IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, HE IS A NEW CREATURE. THE OLD HAS PASSED AWAY; LOOK! EVERYTHING IS NEW (2 Cor. 5: 17). According to St. Paul, as he goes on to affirm in this same passage, the Father through Christ reconciled all things to himself, by forgiving sin. This reconciliation, as is evident from the above words, is not merely a legal alteration affecting the moral standing of the sinner and his world; rather, it results in a new creature who is recreated in the likeness of Christ himself. "In Christ Jesus," Paul wrote to the Galatians, "what matters is neither circumcision nor the natural state but the new creature (6:15)." For Paul when the believer accepts Christ and is baptized not only does his moral status change for the better but so does his person and, as a consequence everything in his world: EVERYTHING IS NEW. In Ephesians (4: 23, 24) the matter is stated no less explicitly and in similar terms: " in justice and holiness of truth."

This last text is employed in the rite of monastic profession when the abbot imposes the monastic cowl; "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man who is created according to God." This is the essential meaning of the monastic life; indeed, it is the program for all the baptized. Monks, by virtue of their profession, undertake to take this injunction of the apostle with such seriousness as to make it the guiding principle of the whole of their life.

At various times and in different localities, monks have differed in the emphasis given to certain practices, even though there has always been an agreement in principle on the essential ones, such as separation from the world, prayer and celibacy. What is not subject to debate, however, is this fundamental purpose of the life vowed to God's service. Nothing is more basic than this basic conception of the purpose of the monastic vocation: to be refashioned in the likeness of Christ. However, it has not always been understood sufficiently in depth so as to guide the way in which the various practices have been applied and taught. At times over emphasis on penance, on reparation for sins, on intercession for others, on public prayer and worship, service to guests and other legitimate but less fundamental aspects of monastic spirituality have obscured this more radical and dynamic, mystical function of the consecrated life of the monk

In fact, even though there has been a good deal of heat generated over differences of interpretation and application of the Rule of St. Benedict, monks of various observances always had, and still have, more in common that unites them than what separated them into different Orders. Fr. Terrence Kardong makes the observation in his discussion of the differences between Cluny and Cīteaux in the twelfth century that they agreed on the fact that the best way to live the Gospel was to follow the Rule of St. Benedict (Saint Benedict and the Twelfth-Century Reformation, CSQ 36 (2001), 284). Focusing on relatively superficial differences (clothing) and on more important but still secondary issues (the place of manual labor) for many obscured the essential agreement on the function of the vows as instruments leading to purity of heart and inner transformation.

John Cassian did not make such a mistake of perspective. He opens his Conferences with a discussion of this very point in the course of which he develops in extended detail the importance of keeping before one's eyes the immediate purpose of all the observances: purity of heart. He had learned this lesson well from his contacts with Evagrius Ponticus whom he knew at the settlement of Cells. Purity of heart, which Evagrius refers to as apatheia in Greek, consists in the ordering of passion which is achieved by obeying the commandments and by contemplating God in his creation. "We call apatheia the health of the soul (The Praktikos, 56). Such a state of soul is essential because it is a condition for true love; "agape is the progeny of apatheia"(The Praktikos, 81) The one who attains to this condition is capable of that contemplation which is a direct if obscure union with God in himself, the Blessed Trinity. God's purity is such that only those whose spiritual senses are pure, and whose spiritual desire is awakened and ardent, can behold something of his radiant light. Of Evagrius it is reported that he had arrived at this height of purity the last three years of his life, after heroic struggles with the passions in all night vigils. But unfortunately, we are provided with insufficient details of his experience to form any very concrete conception as to the ways it was lived out day by day.

The monastic virtues are formed through habitual obedience to the commandments given by Jesus such as humility, love of neighbor, mercy along with meditation. These, when supplemented by the contemplation of God's attributes as revealed in Scripture and in creation- His wisdom, power, loving Providence, mercy and love among others- gradually result in that interior reformation of which St. Paul speaks in his letters. The monk who is thus transformed is learning a new way of loving. Both love and consciousness are infused with characteristics that expand and elevate awareness by the knowledge derived from contact with the living God. This profound reformation of the whole of the human person in all dimensions of his being proved to be, unsurprisingly, a formidable task. Even so gifted and earnest a man as St. Augustine found that he had to revise his concept of what perfection can be achieved in this world. Can the passions be so reformed as never to trouble the spirit? Is the perfection of love possible only to those who arrive at such a condition, and if so can it be attained to in this world?

Freedom from all disordered passion, even as a spontaneous first reaction, he had thought to be a state that the man truly given over to wisdom might reasonable expect to arrive at. He certainly made it his aim and dedicated his best efforts to achieving it early on at the time of his conversion. He came to understand, however, that this view of the wise man, which had been elaborated by the Stoic philosophers and was the received wisdom by members of that school, was not tenable. For one thing, pride is so intermingled with this approach to perfection that what sets out to be virtue soon develops into an obstacle to union with God by subtly inculcating a false pride. He was consequently constrained to alter his understanding of what is possible and above all of the way to attain to the purity of perfect love. Grace is essential to remain free from the tyranny of passion, and prayer is the way to obtain grace. Of his own powers man cannot obtain freedom from selfish desires and disordered passion. Moreover, the hidden roots of passion and the subtle forms assumed by self-love are so deeply buried that one cannot long remain free from their influence. So convinced was Augustine of this state of things that as he drew near the end of his life he felt he should revise his works in light of his current understanding, so that they could be read with profit. "Therefore, what remains for me to do, is to judge myself under my single Master, whose Judgement I desire to escape, for all my offences." (Retractiones Prologue.2, cited in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 435). For ten days before his death he refused to see anyone save when his doctor visited or when his meals were brought. He spent the last ten days in reclusion, alone with God in prayer, saying penitential psalms and searching his soul for any hidden remains of disordered attachments. He put into practice what he had earlier preached in a sermon to his people.

Whoever does not want to fear, let him probe his inmost self. Do not just touch the surface; go down into yourself; reach into the farthest corner of your heart. Examine it then with care: see there, whether a poisoned vein of the wasting love of the world does not pulse, whether you are not moved by some physical desires, and are not caught in some law o f the senses, whether you are never elated with empty boasting, never depressed by some vain anxiety; then only can you announce that you are pure and crystal clear, when you have sifted everything in the deepest recesses of your inner being. (Sermon 348.2, cited in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 436).

As is evident from this sermon, St. Augustine directed attention of his people to examination of the inner motives and hidden dispositions which influenced and even determined their decisions and actions. He was aware that in his Confessions he had given a strong impulse to the struggles that take place in the heart with those passions which dominate the lives of the majority and obscure the way of freedom and truth that lead to God. When he came to his Autobiography as he reviewed the 93 works he had written in the course of his career, he made what was practically the only personal observation in the rather dry list of comments and corrections of his written oeuvre:

Thirteen books of my Confessions, which praise the just and good God in all my evil and good ways, and stir up towards Him the mind and feeling of men: as far as I am concerned, they had this effect on me when I wrote them, and they still do this, when now I read them. What others think is their own business: I know at least, that many of the brethren have enjoyed them, and still do (Retractationes II.32, cited in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 435).

Augustine's insistence on interiority and on feeling as contributing significantly, even decisively to conversion and the ongoing growth of union with God was original in its time. While this orientation to the subjective had its broad appeal, still it was not the dominant element in religious life during the Patristic age and the centuries of the early Middle Ages, until the late 11th century. Social structures and the character formed during the later Roman Empire and the feudal society that replaced it were largely determinative of peoples' major choices in life. Father T. Kardong observes in this connection that

In the early Middle Ages, which are often said to start with Gregory the Great, thus giving us a neat 500-year block,(600 -1100), people felt themselves to be an integral part of a self-contained society. This society, which is often called. "Feudal because of its social contracts , provided a set place for each person, depending on ancestry. One was simply born into a role, which guaranteed one a good deal of security and meaning as long as one faithfully carried out that role (op. cit., 280).

In the late eleventh century religious sentiment saw the beginnings of a profound alteration in its character that represented a radical transformation of spirituality. Devotion to the humanity of Christ began to give a more human dimension to the life of prayer, whereas in the past a larger place was give to the Blessed Trinity and God's majesty and authority. Peter Damien was one of the first to give expression to it, writing in his Institutio monialis 3: '"Whoever embraces Christ with a constant love in the recesses of his heart, whoever meditates continually on the mystery of his passion for the sake of imitation, for this person Christ will surely become ‘a bundle of myrrh... and will abide within his breast.'" (cited in G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, 279).

This new devotion and the spirituality associated with it attained its highest expression in the twelfth century in the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux who wrote that "Power requires subjection, and majesty admiration, but neither of them imitation. Let, O Lord, the goodness, to which man who was created in Your image can be conformed, appear, since we neither can imitate nor is it suitable for us to emulate the majesty, the power, the wisdom (Sermon 2 in quadragesima, I; Sermo I in Nativitate Domini, 2) . Other Cistercian writers followed in this same vein. William of St. Thierry, who had a powerfully synthetic mind, linked together three of the most characteristic aspects of the new spirituality: self-knowledge, conscience and man as the image of God. "Blessed conscience, which always says Lord Jesus in the same spirit, whatever it encounters, whatever it attacks." ‘Know yourself because you are My image, and so you can know Me, whose image you are, and you will find Me within yourself. If you will be with me in your mind, then I shall recline with you, and from there I shall pasture you.' (cited in Constable, op. cit. 276).

This remarkable development which has been unfolding in the life of the Church down to the present, took place in a society that itself saw the creation of a new kind of love, a love that resulted in a change in the human psyche and in human sentiment that has rarely occurred in the course of history. According to C. S. Lewis "The new thing itself [courtly love], I do not pretend to explain. Real changes in human sentiment are very rare- there are perhaps three or four on record- but I believe that they occur, and that this is one of them (The Allegory of Love, 11)." As Lewis was to demonstrate in the course of this same work, the concept of love and marriage in the West has ever since borne certain marks of this courtly love, notably the ideal of life-long friendly association in marriage based on the personal attractions associated with eros. It effected, on the psychic level a restructuring of sentiment that has continued to give form to the affections as they bear upon the relations between the sexes.

Monks had been very much a part of the earlier feudal system. Their outlook and values were formed in a world where authority was strongly hierarchical and each person had a place with proper duties and privileges clearly defined. With the growing influence of the new forms of sentiment, along with other factors, such as the social and economic developments, as city-states assumed a new importance, feudal society itself felt the impact. The new currents of change gave prominence to personal freedom and feeling, which made its appearance first in relation to the lady one chose to serve. This freedom was not long confined to the area of the erotically attractive; it was soon seen to have large implications for the spiritual life and to be significant for persons in every station of society. Spiritual authors, and especially monks, were alert to its potential significance for a more profound insight into the nature of the human person. Freedom, they concluded from their meditations on the Bible in the context of these new developments in courtly love, and in society, is the very core of man's nature and so is the basis for the whole of the spiritual life; in fact, it is the primary constituent of the human being's dignity. Freedom of choice, liberum arbitrium, as St. Bernard called it, is the essence of the image of God in man; the way freedom is employed, under the influence of grace, determines his recovery of the likeness to God. This faculty is the chief feature of his personality, and is manifested in the kinds of love the person forms. Accordingly, the Abbot of Clairvaux could compose a work describing the whole of the spiritual journey in terms of the quality of one's love. The quality of love in turn can be recognized from the specific objects that he freely chooses to govern his intentions and his acts. The purpose of life, then, is a transformation of love until, by habitually clinging to the True and Absolute Good who is God, the person himself becomes like the One he freely chooses to adhere to and becomes inseparably united with Him. Seen this way, the monastic life is relevant not only to monks, but to all persons of good will, for it is a paradigm that bodies forth the meaning of life stripped of those accidentals that tend to obscure its purpose and to divert its energies into channels that soon dry up.

For this very purpose Christ came into the world and gave himself upon the cross. St. Bernard sums up the purpose of our Lord's life in this world and the meaning of our life on earth as well as he considers the essential basis of our human dignity.

The form itself to which free judgment was to be conformed came into the world, because in order that it might receive the pristine form it had to be reformed from that form from which it had been formed. That form is wisdom; conformation is effected in order that the image might do in the body what the form that is wisdom does in the world. For she reaches from end to end with strength and disposes all things sweetly. (Wisdom 8: 1)... And so those who have a proper understanding of these matters acknowledge a threefold operation, not indeed of free judgment, but of divine grace acting on it, or from it.... For in the first place we are created in Christ in liberty of will; secondly, we are reformed through Christ in the spirit of liberty; thirdly, then we are to be perfected with Christ in the state of eternity (De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, X. 33 PL 182: 1018f and XIV, 49 1047f)

These words describe, on the deeper level of the inner man, the stages by which, in the view of the Abbot of Cīteaux, St. Paul's teaching which was cited at the opening of this talk is carried into effect: IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, HE IS A NEW CREATURE. THE OLD HAS PASSED AWAY; LOOK! EVERYTHING IS NEW.

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