Christian Asceticism

Foreword by Fr. Roberto Ferrari, OSB (Researcher in Mystical and Monastic Spiritual Theology) Anselm Stolz, the author of this book, was a Benedictine monk of the German abbey of Gerleve. He was called to Rome to teach theology at Sant'Anselmo, the Roman Benedictine college, until his early death from typhus in 1942. In his life and teaching, as his confrère Elmar Salman points out, he united Christian belief and Christian living, he not only talked the talk in books and lectures, he walked the walk, in his life and death. A lifetime later, another Benedictine professor, Gellért Békés, would recall how, when he arrived from his Hungarian monastery as a new student, his confrères left him to his own devices, and as he stood there in the dark, alone and somewhat bereft in a strange house and country, Anselm Stolz came up and greeted him - in Hungarian! - and made him feel welcomed and at home. This gesture of kindly fraternal charity by a professor to a new student inspired him. The end of Stolz's life was of a piece with this. Sent to minister to typhus patients in hospital, he caught the disease, and died of it, giving his life for others. Stolz taught that mysticism, in the sense of having a deep personal relationship with Jesus, was for everyone, not just the preserve of a spiritual élite - in this he was a precursor of the Second Vatican Council's emphasis on the universal vocation to holiness. As Salman says, this book "is the final stage of Stolz's journey towards perfection." It is, as Abbot Ogliari says "intended to provide inspiration for living with inner freedom and joy the following of Christ and his Gospel." So, in a succession of chapters, Stolz offers advice on the means to come closer to Christ, and, more importantly, to removing obstacles to Christ coming closer to us. He draws his teaching from the Scriptures and the writings of the saints, the Fathers and doctors, who have followed the same paths and so are reliable guides for us. The demands of the Gospel can seem frighteningly uncompromising, costing not less than everything. But if you have found the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field, if you have found Christ, everything falls into place. And there is always that comforting "law of graduality" to fall back on, we are on a pilgrim journey, returning to our Father, so it is a progress, a process, not all to be achieved at once. All you have to do, is respond to the call of the Master, putting one foot in front of the other, following Him. This book is your invitation to set out.

To Train His Soul in Books explores numerous aspects of this rich religious culture, extending previous lines of scholarly investigation and demonstrating the activity of Syriac-speaking scribes and translators busy assembling books for the training of biblical interpreters, ascetics, and learned clergy.

Students of church history and the monastic ascetic life will find this volume of much interest. Contained are three important documents of the early Christian Church: The Sayings of the Fathers, The Conferences of Cassian, and The Rule of Saint Benedict.Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and...

From meditation and fasting to celibacy and anchoritism, the ascetic impulse has been an enduring and complex phenomenon throughout history. Offering a sweeping view of this elusive and controversial aspect of religious life and culture, Asceticism looks at the ascetic impulse from a unique vantage point. Cross-cultural, cross-religious, and multidisciplinary in nature, these essays provide a broad historical and comparative perspective on asceticism--a subject rarely studied outside the context of individual religious traditions. The work represents the input of more than forty preeminent scholars in a wide range of fields and disciplines, and analyzes asceticism from antiquity to the present in European, Near Eastern, African, Asian, and North American settings. Asceticism is organized around four major themes that cut across religious traditions: origins and meanings of asceticism, which explores the motivations and impulses behind ascetic behaviors; hermeneutics of asceticism, which looks at texts and rhetorics and their presuppositions; aesthetics of asceticism, which documents responses evoked by ascetic impulses and practices, as well as the arts of ascetic practices themselves; and politics of asceticism, which analyzes the power dynamics of asceticism, especially as regards gender, cultural, and ethnic differences. Critical responses to the major papers ensure the focus upon the themes and unify the discussion. Two general addresses on broad philosophical and historical-interpretive issues suggest the importance of the subject of asceticism for wide-ranging but serious cultural-critical discussions. An Appendix, Ascetica Miscellanea, includes six short papers on provocative topics not related to the four major themes, and a panel discussion on the practices and meanings of asceticism in contemporary religious life and culture. A selected bibliography and an index are also included. The only comprehensive reference work on asceticism with a multicultural, multireligious, and multidisciplinary perspective, Asceticism offers a model not only for an understanding of a most important dimension of religious life, but also for future interdisciplinary study in general.

Barsauma was a fifth-century Syrian ascetic, archimandrite, and leader of monks, notorious for his extreme asceticism and violent anti-Jewish campaigns across the Holy Land. Although Barsauma was a powerful and revered figure in the Eastern church, modern scholarship has widely dismissed him as a thug of peripheral interest. Until now, only the most salacious bits of the Life of Barsauma—a fascinating collection of miracles that Barsauma undertook across the Near East—had been translated. This pioneering study includes the first full translation of the Life and a series of studies by scholars employing a range of methods to illuminate the text from different angles and contexts. This is the authoritative source on this influential figure in the history of the church and his life, travels, and relations with other religious groups.

Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement examines the ways in which Irenaeus and Clement understood what it means to be human. By exploring these writings from within their own theological perspectives, John Behr also offers a theological critique of the prevailing approach to the asceticism of Late Antiquity. Writing before monasticism became the dominant paradigm of Christian asceticism, Irenaeus and Clement afford fascinating glimpses of alternative approaches. For Irenaeus, asceticism is the expression of man living the life of God in all dimensions of the body, that which is most characteristically human and in the image of God. Human existence as a physical being includes sexuality as a permanent part of the framework within which males and females grow towards God. In contrast, Clement depicts asceticism as man's attempt at a godlike life to protect the rational element, that which is distinctively human and in the image of God, from any possible disturbance and threat, or from the vulnerability of dependency, especially of a physical or sexual nature. Here human sexuality is strictly limited by the finality of procreation and abandoned in the resurrection. By paying careful attention to these two writers, Behr offers challenging material for the continuing task of understanding ourselves as human beings.