Kategoria BISAC: Religion >> Monasticism

'The spiritual centre of the human person, the self', writes the author, 'maintains its fundamental identity for the whole of life on earth and is destined for participation in the eternal life of God... The person is not a succession of separate points at the mercy of the conditions of the moment. God has given us a share in his power as creator, and to create ourselves through our liberty, to go beyond ourselves towards absolute values'. These reflections by a Carthusian novice master for those training for the life of silent love show that in the obedience born of love, one responds to...

Followers of the way of Jesus Christ through two millennia have engaged in the joyful yet life 'costing struggle of responding to the challenge of being transformed into his likeness. This further volume of Carthusian Novice Conferences offers the father 'master's words of instruction on poverty to the men who have been drawn to the Carthusian form of the Christian way.

As with al of us, 'poverty' operates on many levels, and one of the most remarkable qualities of these talks is that they range over the economic history as well as the more traditionally spiritual teaching of the...

The best-known Cistercian of the twentieth century reflects on the teaching and life of the most reknown Cistercian of the twelfth century. Three essays written in the 1950s explore the relation of contemplation and action in the monastic vocation and in the life of Christians.

William of Saint Thierry wrote down his reflections on the nature and greatness of love during the second decade of the twelfth century, while he was abbot of the benedictine monastery of St Thierry, near Rheims. His insight, drawn from Scripture and the Church Fathers, shaped his own spiritual journey and his earthly pilgrimage from the schools to the abbey and finally to cistercial life at Signy in the Ardennes. Love, he writes, is a force which draws human beings towards the God who is love. In love we were created 'to the image and likeness of God'...

Descriptions of Pachomian monastic communities from a variety of ancient sources, including the Lausiac History and A History of the Monks in Egypt, and full translations of the Rule of Saint Pachomius and the Regulation of his successor, Horsiesios.

A carthusian novice master reminds his charges, and his readers, that the call to live wholly and radically in Christ is the vocation of al Christians and al humanity. 'The Christian is not a separate species of human being, but what each person is called to be. And the monk is not a separate species of Christian. He tries to be what each Christian ought to be. Conformity to Christ in faith, hope, and love: this is holiness, and each person is called to this holiness.'

Written during his benedictine years, these colloquies reveal William's inner struggle to reach out to God by stripping away encumbrances, to learn to love and to accept God's love by learning to accept himself.

The history of monastic institutions in the Middle Ages may at first appear remarkably uniform and predictable. Medieval commentators and modern scholars have observed how monasteries of the tenth to early twelfth centuries experienced long periods of stasis alternating with bursts of rapid development known as reforms. Charismatic leaders by sheer force of will, and by assiduously recruiting the support of the ecclesiastical and lay elites, pushed monasticism forward toward reform, remediating the inevitable decline of discipline and government in these institutions. A lack of concrete...