Words on the Word
Erik Varden is a monk and bishop, born in Norway in 1974. In 2002, after ten years at the University of Cambridge, he joined Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest. Pope Francis named him bishop of Trondheim in 2019.
Please find below a selection of homilies:
Renewal of Vows 
This homily was given in the abbey church of Fontgombault at the conclusion of the community’s retreat, at a Mass during which the monks renewed their vows. In the monastic world, 13 November is celebrated as the feast of All Read More
Towards Dawn ‘It is often casually said that we live in post-Christian times. I believe that statement to be false. Theologically, the term ‘post-Christian’ makes no sense. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, and all the letters in between. He carries Read More
Desert Fathers 46 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
They say about Abba John Read More
They say about Abba John Read More
No Blond Skies There is clearly a Norway of the imagination. An attentive reader, having seen my note on Emily Dickinson last week, sent me this supremely melancholy poem by the symbolist Émile Nelligan, who says of himself in a moment of near Read More
Antisemitism Throughout the West, antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, is raising its ugly head, more or less sublimated in political terms, but instantly recognisable. Much is being written about this development. This is good. Wise heads must think together to counter Read More
Translation Praised ‘Then, of course, there is Artificial, or Inhuman, Intelligence. Thanks to it, translation is mechanised. Feed in some verses by, say, Li Bai, a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, and you find them spewed out in the twinkling of Read More
Desert Fathers 45 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
A man hunting wild beasts Read More
A man hunting wild beasts Read More
Renewal of Vows
This homily was given in the abbey church of Fontgombault at the conclusion of the community’s retreat, at a Mass during which the monks renewed their vows. In the monastic world, 13 November is celebrated as the feast of All Benedictine and Cistercian Saints. An English translation will follow.
Alors Pierre prit la parole et dit à Jésus : « Voici que nous avons tout quitté pour te suivre : quelle sera donc notre part ? » Jésus leur déclara : « Amen, je vous le dis : lors du renouvellement du monde, lorsque le Fils de l’homme siégera sur son trône de gloire, vous qui m’avez suivi, vous siégerez vous aussi sur douze trônes pour juger les douze tribus d’Israël. Et celui qui aura quitté, à cause de mon nom, des maisons, des frères, des sœurs, un père, une mère, des enfants, ou une terre, recevra le centuple, et il aura en héritage la vie éternelle.
Quand Saint Benoît décrit la profession monastique, il souligne le rapport entre celle-ci et l’autel. Le candidat demande d’être admis par une pétition écrite ‘de sa propre main’ qu’il dépose sur l’autel. Seulement ensuite entonne-t-il ce verset du Psaume 118 qui fait frémir tout coeur bénédictin:
Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam; et ne confundas me ab expectatione mea.
Son oblation, suscitée par la parole du Seigneur, a été perçue comme un appel. Le profès a pris au sérieux la question posée par le Christ dans le Prologue à la Sainte Règle: Quis est homo qui vult vitam?
Bien sûr qu’il désire la vie, et comment!
Il veut vivre en plénitude, sans compromis. Voilà pourquoi il se consacre à vie au service du Seigneur de la Vie, qui donna sa vie pour que nous vivions, sauvés une bonne fois pour toutes du Règne de la Mort.
La source dont coule ce salut est le sacrifice du Christ. L’autel le manifeste. L’autel est le gardien de la plus noble aspiration du moine, qui, par sa profession, entre librement dans une dynamique pascale. Le moine consent à être conformé au Christ crucifié pour connaître la force de sa résurrection. Dans l’obscur quotidien il choisit de participer, par la patience, à la passion du Saveur.
Le lien entre l’oblation monastique et l’oblation du Calvaire devient plus explicite encore quand Saint Benoît décrit la procédure pour accueillir des oblats présentés par leurs parents au monastère. Dans ces cas, la pétition, écrite par le père de l’oblat, est non seulement mise sur l’autel mais enveloppée, avec les dons de l’offertoire et la main de l’enfant, ‘dans la nappe de l’autel’.
La valeur symbolique de la nappe est prodigieuse. Elle nous met devant les yeux les langes dans lesquels l’Enfant Jésus fut enveloppé à sa naissance; elle représente le linceul où son Corps Sacré fut placé 33 ans plus tard, après la déposition de la Croix; elle nous laisse pressentir le vêtement blanc des élus, conviés à se réjouir éternellement de l’alliance nuptiale de l’Agneau.
Toutes ces dimension de la vie de Christ, de la vie en Christ, marquent l’existence du moine. Il s’associe aux éléments qui deviendront le Corps et le Sang du Christ. Le moine aussi est destiné à la transformation, exposé par grâce à la divinisante lumière qui le fera christophore, un porteur du Christ, une preuve vivante de la grâce de l’incarnation.
‘Nous avons tout quitté’, dit Saint Pierre dans l’évangile. L’affirmation s’applique à la vie monastique. On arrive au monastère avec bien peu de bagage, ayant laissé derrière soi des choses précieuse et chères. Pendant un certain temps la mémoire de ces choses peut inspirer en nous la nostalgie.
Bientôt, pourtant, la réalité du centuple promis se manifeste à nous, nous laissant ébahis. Comparée à la générosité de Dieu, la nôtre n’est qu’une bien pauvre chose. Le moine apprend à se réjouir de sa pauvreté pour que Dieu la comble. Il apprend à se réjouir de sa faiblesse pour que Dieu y déploie sa puissance.
En renouvelant nos voeux, mettons notre espérance en lui; conformons, à nouveau, notre volonté à la sienne.
Avant-hier, à Saint Anselme, le Saint Père a dit à la communauté bénédictine rassemblée: ‘Nous ne pouvons répondre aux exigences de la vocation qu’en plaçant le Christ au centre de notre existence et de notre mission. Il faut partir de l’acte de foi par lequel nous le reconnaissons comme Sauveur pour ensuite traduire cet acte dans la prière, dans l’étude, dans l’engagement d’une vie sainte.’
Il faut viser la sainteté.
La fête de ce jour, la Toussaint Bénédictine, nous rappelle que la vie monastique a été une voie de sanctification pour des multitudes. Une nuée de témoins aimables et crédibles nous entoure. Puissent nos vies radicalement données être dignes de leur exemple, apportant de la joie au Coeur de Dieu et du réconfort à notre monde qui pleure.
Amen.
Alors Pierre prit la parole et dit à Jésus : « Voici que nous avons tout quitté pour te suivre : quelle sera donc notre part ? » Jésus leur déclara : « Amen, je vous le dis : lors du renouvellement du monde, lorsque le Fils de l’homme siégera sur son trône de gloire, vous qui m’avez suivi, vous siégerez vous aussi sur douze trônes pour juger les douze tribus d’Israël. Et celui qui aura quitté, à cause de mon nom, des maisons, des frères, des sœurs, un père, une mère, des enfants, ou une terre, recevra le centuple, et il aura en héritage la vie éternelle.
Quand Saint Benoît décrit la profession monastique, il souligne le rapport entre celle-ci et l’autel. Le candidat demande d’être admis par une pétition écrite ‘de sa propre main’ qu’il dépose sur l’autel. Seulement ensuite entonne-t-il ce verset du Psaume 118 qui fait frémir tout coeur bénédictin:
Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum et vivam; et ne confundas me ab expectatione mea.
Son oblation, suscitée par la parole du Seigneur, a été perçue comme un appel. Le profès a pris au sérieux la question posée par le Christ dans le Prologue à la Sainte Règle: Quis est homo qui vult vitam?
Bien sûr qu’il désire la vie, et comment!
Il veut vivre en plénitude, sans compromis. Voilà pourquoi il se consacre à vie au service du Seigneur de la Vie, qui donna sa vie pour que nous vivions, sauvés une bonne fois pour toutes du Règne de la Mort.
La source dont coule ce salut est le sacrifice du Christ. L’autel le manifeste. L’autel est le gardien de la plus noble aspiration du moine, qui, par sa profession, entre librement dans une dynamique pascale. Le moine consent à être conformé au Christ crucifié pour connaître la force de sa résurrection. Dans l’obscur quotidien il choisit de participer, par la patience, à la passion du Saveur.
Le lien entre l’oblation monastique et l’oblation du Calvaire devient plus explicite encore quand Saint Benoît décrit la procédure pour accueillir des oblats présentés par leurs parents au monastère. Dans ces cas, la pétition, écrite par le père de l’oblat, est non seulement mise sur l’autel mais enveloppée, avec les dons de l’offertoire et la main de l’enfant, ‘dans la nappe de l’autel’.
La valeur symbolique de la nappe est prodigieuse. Elle nous met devant les yeux les langes dans lesquels l’Enfant Jésus fut enveloppé à sa naissance; elle représente le linceul où son Corps Sacré fut placé 33 ans plus tard, après la déposition de la Croix; elle nous laisse pressentir le vêtement blanc des élus, conviés à se réjouir éternellement de l’alliance nuptiale de l’Agneau.
Toutes ces dimension de la vie de Christ, de la vie en Christ, marquent l’existence du moine. Il s’associe aux éléments qui deviendront le Corps et le Sang du Christ. Le moine aussi est destiné à la transformation, exposé par grâce à la divinisante lumière qui le fera christophore, un porteur du Christ, une preuve vivante de la grâce de l’incarnation.
‘Nous avons tout quitté’, dit Saint Pierre dans l’évangile. L’affirmation s’applique à la vie monastique. On arrive au monastère avec bien peu de bagage, ayant laissé derrière soi des choses précieuse et chères. Pendant un certain temps la mémoire de ces choses peut inspirer en nous la nostalgie.
Bientôt, pourtant, la réalité du centuple promis se manifeste à nous, nous laissant ébahis. Comparée à la générosité de Dieu, la nôtre n’est qu’une bien pauvre chose. Le moine apprend à se réjouir de sa pauvreté pour que Dieu la comble. Il apprend à se réjouir de sa faiblesse pour que Dieu y déploie sa puissance.
En renouvelant nos voeux, mettons notre espérance en lui; conformons, à nouveau, notre volonté à la sienne.
Avant-hier, à Saint Anselme, le Saint Père a dit à la communauté bénédictine rassemblée: ‘Nous ne pouvons répondre aux exigences de la vocation qu’en plaçant le Christ au centre de notre existence et de notre mission. Il faut partir de l’acte de foi par lequel nous le reconnaissons comme Sauveur pour ensuite traduire cet acte dans la prière, dans l’étude, dans l’engagement d’une vie sainte.’
Il faut viser la sainteté.
La fête de ce jour, la Toussaint Bénédictine, nous rappelle que la vie monastique a été une voie de sanctification pour des multitudes. Une nuée de témoins aimables et crédibles nous entoure. Puissent nos vies radicalement données être dignes de leur exemple, apportant de la joie au Coeur de Dieu et du réconfort à notre monde qui pleure.
Amen.
Towards Dawn
‘It is often casually said that we live in post-Christian times. I believe that statement to be false. Theologically, the term ‘post-Christian’ makes no sense. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, and all the letters in between. He carries constitutionally the freshness of morning dew. Christianity is of the dawn. If at times, during given periods, we feel enshrouded by twilight, it is because another day is in the making. It seems to me clear that we find ourselves in such a process of awakening now. If we do want to deal in the currency of ‘pre’ and ‘post’, I think it more apposite to suggest that we stand on the threshold of an age I would call ‘post-secular’. Secularisation has run its course. It is exhausted, void of positive finality. The human being, meanwhile, remains alive with deep aspirations. It is an essential task of the Church to listen to these attentively, with respect, then to orient them towards Christ, who carries the comfort and challenge for which the human heart yearns.’ From my new book, Towards Dawn, just published. You can read more about it here.
Desert Fathers 46
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
They say about Abba John the Dwarf that one day he told his elder brother: ‘I wish to live without cares, like the angels, who are without cares, not having to work but ceaselessly offering praise to God.’ Then, untying his garment, he went into the desert. After a week he came back to his brother. When he knocked on the door, [his brother] heard him from within. Before opening, he said: ‘Who are you?’ And he said: ‘I am John’. But [his brother] answered, saying: ‘John has become an angel! He no longer dwells among men’. So he besought him and said: ‘It’s me! Open for me!’ But he did not open, leaving him afflicted until the next morning. When eventually he did open, [his brother] said: ‘You see, you are a man after all. If you want to eat, you will once again have to work.’ At that, [John] prostrated himself and said: ‘Forgive me!’
Abba John the Dwarf is a towering presence in the Desert. A pupil of Pambo, a teacher to Arsenius, his authority was held in high regard. It was John, short of stature, who as a novice was given a task destined to become legendary. His elder took a dry stick, plonked it in arid ground, and instructed John to water it daily ‘until it should bear fruit’. The only well was so far away that John, to draw from it, had to leave in the evening and come back the next day, spending all his time, and most of his strength, on an exercise that seemed, to all intents and purposes, not only useless, but a kind of mockery. John, though, persevered. And at ‘the end of three years the wood came to life and bore fruit. Then the elder took some of the fruit and carried it to the church, saying to the brethren, “Take and eat the fruit of obedience”.
Andrei Tarkovsky, the master cinema director, used this story as a framework for his final essential feature, the film Sacrifice released in 1986, the year of his death. He invoked John the Dwarf’s silent, trustful, patiently gratuitous work, a source of paradoxical fecundity, as a corrective to the forceful yet insubstantial impact of ‘Words, words, words’, an exclamation from Hamlet uttered in despair by the intellectual Alexander, the film’s protagonist, when he considers his own trajectory of spouted hot air.
It is touching to find John, an illustrious specimen of monastic virtue, falling prey, at a given moment, to illusion. His intention is noble enough. Taking stock of his life, John considers that too much effort goes into chores. Did he become a monk to work in the kitchen, weave baskets, and attend to practical needs that are often dull? Had he not opted for an angelic life, the transformation of his whole existence into praise? When this thought came to him, he lived with his own brother.
That is, I should think, relevant information. Family relationships are complex. If the Lord let a third of the apostolic college consist of pairs of brothers, it was partly to show how blood-ties must be illumined by a supernatural call. There may, for all we know, have been a latent quarrel in the shared hermitage. Did John sometimes think along the lines ‘Argh! He has always had a way of dodging the dishes!’? Given the fraternal straightforwardness that marks the exchanges after John’s return, a dynamic of this sort may have contributed to tension felt, in any case, by those who embrace a life of spiritual pursuits when they discover the continued exigence of practical life, those times when Benedictines dream of becoming Cistercians, Cistercians hanker after the Charterhouse, and Carthusians dream of a solitary mountain-top with steep access.
John wished to live an angelic life. So off he went, loosening his robe, no more needing, now, the girdle or apron with which he had tied it in for efficient work. He had forgotten one thing, though: angels have no need for supper. Also, they are never quite on their own. Theology shows them to us configured in choirs and hierarchies. We do not know what went through John’s head during seven days and seven nights in isolation under the vast desert sky, with the distant calls of jackals his only perceptible company. In any case, life at home with his brother no longer seemed so awful. Perhaps, he mused, one might after all live a God-pleasing life there, too.
Schadenfreude, spontaneous pleasure in others’ misfortune, especially when they have acted against our advice, is no monastic trait. Among brothers, however, it can find licit expression, and is not always wholly incompatible with charity. John’s brother reinforces the lesson circumstance had taught the ex-hermit. ‘Ah! My angelic fratello of whose company I was not worthy!’ He let John spend a further night out in the cold, just to bring the point home. Then he volunteered a wholly Biblical correction — for already St Paul had written to the Thessalonians, a lot rather given to airy-fairy religion: ‘If any one will not work, let him not eat.’
The end of the story is typical of this genre of literature. Nonetheless it is surprising and beautiful. John does not waste time on explanations. He does not go into some long tirade about how he had felt when he decided to leave, how accumulated frustration had made life a trial. To seek to justify himself even implicitly would have seemed to him both a waste of time and somehow unworthy. He says simply: ‘Forgive me’, and assumes the full weight of his mistake.
Therein lies this story’s principal lesson.
Detail from Fra Angelico’s Last Judgement.
They say about Abba John the Dwarf that one day he told his elder brother: ‘I wish to live without cares, like the angels, who are without cares, not having to work but ceaselessly offering praise to God.’ Then, untying his garment, he went into the desert. After a week he came back to his brother. When he knocked on the door, [his brother] heard him from within. Before opening, he said: ‘Who are you?’ And he said: ‘I am John’. But [his brother] answered, saying: ‘John has become an angel! He no longer dwells among men’. So he besought him and said: ‘It’s me! Open for me!’ But he did not open, leaving him afflicted until the next morning. When eventually he did open, [his brother] said: ‘You see, you are a man after all. If you want to eat, you will once again have to work.’ At that, [John] prostrated himself and said: ‘Forgive me!’
Abba John the Dwarf is a towering presence in the Desert. A pupil of Pambo, a teacher to Arsenius, his authority was held in high regard. It was John, short of stature, who as a novice was given a task destined to become legendary. His elder took a dry stick, plonked it in arid ground, and instructed John to water it daily ‘until it should bear fruit’. The only well was so far away that John, to draw from it, had to leave in the evening and come back the next day, spending all his time, and most of his strength, on an exercise that seemed, to all intents and purposes, not only useless, but a kind of mockery. John, though, persevered. And at ‘the end of three years the wood came to life and bore fruit. Then the elder took some of the fruit and carried it to the church, saying to the brethren, “Take and eat the fruit of obedience”.
Andrei Tarkovsky, the master cinema director, used this story as a framework for his final essential feature, the film Sacrifice released in 1986, the year of his death. He invoked John the Dwarf’s silent, trustful, patiently gratuitous work, a source of paradoxical fecundity, as a corrective to the forceful yet insubstantial impact of ‘Words, words, words’, an exclamation from Hamlet uttered in despair by the intellectual Alexander, the film’s protagonist, when he considers his own trajectory of spouted hot air.
It is touching to find John, an illustrious specimen of monastic virtue, falling prey, at a given moment, to illusion. His intention is noble enough. Taking stock of his life, John considers that too much effort goes into chores. Did he become a monk to work in the kitchen, weave baskets, and attend to practical needs that are often dull? Had he not opted for an angelic life, the transformation of his whole existence into praise? When this thought came to him, he lived with his own brother.
That is, I should think, relevant information. Family relationships are complex. If the Lord let a third of the apostolic college consist of pairs of brothers, it was partly to show how blood-ties must be illumined by a supernatural call. There may, for all we know, have been a latent quarrel in the shared hermitage. Did John sometimes think along the lines ‘Argh! He has always had a way of dodging the dishes!’? Given the fraternal straightforwardness that marks the exchanges after John’s return, a dynamic of this sort may have contributed to tension felt, in any case, by those who embrace a life of spiritual pursuits when they discover the continued exigence of practical life, those times when Benedictines dream of becoming Cistercians, Cistercians hanker after the Charterhouse, and Carthusians dream of a solitary mountain-top with steep access.
John wished to live an angelic life. So off he went, loosening his robe, no more needing, now, the girdle or apron with which he had tied it in for efficient work. He had forgotten one thing, though: angels have no need for supper. Also, they are never quite on their own. Theology shows them to us configured in choirs and hierarchies. We do not know what went through John’s head during seven days and seven nights in isolation under the vast desert sky, with the distant calls of jackals his only perceptible company. In any case, life at home with his brother no longer seemed so awful. Perhaps, he mused, one might after all live a God-pleasing life there, too.
Schadenfreude, spontaneous pleasure in others’ misfortune, especially when they have acted against our advice, is no monastic trait. Among brothers, however, it can find licit expression, and is not always wholly incompatible with charity. John’s brother reinforces the lesson circumstance had taught the ex-hermit. ‘Ah! My angelic fratello of whose company I was not worthy!’ He let John spend a further night out in the cold, just to bring the point home. Then he volunteered a wholly Biblical correction — for already St Paul had written to the Thessalonians, a lot rather given to airy-fairy religion: ‘If any one will not work, let him not eat.’
The end of the story is typical of this genre of literature. Nonetheless it is surprising and beautiful. John does not waste time on explanations. He does not go into some long tirade about how he had felt when he decided to leave, how accumulated frustration had made life a trial. To seek to justify himself even implicitly would have seemed to him both a waste of time and somehow unworthy. He says simply: ‘Forgive me’, and assumes the full weight of his mistake.
Therein lies this story’s principal lesson.
Detail from Fra Angelico’s Last Judgement.
No Blond Skies
There is clearly a Norway of the imagination. An attentive reader, having seen my note on Emily Dickinson last week, sent me this supremely melancholy poem by the symbolist Émile Nelligan, who says of himself in a moment of near despair: ‘I am the new Norway from which the blond skies have departed’. Nelligan is a tragic figure in the literature of Québec. Afflicted with a bipolar condition he was hospitalised at the age of twenty and remained in institutions until his death at 44. He seems not to have known the soft luminosity that marks even the depths of Norwegian winter – not to mention the summer nights untouched by any darkness at all.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Emile-Nelligan-Soir-dhiver.m4a
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Emile-Nelligan-Soir-dhiver.m4a
Antisemitism
Throughout the West, antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, is raising its ugly head, more or less sublimated in political terms, but instantly recognisable. Much is being written about this development. This is good. Wise heads must think together to counter a trend that lies within the body politic as a latent virus. In such straits I miss the intelligent, humane, fearless voice of Jonathan Sacks. Fortunately many of his videos and texts are available on a website dedicated to his legacy. Rabbi Sacks spoke of antisemitism as ‘the first warning sign of a culture in a state of cognitive collapse. It gives rise to that complex of psychological regressions that lead to evil on a monumental scale: splitting, projection, pathological dualism, dehumanisation, demonisation, a sense of victimhood, and the use of a scapegoat to evade moral responsibility. It allows a culture to blame others for its condition without ever coming to terms with it themselves.’ Those words were written ten years ago. Meanwhile they have only gained in relevance.
Psalmody
In a wise, poetic essay, Armando Pego describes a visit to an abbey where he delves into silence after a train trip alongside travellers full of that joy ‘only the sea can give’. They go on to ‘scatter like solitary starlings’; he, meanwhile, is bound for a definite goal: ‘At Poblet I find the rest the hours of the Office give. Along with a handful of guests, joined by more or less sporadic tourists, or on my own at daybreak or for None, I find myself on a pew distant from the choir, trying to abandon subjective pretensions. We live in times that give great weight to personal experience and sentiment, to that in our ego which is at the same most moving and most onerous. I wish to propose as counterweight an inner life alert to the objectivity of liturgy. I desire to stop being the centre; to lean towards the vertigo of God’s greatness. We can touch it, just about, through psalmody, which lets us glimpse it as a boundless fount of love. There is no trace of a concert or spectacle; there is no enthusiasm, no ecstasy. We make a superhuman effort to rise above our smallness, gathered as a community that, in unison, harmonises stammering. I always come out a loser. About to yield to discouragement, I console myself that I have had a lesson in humility. Had I been victorious even for a moment, it would all have been in vain.’ You can read the entire piece (in Spanish) here.
Translation Praised
‘Then, of course, there is Artificial, or Inhuman, Intelligence. Thanks to it, translation is mechanised. Feed in some verses by, say, Li Bai, a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty, and you find them spewed out in the twinkling of an eye in colloquial American, contractions and all. AI does not limit itself to rendering a given ‘foreign’ language into another. It offers to translate even the vaguest notions that arise out of our fancy’s pond-fog into cogent speech. As a result, we can increasingly dispense ourselves from coming up with our own words. There are, here and there, pragmatic advantages to this. But they come at the cost of catastrophic loss. For what will man turn into as he, formed in the image of the Word, surrenders poetry to algorithmic patterns, logos to digits, with everyone’s speech, everywhere, sounding the same?’
From this year’s Erasmus Lecture, to be published on the internet and in First Things in mid-December.
From this year’s Erasmus Lecture, to be published on the internet and in First Things in mid-December.
Desert Fathers 45
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
A man hunting wild beasts found himself in the desert. He saw Abba Antony at recreation with the brothers, and was scandalised. The elder decided to make him understand that now and again one has to encounter the brethren at their own level. He said to him: ‘Take an arrow, put it to your bow, and pull!’ He did just that. Then he said again: ‘Pull more!’ And he pulled. And again [Abba Antony] said: ‘Pull!’ But the hunter replied: ‘If I pull beyond measure, I will break the bow.’ Abba Antony said to him: ‘It is exactly the same when it comes to the work of God. If we stretch the brothers excessively, they will be shattered. So now and again we must encounter them at their own level.’ Hearing this, the hunter was filled with compunction. He went away greatly profited by the elder. As for the brethren, they returned to where they lived with new strength.
Early on in The Sound of Music, the wise old abbess asks a few nuns for advice on the postulant Maria. A senior, uppety sister says, ‘She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee, her dress has got a tear’, with disapproval, not expecting an aspiring nun to be out doing enjoyable things. Secular observers also curiously sense a kind of incongruity. That is why they are tickled by pictures of nuns on rollerblades or eating ice-cream; or of monks tobogganing.
Such images seem, I suppose, emblematic of transgression at some subliminal level. The religious habit makes the stakes more emphatic; so people snigger and think, reassuring themselves, ‘Ah, so they are up to it, too.’
That is what the hunter thought who, on the look-out for bush-meat, found Antony and a group of brothers having a pleasant time. I do not suppose the monks were playing badminton. Most probably they were just sitting around on the ground in lively conversation, taking pleasure in each other’s company. The hunter was disedified. He had heard about monks. He expected them to be austere, world-weary, forbidding-looking creatures who gaze at skulls while scourging themselves. He was not prepared to find them cheerfully at ease. His ‘Tut!’, whether spoken or expressed by some gesture, must have been evident enough for Antony to pick it up. Instead of being upset, or of making a sarcastic remark about the world’s hypocrisy, Antony resolved, ever forthcoming, to help the man reach freeing insight.
There is gentle humour in the exercise he proposes. He, who will speak about the need to encounter the brothers ‘at their own level’ (the Greek verb means ‘to condescend’, but it has not the pejorative ring of its English equivalent), meets the hunter where he is. Instead of launching into complicated explanations about the search for balance in life, he sets out from something the other man will naturally grasp, asking him to consider how he uses his equipment. Antony gives the man time, considering: ‘How can I make him understand?’
This encounter shows how the attentive kindness which people saw in him when at last he came forth from twenty years of seclusion mellowed over time, and did not shy back from a little comedy.
We can imagine the hunter standing there, before a half-circle of monks, now suddenly looking deadly serious, pulling and pulling at his bow with sweat pouring down his forehead while thinking, ‘One millimetre more and this old thing will snap!’ Antony waits for him to reach his limit and unwittingly to speak words that will answer his own perplexity. Uninterrupted tension is unbearable for any created thing. There is a pattern in nature and relations, as in speech and music, of give-and-take. Relaxation need not be a sign of weakness. It may spring from self-knowledge, which is a form of humility, which is a great, albeit paradoxical, form of strength.
Antony, for being humane, was far from soft. He used to say: ‘God does not permit the enemy to wage war on this generation as he did on those of old. For he knows that people now are feeble, so would not endure it.’ We know the warfare he himself endured. He admitted, though, that rest has its part to play in the spiritual life, and was not ashamed to admit it. The idea of holy leisure, otium sacrum, is deeply rooted in monastic tradition.
Can we then enjoy leisure without being idle? Yes, we can. The distinction matters. To be idle is to avoid what needs to be done, to shun work and duty for selfish reasons, to waste time. To savour leisure, on the other hand, is in itself a high form of attention. It is a matter of being intensely present; of resting deliberately; of turning away from self towards the other, towards God and the world, in a state of receptivity, marvelling at the gift of it all, giving thanks. Such an attitude is intrinsic to contemplative living. It is something monks should foster as second nature. I would even say it is something they should be good at and enjoy.
In monastic vocabulary, scheduled times of rest are known as ‘recreations’. The word has slipped into worldly usage. We speak oxymoronically of ‘recreational activity’. It is useful, though, to hang on to the primary sense. To be a Christian is to let oneself be constantly re-created in Christ. Times of conscious rest are given us as opportunities for conscious consent to this divine work. For how can God fashion his image in us if we are always furiously busy, shaping our existence in ours?
A man hunting wild beasts found himself in the desert. He saw Abba Antony at recreation with the brothers, and was scandalised. The elder decided to make him understand that now and again one has to encounter the brethren at their own level. He said to him: ‘Take an arrow, put it to your bow, and pull!’ He did just that. Then he said again: ‘Pull more!’ And he pulled. And again [Abba Antony] said: ‘Pull!’ But the hunter replied: ‘If I pull beyond measure, I will break the bow.’ Abba Antony said to him: ‘It is exactly the same when it comes to the work of God. If we stretch the brothers excessively, they will be shattered. So now and again we must encounter them at their own level.’ Hearing this, the hunter was filled with compunction. He went away greatly profited by the elder. As for the brethren, they returned to where they lived with new strength.
Early on in The Sound of Music, the wise old abbess asks a few nuns for advice on the postulant Maria. A senior, uppety sister says, ‘She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee, her dress has got a tear’, with disapproval, not expecting an aspiring nun to be out doing enjoyable things. Secular observers also curiously sense a kind of incongruity. That is why they are tickled by pictures of nuns on rollerblades or eating ice-cream; or of monks tobogganing.
Such images seem, I suppose, emblematic of transgression at some subliminal level. The religious habit makes the stakes more emphatic; so people snigger and think, reassuring themselves, ‘Ah, so they are up to it, too.’
That is what the hunter thought who, on the look-out for bush-meat, found Antony and a group of brothers having a pleasant time. I do not suppose the monks were playing badminton. Most probably they were just sitting around on the ground in lively conversation, taking pleasure in each other’s company. The hunter was disedified. He had heard about monks. He expected them to be austere, world-weary, forbidding-looking creatures who gaze at skulls while scourging themselves. He was not prepared to find them cheerfully at ease. His ‘Tut!’, whether spoken or expressed by some gesture, must have been evident enough for Antony to pick it up. Instead of being upset, or of making a sarcastic remark about the world’s hypocrisy, Antony resolved, ever forthcoming, to help the man reach freeing insight.
There is gentle humour in the exercise he proposes. He, who will speak about the need to encounter the brothers ‘at their own level’ (the Greek verb means ‘to condescend’, but it has not the pejorative ring of its English equivalent), meets the hunter where he is. Instead of launching into complicated explanations about the search for balance in life, he sets out from something the other man will naturally grasp, asking him to consider how he uses his equipment. Antony gives the man time, considering: ‘How can I make him understand?’
This encounter shows how the attentive kindness which people saw in him when at last he came forth from twenty years of seclusion mellowed over time, and did not shy back from a little comedy.
We can imagine the hunter standing there, before a half-circle of monks, now suddenly looking deadly serious, pulling and pulling at his bow with sweat pouring down his forehead while thinking, ‘One millimetre more and this old thing will snap!’ Antony waits for him to reach his limit and unwittingly to speak words that will answer his own perplexity. Uninterrupted tension is unbearable for any created thing. There is a pattern in nature and relations, as in speech and music, of give-and-take. Relaxation need not be a sign of weakness. It may spring from self-knowledge, which is a form of humility, which is a great, albeit paradoxical, form of strength.
Antony, for being humane, was far from soft. He used to say: ‘God does not permit the enemy to wage war on this generation as he did on those of old. For he knows that people now are feeble, so would not endure it.’ We know the warfare he himself endured. He admitted, though, that rest has its part to play in the spiritual life, and was not ashamed to admit it. The idea of holy leisure, otium sacrum, is deeply rooted in monastic tradition.
Can we then enjoy leisure without being idle? Yes, we can. The distinction matters. To be idle is to avoid what needs to be done, to shun work and duty for selfish reasons, to waste time. To savour leisure, on the other hand, is in itself a high form of attention. It is a matter of being intensely present; of resting deliberately; of turning away from self towards the other, towards God and the world, in a state of receptivity, marvelling at the gift of it all, giving thanks. Such an attitude is intrinsic to contemplative living. It is something monks should foster as second nature. I would even say it is something they should be good at and enjoy.
In monastic vocabulary, scheduled times of rest are known as ‘recreations’. The word has slipped into worldly usage. We speak oxymoronically of ‘recreational activity’. It is useful, though, to hang on to the primary sense. To be a Christian is to let oneself be constantly re-created in Christ. Times of conscious rest are given us as opportunities for conscious consent to this divine work. For how can God fashion his image in us if we are always furiously busy, shaping our existence in ours?