Useful Servanthood (Cistercian Studies) by McNary-Zak Bernadette & Conic Nada

Author:McNary-Zak, Bernadette & Conic, Nada [McNary-Zak, Bernadette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780879079222
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2011-02-16T05:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

Examination of Abba Ammonas’ model of spiritual formation has given us a fruitful way of exploring monastic practice as Christian action in this period. A reader of the letters and exhortations of Abba Ammonas encounters the way of a desert monk, a solitary one, who struggled earnestly to take refuge in a deep awareness of the divine as the source and sustenance of his being. While the seamless reality of Abba Ammonas’ life is recoverable only in fragmentary pieces, his writings afford a sustained glimpse into an understanding of the role of the divine in the life of the monk that led him to formulate an accessible framework for a way of life that merged ascetic discipline and mystical union. As we have seen, for Abba Ammonas spiritual formation was a process whereby a monk underwent training in his quest for knowledge of and union with the divine. In his emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit, on the need to cultivate withdrawal, solitude, quiet, and prayer, and on the ascent of the soul, Abba Ammonas’ model of spiritual formation illumines how discernment was acquired and how it might function in private and public expression as a means of helping others to respond rightly to the challenge of Christian discipleship.

Abba Ammonas’ exercise of the spiritual gift of discernment in his teachings about human knowledge and divine judgment as found in his writings and in those sayings attributed to him and through his prayer enabled him to participate in this distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit. In turn, such discernment was evidence of a specific form of Christian monastic insight. As it did for other righteous ones who had come before, the exercise of discernment enabled Abba Ammonas to assist others in their attempt to see and define and know a true relation to the divine as abba and guide. As the embodiment of both process of acquisition and maintenance of its end, Abba Ammonas was a specific vehicle of instruction. His insight, and his ability to serve as a site of discernment, would have challenged others in his monastic network to live in a community of righteousness rooted in love. As a member of, and a contributor to, this community Abba Ammonas offered examples from his own experiences and from those of other righteous ones who had gone before him to the people of his generation. His witness was testimony to the lasting value of this community and to its efficacy in his own practice. In this way, Ammonas represented to others an alternative vision of the world and of their place in it, a glimpse at the divinely sanctioned order of creation, and welcomed the monk into communion with the divine. As we have seen, his ability to exercise discernment rested on the adoption of specific claims about prayer and tradition, claims that culminated in a vision of Christian discipleship as public witness to the mercy of God the Father, to the ministry of Jesus Christ, and to the spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit.

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