May 2, 2002 – Memory of s. Athanasius
In Jesus' preaching there were several calls to radical detachment and
radical commitment. Invitation to
abandon father, mother, sister, brother, even oneself in order to seek the
only thing that mattered, to buy the precious pearl.
Those among the first Christians who wanted to adopt such a search and
such a renunciation as a permanent way of life could find in the religious
culture of the time, especially in the baptist movement to which John the
Baptist belonged and in which Jesus inserted himself through his baptism,
a mode of expression that corresponded to something deeply rooted in human
nature itself.
And so, radical ascetic tendencies that were widespread at the time of
Jesus came into contact with the Gospel, and were gradually transformed, during
the first few centuries of the Church, through a process corresponding to
what would now be called inculturation. Monastic
life, when it found its clearly defined Christian form, at the beginning of
the fourth century, could be considered as one of the first and best achieved
form of inculturation.
That those -- at times wild -- currents of asceticism could be channeled
into forms of authentic Christian living, was due to perceptive bishops like
Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, who became patriarch precisely the year
when Pachomius founded his first monastery.
In his Life of Anthony, which is not a biography in the modern sense, but
a treatise on monastic life, Athanasius wanted to do two things. He had understood that the crowds of ascetics
who fled to the desert could either be a wild movement that would disrupt
the Church or could be a grace for the Church. He therefore wanted on the one hand, in his
responsibility as Pastor of the Church of Egypt, to give a spiritual guidance
to the monks, and to give a spiritual orientation to their movement, and,
on the other hand, to convince the other bishops who, as a whole, were not
favorable at all to the monastic movement, that this could be a beautiful
example of Christian living.
He was successful on both fronts. And
because he was successful, the monastic tradition has remained alive in the
Church. It has been handed down through the centuries; and, through great
intermediaries as Benedict and Robert, Alberic and Stephen, has come down
to us as a personal call. We can say
that it is because of Athanasius that we are here today, celebrating as a
monastic community.
May this Eucharist be a sacrifice of praise to the Lord, for the grace
of our monastic vocation.