The Silent Life by Thomas Merton

Author:Thomas Merton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1999-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

* St Benedict allows warmer garments in climates colder than that of Italy, and foresees that his monks may have to live in countries where no vines will grow and wine cannot be obtained. See chapters 55 and 40 of the Rule.

* P.L. 90:37.

** Commentary on St Luke, chapter 10, P.L. 90.

* Declarationes ad Sanctum Regulam, cxx.

* Holy Wisdom, sect, iii, c.4, n.7. 84

3. The Cistercians

It is customary to begin discussions of Cistercian spirituality with a historical flourish, and to state that on Palm Sunday 1098 Robert of Molesmes and his companions left their Benedictine monastery and retired to the woods of Citeaux in order to follow the Rule of St Benedict “to the letter.” The expression “to the letter” is the starting point of heated discussions, in which the Cistercians are accused of pharisaism, literalism, fanaticism, or praised for their austere integrity. The result of such discussions has always been to obscure some of the main features of the Cistercian character. The Cistercians certainly wanted to return to the austere simplicity of Benedictine life, for they believed that St Benedict had effectively codified the renunciation and charity of the early Christians. They saw in the Rule of St Benedict the formula perfectae penitentiae* (the formula of perfect penance, or perfect conversion) which would enable the monk to live the Gospel and become transformed in Christ.

A casual glance at any of the writings of the Cistercian Fathers, or at the earliest legal documents of the Order, will show that Cistercian austerity was not considered an end in itself but a means of putting off the “old man” corrupted by sin, and renewing the image of God, implanted by the Creator in the soul of His creature, by perfect likeness to Christ in Charity.

The Cistercian reform aimed, then, to restore the pure charity of the early Christians by means of a simple and austere common life, in which the monks, “poor with the poor Christ—pauperes cum paupere Christo—“ living in community, sharing their poverty and labor and prayer and praise, would come to union with God by loving one another as Christ had loved them. This life was therefore and above all deeply contemplative—a life “in the Spirit”—and the monastic community was a City of God in the building, its members were living stones, built together by charity into an “habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesitms, 2:22).* The Cistercian life is essentially a life of contemplation in common, in which the humility, poverty and charity of the common life are regarded above all as means to dispose the soul remotely for union with God in mystical wisdom.

Once these essential overtones of charity and contemplation are forgotten the Exordium Parvum and the other fundamental statements of Cistercian policy refuse to yield us their true meaning. In fact, it is quite easy to squabble about the degree of austerity that was originally intended by the Cistercian Fathers, to lose oneself in hairsplitting details about clothing, food and sources of income, and finally

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