Camaldoli: Teaching on Prayer

We will now analyze Blessed Paul Giustiniani’s doctrine on prayer. The hermit’s principal ideal, aim, or task is continual prayer (Lk 18:1), that is, constant union with God. There is no fixed time for mental prayer in the eremitic life, unlike other religious institutes, because prayer is to be unceasing, a kind of spiritual equivalent to breathing. How can one enter into this prayer? Blessed Paul takes up again the doctrine (then attributed to Saint Bernard) of Guigo II the Carthusian. This commonly-accepted monastic approach to prayer, called lectio divina or divine reading , can be explained as a ladder (Guigo’s Scala Claustralium) of four rungs: (1) lectio (reading), (2) meditatio (meditation), (3) oratio (prayer), and (4) contemplatio (contemplation).

(1) Lectio, as the initial and fundamental element (Coronese Constitutions 31), gives the entire procedure of four steps its name analogically. This reading is called divine because its object is divine revelation, the Word of God heard in faith. One seeks this Word either in the Bible (also heard read in its entirety each year in the liturgy) or in some other devout book faithfully echoing Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture.

(2) Meditatio or meditation is a careful thinking over of what has been read and focuses on very definite dogmatic and moral considerations . One needs an appreciation of the basic standards of interpreting Scripture and of its various senses. Meditation can also legitimately pass beyond what has just been read to other points gleaned outside the time of private prayer.

(3) Oratio makes use of the truths and sentiments found by meditation in any of an infinite multitude of possible acts of affective prayer. Ejaculatory prayer formulas could be used at this stage, such as the invocation of the name of Jesus as practiced in the Eastern Church, which Eastern practice would reinforce in the body by the fingering of beads, bows, and the like. Even though prayer most narrowly defined means asking God for something, yet its wider and widest senses, namely the ascent of the mind to God and colloquy with God, are equally relevant and ought not be neglected. Blessed Paul says he prayed, in the first place, by confession of his misery and unworthiness; then by adoration, confession (of praise), thanksgiving, invocation, awaiting, and desire. These acts of prayer agree with the more compact typology of 1 Tim 2:1: supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings.

(4) Contemplatio or contemplation moves from the many acts of the previous step to a single act. Beginners may achieve this level seldom and but briefly. The starting point of contemplation will later be called the prayer of simplicity by Bishop Bossuet and subsequent theologians. In order to enter into this state, Giustiniani bids us to be empty for and towards God, vacare Deo (cf. the English cognates vacuum and vacation ), disencumbered of all attachment to creatures and expectant like the hungry chick of Saint Romuald’s Brief Rule. This is the adoring silence of apophatism, which eventually can give birth to annihilation, an ecstatic absorption in God, and Blessed Paul’s experience of these resembles that of other mystics. Saint John of the Cross tells us (Ascent II 24:9): . . . God . . . is incomprehensible and above all, and therefore it befits us to go to God by the negation of all. And Aquinas (cited by Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge V:23) summarizes thus Pseudo-Dionysius’ interpretation of Ex 20:21: At the end of our knowledge, we know God precisely as unknown.

To ascend through these stages is to proceed from a solid grounding of the mind in truth to a more precious exercise of the will in hope and love, for character is in the will, not in the intellect (Archbishop Sheen, quoted in Reeves’biography, p.144). The effort this ascent requires must not be stinted, because, through the practice of the seven gifts, the divine movement of actual grace, which is the soul of prayer, comes to be received no longer violently, but connaturally.

The foregoing analysis will help us understand better Blessed Paul’s distinctive teaching on methodless prayer. The famous four grades elaborated by Guigo II, noted by both Blessed Paul and the redactors of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and just expounded do not constitute a method in the strict sense. They are, rather, moments in a movement of interiorization of the Word of God. And yet Giustiniani does admit of what Leclercq calls the method of prior asceticism , that is, of remote and proximate preparation for prayer. Remote preparation is living a holy life, which detaches the mind from worldly preoccupations and disposes it for that ascent to God which is, as we have seen, prayer’s broader definition. This remote preparation includes the practice of the virtues, liturgical worship, and discipline of the senses (the Camaldolese trinomium is solitude, silence, and fasting). Proximate preparation comprises the first two rungs of Guigo’s ladder, reading and meditation. Now beyond such somewhat methodical remote and proximate preparation, we must climb up to the third and even, if possible, to the fourth rung. At this point, Giustiniani’s counsel to eschew method comes fully into force, and with evident wisdom. Human planning and effort have served their purpose and run their course. They must now give place to the subtle groanings of the Spirit (Rom 8:26-27). His influence must be sought reverently and clung to tranquilly for as long as it lasts. If Blessed Paul requires a daily half hour of stillness in prayer, with a reverent and vigilant posture and in a sacred place, this is to assure that our own actions are not so unremitting as to block the Spirit’s initiatives. We should allow Him to lead us either to multiply acts of prayer, or to ascend to contemplation, or even to return to reading and meditation. And normally He will provide us with some word to hold fast patiently in our hearts (Lk 8:15), as Mary did (Lk 2:19, 51), to sustain what the Holy Fathers call the remembrance of God. The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom. . . . (Ps 36 (37):30; cf. Ps 1:2 and Jos 1:8).

The Camaldolese Benedictines

The identity of the Camaldolese Benedictine monk/nun has its beginning and its end in the subsistent relations of God, which by faith we call Father, Word, and Holy Spirit [cf. Jn 1:1 ff]. We are sharers in the divine nature [cf. I Pt 1:4] thanks to the incarnate Word, the one mediator Jesus Christ [cf. I Tm 2:5], a human being like us in all things but sin [cf. Hb 4:15]. In him and in his body we contemplate the fullness of the Godhead [cf. Col 2:9] and we find our full identity as God's sons and daughters. By the gift of the Holy Spirit we have been called to the monastic life in the Church, with whom we journey as pilgrims in the company of the women and men of this last year of the millennium, whose joys, hopes, anguish, and pain we share [cf. Vatican II, The Church in the Modern World].

In the Church we rejoice in the fellowship of the holy men and women who have lived according to the Rule of Saint Benedict and according to the example of his life [see Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues, book two]. Among the saints of the Benedictine Order shines Master Romuald, father of the Camaldolese monks and nuns. In the fall of 1999, gathering for our general chapter, we saw the assembly of our brothers and sisters as a workshop, a building site, an artist's studio, where we let our Teacher, the Holy Spirit, guide our hand. Our task was to paint a new icon of Saint Romuald. The two saints who told his story - Bruno Boniface and Peter Damian - described him as a person filled with the Holy Spirit, his warm and serene face lit by a gentle smile. As his image slowly took form under our contemplative gaze, we were filled with wonder. We did not view the image possessively, but seeing it as a grace we gave thanks. The icon is still a work in progress, but we can already make out the features of Romuald's face, revealing his gentleness and strength and reflecting the face of today's monks and nuns. The shape of his and our identity is clearer now, with lines drawn from our memory and our future.

We have begun our work, trusting in Saint Romuald's help and prayers like all the sick and needy who during his lifetime came to his cell. We intend to keep working on the new icon until our time comes to an end, and then other hands and other awestruck and contemplative gazes will gather around the unfinished image of Saint Romuald. The final brushstrokes will be applied to the golden background by the last monk and nun in the iconographer's studio.

Together with the image of Master Romuald, his first disciples also sketched a global vision of the monastic vocation, one in its source and manifold in its ramifications. The reference to the "threefold good" (triplex bonum, tripla commoda, tria maxima bona), from chapter four of The Life of the Five Brothers by Saint Bruno Boniface, is understood in a more dynamic sense today, as an efficacious symbol of a deep and rich mystery:

"a threefold advantage: the life of the monastery, which is what novices want; golden solitude, for those who are mature and thirst for the living God; and the preaching of the Gospel to the pagans, for those who long to be set free and to be with Christ" [in: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers (Big Sur: Hermitage Books, 1994), p. 95].

The distinction between a spiritual value (fellowship, solitude, martyrdom of love) and a place (cenobium, hermitage, mission) is essential. A value is not to be identified with a place, nor do they exactly overlap; yet they are related, and the one evokes and expresses the other. The three terms are not structured as a scale of values, nor do they follow one after the other in the monastic's personal journey, which can begin and end with any one of the three. The three terms are equal in dignity, in the sense that each one is able to lead the monastic to the fulfillment of his or her spiritual calling. Bruno Boniface reminds us of this in chapter seven of The Life of the Five Brothers:

"the three highest goods, any one of which is sufficient unto salvation: the monastic habit, the solitary life, and martyrdom" [in: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers, p. 111].

However, the three terms differ among themselves in ways that must be kept in mind, in order to give each of them its full value. Today as in the past, the common life and the solitary life take on institutional forms as, respectively, monastery and hermitage. The third element - witnessing love for Christ to the point of shedding one's blood in the service of the Gospel - is a pure grace. As an expression of unconditional love, it underlies and profoundly animates the other two elements. It is ordinarily expressed within the monastery or hermitage through what we call "monastic presence." But it can also find expression in the personal vocation of an individual monk or nun even outside monastic institutions. The three goods thus relate to, and interact with one another, and they cannot be reduced to a rigid institutional scheme.

The age-old pedagogical wisdom of monastic tradition has shown us that solitude can become "golden," that is, it can be lived as the expression and source of authentic vitality, only if the monastic has experienced life together for a long period and thus has been formed and trained for the single-handed spiritual combat that is the challenge, more demanding than any other, of the solitary life.

The threefold good is also experienced and expressed through a life of elected simplicity.

Since Saint Romuald's charism is characterized by an intrinsic dynamism, we should distinguish between his personal charism, its evolution in subsequent history, and the institutions which the Camaldolese have created in order to give the charism a concrete form. Romuald's charismatic experience never could and never can be totally translated into an institutional structure. Every time it has been so translated, in so far as the structure is unable to convey its entire meaning, the charism has in some way been betrayed. Thus the institution must continually return to, and draw from, the source out of which it sprang.

Within this horizon, the identity that comes to us from Romuald and the origins of Camaldoli remains relative, dynamic, and open. In the light of its origins and its possibilities of future development, our identity is always broader and deeper than anything we can express within a given historical moment and a particular cultural context. Its ramifications extend back into the remembered past, sink deep into the present, and reach far into a future waiting to be lived, explored, and known. A faithfulness both dynamic and creative is the only way we can respond to the One who says, "Behold! I am making the whole creation new" [Rev 21:5]. We can live faithfully only if we acknowledge our roots, our temporality, and our limitations, with humility and with a grateful joy. Here there is no room for arrogance or for competition with brothers and sisters who acknowledge the same father, although they have made different journeys in history (the Camaldolese hermits of Monte Corona, the Camaldolese nuns, etc.). The horizon before us is one of reconciled and complementary diversities.

The Mermaid

One sunny morning, I was crossing the town square of Negritos after Mass, when a small boy of about eight ran up and took my hand. “May I see the sirena please?” he asked. I searched in my vocabulary for the meaning of sirena and had a mental picture of Ulysses being lashed to the mast of his ship to stop him from following the enchanted sound of the sirens’ song which would lure him to his death. Something told me that, whatever the child wanted, it was not that. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t got a sirena,” I replied, thinking that, perhaps, it was a kind of sweet. Unlike the others who were to come, the boy believed me and ran off; and I immediately forgot his request. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a saga.

Two days later, there was a knock on my door, and a small group of secondary school kids were there wanting to see the sirena.

“I’m afraid I don’t have one,” I said, “but this is the second time I have been asked. What is a sirena?”

“Everybody says you have one,” they said accusingly. Then they explained that a sirena is a woman from the waist up but has the tail of a fish. It is the Spanish for mermaid – not a word I had ever had to use before. This was a very particular mermaid. She was ten years old, with fair, golden hair and blue eyes. According to the story which was widely believed, I had found her on the beach that was just outside my home; and she had a fish hook caught in her throat. I took her to the hospital next door and saved her life; and she gave me a scale of pure gold from her tail as a reward. I assured the boys that this tale was completely untrue, that I had never seen a mermaid in my life and don’t even believe that they exist. The boys went away sceptical and unsatisfied.

The number of people at the door who wanted to see the mermaid increased day by day; and, as the news spread, so did the area from which they came. It received a small paragraph in a newspaper and a radio station sent someone to check. Soon there was a crowd outside both my house and the hospital next door all day and every day. They came from far and near. I thought it was very funny and, apart from denying it when asked, I made no move to disillusion the crowd who would not take no for an answer anyway. On one occasion, however, when a group of schoolboys asked to see her, I said, “Yes.” They took a step back in fright because I hadn’t done this before.

“Do you want to see her or not? Now is your chance. You can go into all the rooms, and, if you see her, come and tell me, because I haven’t seen her myself yet.” They entered the house cautiously and began their search and then came out with sad faces, “There is no sirena,” one of them said as they went out with slumped shoulders, sad and defeated. But this did not stop the crowd from growing.

I was told that a Protestant pastor preached about it on Sunday. He said that this was another sign that the end of the world is coming – he was that kind of Protestant pastor – and he pointed out to his congregation, amidst the “alleluias” and “praise- the-Lords”, that they should note that this child of the devil is receiving hospitality from the Catholic priest, (“so we all know what side he is on!!”) A childless couple offered to adopt the mermaid, while other people scoured the beach for a sight of her parents “who must be looking for her anxiously.”

Many people asked themselves why I was lying, continuing to deny that I had a mermaid in my bedroom in a tank of sea water, when everybody knew that she was there. Obviously it was because I did not want the bishop to know, said some. Perhaps I had an unhealthy interest in her body, suggested others. No, said others, the reason is obvious. Everybody knows the mermaid has fair hair and blue eyes. Well, she is obviously not Peruvian. She is probably an English mermaid; and Fr David intends to smuggle her back to England when he goes on holiday in two months time.

Then the television cameras came; and people from Trujillo and Lima later told me they had seen the interview. The journalist and I had a good laugh before the camera was ready; and my denial that any mermaid was lurking in my bedroom was believed when I said it in the interview because, as everybody knows, people never lie on television.

It was only very recently, many years later, that I learnt where the story of the mermaid came from. The parish house is at sea level and looks out onto the beach. There is also a row of buildings which are facing the beach on one side and the road on the other: one of these is a primary school. On a hot summer day during the morning break in 1996, the auxiliary in charge of discipline in the playground caught two little boys climbing over the wall that separates the school from the beach, and he took them to the headmistress. The boys protested that they were not trying to escape. Nothing was further from their minds than playing truant. They had only climbed the wall to look for the mermaid.

“What mermaid?” the headmistress asked excitedly, and the boys saw that she actually believed them. Well, as you know, nothing delights small boys more than taking their headmistress for a ride, especially when this involves escaping from a punishment that is due to them. They made up the rest of the story on the spur of the moment, and it spread like wildfire through the town, gathering credibility and details as it went. I would love to know who the children were.

That should be the end of the story, but true stories don’t always end where they should. About two weeks after I thought everything had blown over and the mermaid forgotten, a young man of about thirty came to the door, wearing a tin hat and the overalls of his firm. He asked me if it was true that a mermaid had been put up in the presbytery. He was interested because he had actually seen a mermaid about the time mine was in the news. He was working at the lighthouse, which happens to be on the most westerly point of South America, when the beam of what he called his “pirate light” lit up a rock in the sea. A mermaid was sitting on the rock combing her hair. He watched her for some time. I asked him if he had told people about it, and he replied that he had. I don’t know if he had been drinking; but that provides another source for the story, different from the one I heard from a teacher in the primary school. Perhaps his sighting, whatever it was, suggested to the boys the story they told. A fisherman from the fishing village told me that mermaids are seen from time to time on that rock; but it is advisable to ignore them because those who go out for a closer look never come back. So there is something in the Ulysses story after all.a_new_foundation.html