Masterful Mystagogue
April 11, 2009, 10:24 am
Posted by Robert P. Imbelli
A good friend gifted me today with news of the lectures on prayer that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave during Holy Week.
There are three lectures of about an hour each available here in audio files.
I have only listened to the first in which Williams speaks of prayer in the early Church, focusing upon Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Cassian. It is superb (and delivered in a marvelous voice: clear and conversational). I thought others might find it to be a precious Holy Saturday reflection as we prepare for the Great Vigil.
I would welcome hearing from those who have a chance to listen what point(s) particularly struck them.
(HT:R.S.)
Fr. Imbelli, thanks for letting us know about these lectures. I listened to the first one and intend to listen to the others very soon. I want to specifically mention John Cassian. St. Benedict relied heavily on Cassian’s teaching when he wrote his Rule. The following quote from Dom John Eudes Bamberger, OSCO tells us a little more about Cassian:
“John Cassian had learned well the psychology taught by Evagrius Ponticus whom he had frequented in Egypt. As a result another of his merits, as Cassiodorus points out, is to ‘help his readers to discover their own defects and to confront them, defects that previously they saw only in a vague and confused manner’ (cited in Viller/Rahner, 184). This is no small achievement, for such sharpened insight renders one’s efforts at overcoming faults more effective, and as this takes place allows one to dedicate the liberated energy of the psyche to the works of true love. By gaining such practical self knowledge, the dedicated Christian expands the knowledge of God the Father, as revealed in the person of Christ Jesus.
Description in concrete detail of such disordered passions as all of us encounter as we enter upon the inward journey that leads to God constitute a large portion of his writings. The second part of his ‘Institutes’ is wholly devoted to a description of the Eight Passionate Thoughts based on the original work of Evagrius. But he does not confine himself to this preparatory effort; he supplements this teaching with a doctrine of prayer that is at once practical and ordered to the intensely mystical. The high point of the life of prayer is a union with God that is experienced as the beginning of a fulfillment that is the goal of all striving, and that is the one valid meaning of life on earth. Cassian teaches us still that truly blest are the pure of heart, for they already on earth enter into the kingdom where God
is all in all…”
http://www.abbotjohneudes.org/h23July08.htm
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast,
it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in
evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian render apatheia by the more Biblical term, “purity of heart.” Cassian further identifies purity as the love described in Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. For Cassian, purity of heart is the immediate goal of monastic life, with the ultimate end being the Kingdom of God.
John Cassian’s teaching on the interplay of Bible, prayer, and experience is the very heart of his monastic theology. It is from this heart that he continues to nourish and to challenge those who find him to be a spiritual guide. The centrality of Christ in both reading and praying
the Bible, the call to deeper awareness of the divine presence in the biblical text and in daily experience, the simplification of prayer to a handful of words and then beyond words to a fiery silence are themes more remarkable and even more provocative in our day than they were in his…In the end his importance is greatest not to the historical theologians who puzzle over his thought but to those of both East and West who recognize in him the great charism of teacher of prayer.
~ Columba Stewart, OSB, “Cassian the Monk”,