The Life of the Vows (Monastic Wisdom) by Merton Thomas & O'Connell Patrick

Author:Merton, Thomas & O'Connell, Patrick [Merton, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780879077938
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2012-09-06T04:00:00+00:00

CHASTITY and VIRGINITY

a) Introduction: having considered the obligations and the spirit of the vow of conversion of manners, we now turn to two of the principal aspects of this vow—chastity and poverty. We take chastity first because in its primitive conception, this will follow most logically and appropriately upon what has just been said about the spirit of the vow of conversion of manners and especially about transformation in Christ. In point of fact, the original monastic conception of chastity and virginity is so closely tied up with the spirit of conversion of manners that it is absolutely essential to that vow as it was understood in the early days of the Church. If sometimes it is possible for modern writers to regard chastity as an aspect of obedience, it is because they consider it negatively and in a very restricted way, namely as an obligation to abstain from sex pleasure. It is true, obviously, that this obligation is essential to monastic chastity, but to make chastity consist only in this, or primarily in this, is to fail completely to understand its purport. In actual fact, chastity means above all a renunciation of partial and limited forms of love to embrace the perfection of love in a nuptial union with Christ. This renunciation of earthly love in order to surrender one’s whole being, body and soul, to Christ, leads in turn to transformation in Christ. It is easy to see that the whole concept of conversion of manners and the pure spirit of the vow is implicit in this notion. Chastity is, in fact, the most eloquent and obvious witness to the fact that one has left the world to follow Christ, to seek perfect union with Him, to be united to Him in spiritual marriage. In reality, a vow of conversatio morum that would not include this renunciation of earthly love and cleaving to Christ in spiritual union would be unthinkable to the early Fathers. Hence chastity is not primarily a negative renunciation of earthly love, and still more crudely a mere renunciation of sex pleasure—it is primarily and above all a liberation from the bonds of earthly love in order to be free to unite oneself to Christ in spiritual love. The renunciation of sex pleasure is the most obvious sine qua non—without it one cannot even begin to think of such a union with Christ. But to say that the mere renunciation of sex pleasure constitutes chastity in this deeply spiritual sense is to fail to have any concept of the meaning of chastity in the life of a monk. Furthermore, those who have only a very crude and insufficient notion of chastity will inevitably find it harder to practice even this elementary kind of chastity. They will not have the deep spiritual motives of love for Christ, the hope of union with Him, which gives strength to our ascetic strivings and helps us to overcome the temptations of the flesh, which can sometimes be very strong even in the cloister—or perhaps in some cases, especially in the cloister.

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