Great Spiritual Men and Women

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

• Macrina
• (327-379)

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Macrinas Life

• Oldest of 10 children born to a wealthy, devoutly
  Christian couple in Pontus.
• Pursued a life of virginity.
• Was very well educated and served as the chief
  teacher of her younger siblings.
• Founded a womens religious community.
• Founded a hospital for the care of the poor.
• Had an enormous influence on the spiritual and
  theological development of her famous brothers,
  Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa.

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Macrinas Life

• When there was no longer any necessity for them
  to continue their rather worldly way of life,
  Macrina persuaded her mother to give up her
  customary mode of living and her more
  ostentatious existence and the services of her
  maids, to which she had long been accustomed, and
  to put herself on a level with the many by
  entering into a common life with her maids,
  making them her sisters and equals rather than
  her slaves and underlings.
• -- From Gregory of Nyssas
• On the Life of St. Macrina

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Macrinas Spirituality

• Christian Spirituality Comes of Age
• No disparagement of the physical realm.
• No relegation of either married life or
  singleness to a secondary or less spiritual
  status.
• Balance between solitary and communal
  spirituality.
• Balance between longing for God and serving other
  people.

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Macrinas Death

• For the fact was that, in her last breath, she
  experienced nothing strange in the expectation of
  the change and displayed no cowardice towards the
  departure from life. Instead, she philosophized
  with high intelligence on what had been decided
  upon by her about this life from the beginning up
  to her last breath, and this made her appear to
  belong no longer to the world of men. For this
  reason, she seemed to me to be making clear to
  those present the divine and pure love of the
  unseen Bridegroom which she had secretly
  nourished in the depths of her soul, and she
  seemed to be communicating the disposition in her
  heart to go to the One she was longing for, so
  that, once loosed from the chains of the body,
  she might quickly be with Him. Truly, her race
  was towards the Beloved and nothing of the
  pleasure of life diverted her attention.
• -- From Gregory of Nyssas
• On the Life of St. Macrina

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

• John Cassian
• (ca. 360 ca. 435)

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Background Desert Spirituality

• Evagrius (late fourth century)
• Praktike the struggle against ones own
  passions, leading to apatheia (purity of heart)
• Psychike the struggle against demons
• Theologike the pure contemplation of God

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The Struggle Toward Apatheia

• Evagrius/Cassian Gregory/Thomas
• gluttony gluttony
• fornication lust
• covetousness covetousness
• anger anger
• dejection
• weariness/sloth sloth
• vainglory envy
• pride pride

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Cassians Life

• Probably born in Dobrudja (modern Romania), and
  educated in Greek and Latin.
• Spent time in the Monastery of the Cave in
  Bethlehem, perhaps in the mid-380s.
• Spent at least a decade in Egypt among the
  solitary hermits.
• Fled Egypt for Constantinople during a
  controversy in 399.
• Fled Constantinople for Rome after 403.
• Left Rome sometime after the barbarian invasion
  of 410.
• Wound up in Marseilles as a priest, and there he
  founded two monasteries, one for men and one for
  women.
• Wrote two major works on monasticism and
  spiritual life, and another on the incarnation
  during the Nestorian controversy.

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Cassians Spirituality

• The pursuit of apatheia (which Cassian calls
  purity of heart) through seeking virtue and
  avoiding extremes.
• The place of solitude.
• The essence of spirituality.

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Cassians Spirituality

• If we consider also the beginning of the call
  and salvation of mankind, in which, as the
  apostle says, we are saved not of ourselves, nor
  of our works, but by the gift and grace of God,
  we can clearly see how the whole of perfection is
  not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of
  God who has mercy Rom. 916, who makes us
  victorious over our faults, without any merits of
  works and life on our part to outweigh them, or
  any effort of our will availing to scale the
  difficult heights of perfection, or to subdue the
  flesh?.
• --From Institutes 12.11

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Cassians Spirituality

• And further, the purity of heart that they have
  acquired has taught them this above all, to
  recognize more and more that they are burdened
  with sin (for their compunction to their faults
  increases day by day in proportion as their
  purity of soul advances), and to sigh continually
  from the bottom of their heart because they see
  that they cannot possibly avoid the spots and
  blemishes of those faults which are ingrained in
  them through the countless triflings of the
  thoughts. And therefore they declared that they
  looked for the reward of the future life, not
  from the merits of their works, but from the
  mercy of the Lord, taking no credit to themselves
  for their great circumspection of heart in
  comparison with others, since they ascribed this
  not to their own exertions, but to divine grace.
• --From Institutes 12.15

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

• Gregory Palamas
• (ca. 1296 1359)

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Background Eastern Spirituality

• Apophaticism
• God is unknowable.
• Ignorance, not knowledge, is the condition of
  true spirituality.
• The goal of spirituality is not knowledge about
  God, but vision of God.
• Matt. 17 and 2 Cor. 12 are the paradigms.

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Background Eastern Spirituality

• Trinity!! Higher than any being, any divinity,
  any goodness!
• Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven!
• Lead us up beyond unknowing and light,
• up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic
  scripture,
• where the mysteries of Gods Word
• lie simple, absolute, and unchangeable
• in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.
• Amid the deepest shadow
• they pour overwhelming light on what is most
  manifest.
• Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen
• they completely fill our sightless minds
• with treasures beyond all beauty.
• -- From Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology

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Background Eastern Spirituality

• Hesychasm on Mt. Athos
• Transformation of the entire person through
  quietness and prayer.
• Jesus prayer.
• Physical posture.
• Breathing techniques.

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Gregory Palamas Life

• Born in Constantinople and also lived in
  Thessalonica.
• Spent time at Athos ca. 1318 and then returned
  there permanently in 1331.
• Came into fierce conflict with Barlaam (a
  Greek-Italian monk) in 1337.
• Palamas views were accepted at councils in
  Constantinople in 1341, 1347, and 1351.

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Gregory Palamas Spirituality

• The monks know that the essence of God
  transcends the fact of being inaccessible to the
  senses, since God is not only above all created
  things, but is even beyond Godhead. The
  excellence of Him Who surpasses all things is not
  only beyond all affirmation, but also beyond all
  negation it exceeds all excellence that is
  attainable by the mind. This hypostatic light,
  seen spiritually by the saints, they know by
  experience to exist. What it is, they do not
  pretend to know.
• -- From The Triads

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Gregory Palamas Spirituality

• This most joyful reality, which ravished Paul,
  and made his mind go out from every creature but
  yet return entirely to himselfthis he beheld as
  a light of revelation, though not of sensible
  bodies a light without limit, depth, height or
  lateral extension. He saw absolutely no limit to
  his vision and to the light which shone round
  about him but rather it was as it were a sun
  infinitely brighter and greater than the
  universe, with himself standing in the midst of
  it, having become all eye. (p. 38)
• -- From The Triads

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Gregory Palamas Spirituality

• Christ is transfigured, not by putting on some
  quality He did not possess previously, nor by
  changing into something He never was before, but
  by revealing to His disciples what He truly was,
  in opening their eyes and in giving sight to
  those who were blind. For while remaining
  identical to what He had been before, He appeared
  to the disciples in His splendour He is indeed
  the true light, the radiance of glory. He was
  divine before, but He bestowed at the time of His
  Transfiguration a divine power upon the eyes of
  the apostles and enabled them to look up and see
  for themselves.
• -- From The Triads

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

• Thomas à Kempis
• (ca. 1380 1471)

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Background Medieval Spirituality

• Three Kinds of Spirituality in the Middle Ages
• Sacramentalism with a strong emphasis on the
  Church as the locus of our contact with the
  divine. The mass is a great spectacle filling us
  with awe at the greatness of God and at his
  wisdom in granting to the Church hierarchy the
  power of administering the sacrament.
• Scholasticism a very knowledge-based approach
  to spirituality, which centers around logical
  consistency and sees the mind as the seat of
  spiritual life
• Mysticism a rejection of scholasticism in favor
  of a direct experience of God (similar to Eastern
  apophatic spirituality)

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Background Devotio moderna

• Geert Groote (1340-1384) and the Brethren of the
  Common Life.
• A movement of lay people and secular priests, not
  monks or the Church hierarchy.
• In part, a response to the corruption of the
  Church.
• Not a rejection of the Church, but such a strong
  emphasis on internal devotion that the Church
  hierarchy became somewhat marginalized.
• Key idea a detestation of mere formal religion
  and a desire for deep personal piety.

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Thomas à Kempis Life

• Born in Kempen, the Netherlands, to poor, devout
  parents.
• Educated from age 12 at the school of the
  Brethren of the Common Life.
• In 1399, joined the Augustinian monastery founded
  by his older brother John.
• In 1406, took monastic vows.
• Lived almost all of his long life in the
  monastery.

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Thomas à Kempis Spirituality

• We are too much held by our own passions, and
  too much troubled about transitory things. We
  seldom overcome even one vice perfectly, and are
  not set on fire to grow better every day and
  therefore we remain cold and lukewarm. If we were
  dead unto ourselves, and not entangled within our
  own selves, then we should be able to relish
  things divine, and to known something of heavenly
  contemplation. Our fervor and profiting should
  increase daily. But now it is accounted a great
  matter if a man can retain but some part of his
  first zeal.
• -- From On the Imitation of Christ 1.11

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Thomas à Kempis Spirituality

• The life of a good religious person ought to be
  mighty in all virtues, that he may inwardly be
  such as outwardly he seems to men. And with
  reason there ought to be much more within than is
  perceived without. We ought daily to renew our
  purpose and to stir up ourselves to fervor, as
  though we had for the first time today entered
  the Christian life. According to our purpose
  shall be the course of our spiritual profiting
  and much diligence is necessary to him who will
  profit much. And if he who firmly purposes often
  fails, what shall he do who seldom, or with
  little firmness, purposes anything?
• -- From On the Imitation of Christ 1.19

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Thomas à Kempis Spirituality

• Seek a convenient time to yourself and meditate
  often upon Gods lovingkindnesses. Forsake
  curious questionings, but read diligently matters
  which rather yield contrition to your heart than
  occupation to your head.
• -- From On the Imitation of Christ 1.20

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Thomas à Kempis Spirituality

• They who love Jesus for the sake of Jesus, and
  not for some special comfort of their own, bless
  him in all tribulation and anguish of heart, as
  well as in the highest comfort. Yea, although he
  should never give them comfort, yet they would
  ever praise him notwithstanding, and wish always
  to give thanks. Oh, how powerful is the pure love
  of Jesus, which is mixed with no self-interest,
  or self-love!
• -- From On the Imitation of Christ 2.11

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Great Spiritual Men and Women

• Philipp Jakob Spener
• (1635-1705)

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Background The 17th Century

• Luthers doctrine of justification by faith
• Lutheranisms emphasis on doctrine and the
  institutional church in the 17th century
• Descartes philosophical thought in the early
  17th century

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Background German Pietism

• Sola scriptura revisited
• Lay Bible study groups (collegiae pietatis)
• Focus on personal, individual experience of God
• Strong emphasis on evangelism, missions, and
  concern for the poor

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Speners Life

• He revolted against the spiritual deadness of
  Lutheranism while a student at the University of
  Strasbourg.
• In Frankfurt, he founded a number of collegiae
  pietatis.
• He wrote Pia Desideria in 1675.
• In 1686 he was appointed court preacher at
  Dresden, and then moved to Berlin in 1691.
• In 1694 he secured the founding of the University
  of Halle as a pietistic university.
• Lutheran Orthodoxy opposed his efforts throughout
  his life, and in 1695 he was charged with 283
  counts of heresy.
• In 1698 he withdrew from active life and devoted
  himself to pastoral work and writing.

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Speners Spirituality

• Six major proposals for the improvement of
  spiritual life
• Intensified study of the Bible as the means to
  enhanced personal devotion
• Fuller exercise by the laity of their spiritual
  priesthood
• Emphasis on the practical side of Christianity,
  culminating in a spirit of love
• Showing charity in religious controversy, with
  the aim of winning the heart rather than simply
  winning an intellectual argument
• Higher standards for spiritual life among
  professors and students
• Reform of preaching with a view toward edification

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Great Spiritual Masters

• Key Ideas Revisited
• Macrina Balance between focus on Christ and
  focus on service of others
• Cassian Complete reliance on God in the
  spiritual quest
• Palamas The paradigm of darkness being pierced
  by light
• Thomas à Kempis Turning inward for renewal in
  faith in the midst of ones busy-ness and
  external concerns
• Spener The community of the faithful looking at
  the Word of God together