similarities between the two sacraments in meaning and the service’s order. The layman and the monk share many similarities in their entrance into the life of a Christian. Here is a list of similarities in service order and content:
1) The priest performs the eucharist that is the center of the service
2) Both wear white clothing symbolizing death and renewal
3) There is a cutting of hair as an offering, profession of faith (no oath taking or swearing)
4) Both renounce Satan, they receive a new name, church members are present
5) The sign of the cross is made over the body
6) The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit is given
7) Obedience to clergy and Church, the bishops like a monk under an abbot
8) We both enter spiritual warfare
9) They wear crosses around neck, shoulder, or stitched in clothes was a custom
10) Both seek a union with God and crowns for martyrdom for Christ
11) Both must come under no pressure or coercion, but in freedom and mutuality
Metropolitan Hilarion also teaches that a monk must become like “children of malice.” A child before the of two years old doesn’t become angry or resentful when put down, a young child doesn’t become offended when insulted in an adult way. A child doesn’t become vainglorious or prideful when praised or honored. In understanding we ought to be like the angels of heaven close to God’s throne, but in the things of this world that are malicious and grown-up, monks seek a solitary, non-marital life like a child or like an angel. Very young children are humble and pure in soul and body; they can pray noetically. One of the other main reasons for such an ascetic renunciation of the world was rooted in the Syriac tradition of monasticism. The Syrians called Christian monks “mourners” which referred to their life dedicated to repentance — another proof of the victory of the Cross and the resurrection. For this reason, St. John the Forerunner, and his main message of “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” seems to be connected to the inspiration for monastic principles. In Great Lent’s “bright-sadness,” monasticism seeks to repent and mourn to find great love and joy. They are like children who mourn the loss of our eternal and divine parent, Our Father in heaven, the Holy Trinity’s warm embrace and kiss that we lost because we grabbed food that wasn’t fit for our bellies and souls. Every year, all lay Orthodox Christians take up a monastic or penitential life during Great Lent, and every week on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday morning by fasting and cultivating compunction throughout the entire ecclesial year.
There are so-called “monastic vows” during the tonsuring part of the service with a question-and-answer format. But they answer questions directly. There aren’t any made-up vows or swearing or oaths on people or objects. The abbot “interrogates” the candidate, “Question: Of thine own willing mind and thine own free will comest thou unto the Lord? Answer: Yes, God helping me, reverend father. Question: Not by any necessity, or constraint? Answer: No, reverend father.” Just as Christ commanded, married and monastic let their yes be yes and their no be no. Christians do not swear on the Bible, by anyone or anything, since God alone can keep his word. The monastic service order also borrows a lot from the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. It touches on both repentance and marriage. The service reads, “For with compunction I cry to thee, O Lord: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee.” The monastic candidate is then “clothed in a long white shirt” just like catechumens are clothed in simple white clothing at their baptism. St. Isaac of Ninevah reminds us that a monk “is he who passes all the days of his life in hunger and thirst for the sake of his hope and future good things.” In Great Lent, every Christian makes himself mourn in secret, give away all in hiddenness, and make himself hungry and thirsty to receive Love and Life now and in the next world. The monastic calling is in a broad sense every Christian’s calling to avoid making “life” as we use the term today into an idol. Life isn’t a resource or a thing in itself; life is God became man from a woman – the Most Holy Theotokos. Life is the Holy Trinity. A monk, like every Orthodox Christian, seeks to avoid the “spectacles of the world” that come often from our ethnic customs and institutionalized morality, which are in our very own time becoming unveiled as the anti-Christian corruption of the best that has been given to us in the Church. St. Isaac of Nineveh in his Ascetical Homilies 22 teaches, “All the saints mourned …. He whose loved ones lie dead before him and who sees himself dead in sins” becomes aware of his own personal state of grief. He teaches also to “weep over your own soul that is precious and dead; look, your loved ones are dead in the grave where you too are now and will go into the earth.” Repentance may be the most natural way to grieve as a Christian. It is fitting to mourn to experience freedom and joy. The next chapter discusses burial and the commemoration of the dead.