Sites of the Ascetic Self by Niki Kasumi Clements

Author:Niki Kasumi Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2020-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

The confessional relation works because the abbas exercise both authority and discernment that comes from experience-based wisdom. They build from their own experience as novices submitting to an elder earlier.44 While each ascetic “is subject at every moment to their elder,” “only obedience could hold in check so powerfully charged a network of relationships,” and this is part of the transmission of tradition over time in which novices can become elders who shape novices in turn.45 Cassian stresses the discretion at the heart of elders’ support for novices, the classical roots of which Ramsey notes: “Already in classical thought, under the name phronesis or prudentia, discretion was seen as the governing virtue, distinguishing good from bad, and Cassian in one respect does no more than repeat that insight.”46 Cassian’s adaptation of φρόνησις as discretio involves a technical relation between discretio, the capacity for distinguishing correlating with διάκρισις, and iudicium, referring to judgment, notably with legal connotations.47 The practice of discretio involves the abba’s iudicium in the ability to judge a younger ascetic’s motivations. On the basis of this assessment, the abba prescribes a personalized course of action to help the novice overcome his difficulties.

In Conference 2 (De discretione), Abba Moses narrates an account of discretion by the most authoritative of desert elders, Antony the Great (beatus Antonius).48 Hearing Antony speak to “some elders” soliciting his advice, Abba Moses notes the heart of discretio in instruction:

Nor can another reason be found for their fall, except that they were less well instructed by the elders and were utterly unable to grasp the meaning of discretion, which avoids excess of any kind and teaches the monk always to proceed along the royal road and does not let him be inflated by virtues on the right hand—that is, in an excess of fervor to exceed the measure of a justifiable moderation by a foolish presumption—nor let him wander off to the vices on the left hand because of a weakness for pleasure—that is, under the pretext of controlling the body, to grow soft because of a contrary lukewarmness of spirit.49

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