A few months ago a couple of people asked me if I had heard about a new movement that was trying to recover ancient Christian practices that the contemporary Church has forgotten about. I asked what practices they were talking about, and was told that it was to do with things like silence, and meditation, and spiritual reading, and other quasi-monastic things (my phrase, not theirs).
To be honest, I hadn't heard of the movement. I remember the previous time it came around (folks like Dallas Willard and Richard Foster led it, if I recall, and wrote some very fine books about it, including Celebration of Discipline and The Spirit of the Disciplines); one of the perils of growing older is that you begin to really experience the truth that 'there is nothing new under the sun'.
I've got nothing to say against these 'ancient Christian practices' - last time around, Richard Foster's books were a blessing to me and to many other people too - but I must admit that when my friends first mentioned this new movement, I was hoping that they were going to tell me it had to do with a different set of practices, an even more ancient set. I'm talking about the ones in the Sermon on the Mount.
To be honest, I don't really see monasticism in the Sermon on the Mount. The practices I see there include the following:
- Having an upside-down view of the world, which turns out to be the right-side-up view, since the world is the wrong way up to begin with (Matthew 5:1-12).
- Being different from the world in order to bless it (5:13-16).
- Turning away from anger and working on reconciliation instead (5:21-26).
- Turning away from lust and living a life of sexual purity (5:27-30).
- Turning away from divorce - staying in our marriages and working on them instead (5:31-32).
- Telling the truth and being known as people of our word (5:33-37).
- Blessing those who hurt us instead of retaliating against them (5:38-42).
- Following the example of the God who loves his enemies by loving ours too (5:43-48), and forgiving those who sin against us (6:14-15).
- Carrying out the traditional practices of giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting in such a way as to please God and not win brownie points for our spirituality from others (6:1-18).
- Praying short and simple prayers together (6:7-13).
- Living with very few possessions, serving the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of mammon (6:19-24), focussing on God's will and trusting him to provide the necessities of life for us (6:25-34).
- Not judging others (7:1-6).
- Being bold in prayer, asking for what we need in the faith that God will hear us (7:7-11).
- Treating others the way we would like to be treated (7:12).
- Doing the will of the Father in heaven rather than just talking about it, and putting Jesus' teaching into practice rather than just listening to it and then ignoring it in our daily lives (7:13-29).
I can't claim that I practice all these ancient Christian disciplines. But I do know that in the long list of things I need to learn in my Christian life, these things ought to be my priority. I have no quarrel with St. Benedict, but I'm sure he would agree with me that the teaching of Jesus comes first.
1 comments:
Good morning sir, I hope you're feeling better -- as between Practices and Beatitudes, I take your point and if Practices were a substitute for... that would be a bad thing, no question. Just another self-enhancing hobby..
But I've always thought the Practices were a reality of a different order...perhaps -- what one does in the meantime between bouts of spiritual superheroism and moral power-lifting ...or how one is reminded that the beatitudes remain the desired "behavioural outcome"...or is reminded that they are in fact blessed outcomes... or is made able and motivated to attempt them at all.
Warm up and cool down exercises, in fact.
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