The Benedictine Influence
The Breck Conference 2021
By Luigi Gioia, Ph.D.
One of the most emblematic representatives of Western monasticism is Benedict of Nursia (480-547), not only because of the way his Rule (RB) overwhelmingly shaped spirituality in the West, but also because of how it integrated various strands of Eastern and Latin traditions. Benedict did not leave us a harmonious synthesis, as it is often thought, but a work that keeps the tensions between these different spiritualities alive.
Many aspects of Benedictine asceticism were borrowed from eastern spirituality and especially from the Egyptian Desert Fathers through the influence of Cassian’s (c. 360-435) writings. Later in his life, Benedict was reached by the Augustinian “wave,” which was going to have a huge influence on Western spirituality. These various influences can be detected in a significant shift in the way love operates in spiritual life between earlier chapters of Benedict’s Rule (more inspired by Cassian) and later chapters (more inspired by Augustine). Mainly under the influence of Cassian (himself influenced by Evagrius), some of the programmatic earlier chapters of the Rule see love as the culmination of ascetical effort, as for example in the chapter on humility (which is the longest): spiritual life is compared to the climbing of a ladder in which love is the final step and appears as the result of the effort of perfection (RB 7.66ff).
This order is turned upside down in chapter 72 of Benedict’s Rule where love is not only the apex but also the origin and the incentive of the endeavour to overcome vices and is seen as a form of eagerness (zelum), one might say a “longing,” to do everything possible to make relations in the community more harmonious (RB 72).This greater reliance on love is particularly important in dealing with what came to be known as “passions” or, in more modern terms, affects, something which contemporary authors describe as “economies of compulsion” which move our bodies and can explain our behavior much more than language or belief systems do.
The health of a spirituality depends on the extent to which these compulsions are taken seriously and dealt with holistically, especially by paying attention to bodies. Following this line of inquiry, it is possible to find various ways in which Benedictine spirituality can be incorporated in contemporary parish life. Benedictine spirituality understands something basic and primary about human nature and community which our modern and post-modern mindsets miss spectacularly. Before being rational and linguistic beings, we are bodies permeable and responsive to our environment, sensing and reacting to an infinity of stimuli, alternatively excited, startled, interested or afraid, disgusted, distressed, enraged. These feelings, these affects, are not impervious to reason and language of course.
The aim of education is learn to recognize, control, espouse, assuage them, as well as we can. However, as Thomas Aquinas acknowledged in the Middle Ages, these feelings are intractable or highly unpredictable agencies, and the only effective way of dealing with them is negotiating. Rather than reason and language, these feelings (or passions or affects) respond to purely physical activities: stress is calmed by a walk, anger by breathing deeply, fear by the reassuring bodily proximity of other people. This is why a healthy spirituality should not be first of all about precise wording, nor even stories (however important these elements obviously are), but about what we do with our bodies.
The fundamental factor that gives shape to Christianity is the dominical bodily gathering around a table to eat and drink in remembrance of Jesus – with all that this implies: moving our body somewhere, gathering together to sit, stand, kneel, sing, eat, drink. This is why the life of the parish, especially its liturgy, builds genuine political communities. Not first of all on the basis of individual rights, universal benefits, affirmative action, political correctness, and identity politics. Nor even primarily trying to establish a consensus on “common objects of love,” that is, on common good, however valuable this would certainly prove to be. Rather, liturgy in parish life provides a space that shapes us as a community by taking seriously our senses, our passions, our affects, and our feelings through giving full hospitality to our bodies.
Luigi Gioia holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, having been examined by Rowan Williams, and published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Gioia has taught theology in Rome, Paris and, most recently, Cambridge. He was Abbot of his monastic community in Italy. He is one of the most insightful commentators on monastic and priestly life today. In his book, The Wisdom of St. Benedict, Dr. Gioia shines the light of monastic spirituality on many aspects of the contemporary church. Dr. Gioia will be a plenary speaker at The 2021 Breck Conference on Monasticism & The Church June 24-25, 2021 at Nashotah House. Join us for this exciting conference!