New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering The Shared Ascetical Heritage

New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering the
Shared Ascetical Heritage
Sarah A. Wagner-Wassen
Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 58, Number 2, Spring 2023, pp.

151-184 (Article)
Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2023.a902002
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/902002
For content related to this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/related_content?type=article&id=902002
New Communities, Old Traditions:
Dangers in Recovering the
Shared Ascetical Heritage
Sarah A. Wagner-Wassen*
PRECIS
The twentieth-century publication of works of ancient Christian desert monasticism and
Eastern Orthodox texts had an influence on Western religious institutes, particularly in
communities formed after Vatican II, to have a “new charism” to bring monasticism into
conjunction with the modern world. One community in particular, the Monastic Family
of Bethlehem, is examined here for how borrowings from ancient or Eastern practices
resulted in highly problematic structures that violated the members’ internal forum and
hampered their spiritual formation. By analyzing the system of asceticism practiced in
the desert, particularly by Evagrius, with the view that it is an ordered system to restruc-
ture the self through practices to create inner freedom, we can understand why the prac-
tices adopted by the Monastic Family of Bethlehem failed.
Introduction
I n 1864, an English literary journal reviewed the controversial memoir of

the ex-Benedictine nun, Enrichetta Caracciolo.1 Just as the Italian nun
was warning of the immoral prison from which she escaped, as the reviewer
sternly warned, there were those in England trying to revive these barbaric
*English translations from the French are by the author of this essay.
1
Enrichetta Caracciolo, Memoirs of Henrietta Caracciolo, of the Princess of Forino, Ex-
Benedictine Nun, 2nd ed. (London: Bentley, 1864).
jour na l of ecumenica l studies

vol . 58, no. 2 (Spr ing 2023) © 2023
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152 Journal of Ecumenical Studies • 58:2
practices by becoming monks or nuns themselves. Father Ignatius (Joseph

Leycester Lyne) was presented as the prime example of such “mischievous
nonsense,” wearing “fantastic robes.” If St. Benedict would see him, the
reviewer judged, he “would clap him into the most uncomfortable quarters
at his disposal, and feed him with the bread of affliction and with the water
of affliction, until he had learnt to understand his own time better.” Of what
in 1864 was Father Ignatius ignorant? The reviewer noted his appreciation
for the “devoted women” evangelizing and doing works of charity but faulted
many of them for organizing into sisterhoods with “rules and costumes and
vows of obedience” and judged that, the more they imitated medieval pat-
terns and sought to put new wine into old wineskins, the more their ministry
suffered. Florence Nightingale was named as the right way for unmarried
women to act, while Lydia Sellon (the founder of the Society of the Most
Holy Trinity) was the example of the wrong way.2
While the rise of and opposition to English monasticism during the early
Tractarian years have been studied by others,3 the narrative underlying
Caracciolo’s memoir and the reactions to Father Ignatius and Lydia Sellon
are part of a larger context of monasticism in a post-Josephism and post-
Napoleonic world that tried to understand the philosophical meaning of an
ascetical community in an industrialized modern world. As so many historic
religious institutes had been shuttered, monastic movements arose more by
design than through organic development. Were these designs simply medi-
eval fantasy? If St. Benedict were writing his Rule today, would he, as the
reviewer in 1864 thought, have excised those rules, modes of dress, and
vows—or can such things still have value today? This was not merely a Prot-
estant concern; the Benedictine monk and scholar Jacques Leclercq also
noted the dangers inherent in historic rules, constitutions, or the retention
of monastic custom in vestigial form in practices that are obsolete in the
contemporary world—such as the kneeling posture of a novice when speak-
ing to a superior, a practice that continued even when its social meaning had
dramatically changed.4
2
See T. H., The Reader, vol. 4 (November 5, 1864) ( James Bohn, 1864), pp. 567–568.
3
On the anxiety over Anglican sisterhoods in particular, see John Shelton Reed, Glorious
Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism, 1st ed. (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt
University Press, 1996), pp. 201–208.
4
See Jacques Leclercq, The Religious Vocation, tr. The Earl of Wicklow (Dublin: Clonmore
and Reynolds, 1955), p. 66.
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Wagner-Wassen • New Communities, Old Traditions 153
We can see how questions such as these could have used the new fasci-
nation with patristic writers to find answers. While the editors of the Ante-
Nicene Fathers series took care to downplay any attraction to asceticism or
monasticism in the texts they translated and included in the volumes,5 by
the mid-t wentieth century the rediscovery and translation of many early
Christian ascetical texts culminated in Thomas Merton´s The Wisdom of the
Desert (1960), Derwas Chitty’s The City a Desert (1966), and Benedicta Ward’s
popular translation of the Apophthegmata Patrum (Wisdom of the Desert
Fathers, 1975). Evagrius of Pontus and his autochthonous synthesis of
Egyptian asceticism was also introduced to the West.6 At the same time,
translations of Otkrovennye rasskazy strannika duhovnomu svoemu otcu (A
Wanderer’s Revealed Tales to His Spiritual Father) were appearing in
Western languages,7 introducing the West to the Philokalia and the Jesus
Prayer and what seemed to be a less institutionalized experience of ascet-
icism learned from a “starets” (a monastic spiritual leader). Coinciding as
it did with the post-Vatican II movement for renewal and “new charism” in
religious life, many ascetical communities turned not to the continental
medievalism so feared in 1864 but to something much more antique and
Eastern.8
This recovery of a shared inheritance of monasticism and asceticism
offers a platform to bridge ecclesial divides. However, it can also present
several dangers, particularly in new or renewed communities that expressly
5
See Elizabeth A. Clark. “Contested Bodies: Early Christian Asceticism and Nineteenth-
Century Polemics,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 17 (Summer, 2009): 281–307; available at
https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.0.0252.
6
See Wilhelm Frankenberg, Evagrius Ponticus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912); Antoine Guillau-
mont, tr. and ed., Les six centuries des “Kephalaia gnostica”: édition critique de la version syriaque
commune et édition d’une nouvelle version syriaque, Patrologia orientalis 28:1 (Paris: Firmin–Didot,
1958); Antoine Guillaumont and Claire Guillaumont, intro., Évagre le Pontique, traité pratique
ou Le Moine, Scources chrétiennes 170–171 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1971); and Evagrius, The
Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian Studies Series 4, tr. John Eudes Bamberger (Kalam-
azoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1972).
7
See Reinhold von Walter, tr. and ed., Ein russisches Pilgerleben (Berlin: Petropolis Verlag
and Verlag die Schmiede, 1925); Reginald M. French, tr., The Way of a Pilgrim (London: Philip
Allan, 1930); Jean Laloy, tr., Récits d’un pèlerin à son père spirituel (Chêne-Bourg, Switzerland:
Éditions de la Baconnière, 1943); and L. Bortolon, tr., Racconti di un pellegrino russo, raccolti ed
annotati da Jean Gauvain (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1956).
8
For an example of this feeling of modern monastic inferiority, see George Every, “The
Decay of Monastic Vision,” Theoria to Theory; An International Journal of Science, Philosophy, and
Contemplative Religion 1 (October, 1966): 20–27.
19632-JES58.2.indd 153 6/27/23 10:35 AM

seek to put into practice aspects of monastic practice from a different time
or place. While the ancient desert literature provides a venue for ecumenical
conversation on asceticism and monasticism, it should also be remembered
that any religious community is a localized and personalized entity that
intersects with pre-existing cultural and social mores and norms. Reinsti-
tuting the structures and spirituality of nascent monasticism in new com-
munities may present new dangers in today’s context. It can particularly
risk “sectarian drift,” wherein charismatic superior-founders and their per-
sonal interpretation of spirituality become the defining essence of the
community.9
Other things that cause a religious institute to isolate and drift include:
(1) the idea that they are better than everyone else;10 (2) the belief that their
leader is very special, messianic, and has a direct line with God;11 (3) the
belief that they will save the church;12 (4) an intolerance of disagreement;13
(5) secrecy;14 (6) a superior who no longer obeys the rules of their commu-
nity or customary or of the church (a culture of exception);15 (7) the encour-
agement of more extreme asceticism;16 (8) a superior who becomes the only
source of spiritual guidance;17 (9) contempt for the human being in favor of
“the spiritual”;18 and (10) considering the spiritual director to be the only
mediator of God’s will.19
Different communities experienced monastic ressourcement in different
ways, but, because of the extensive reports and investigations in the wake of
abuse allegations, here we will use—as an example of the peril of trying to
reconstitute the practices of the early monastics or simply borrowing
structures from Eastern Orthodox monasticism—the Monastic Family of
9
See Dysmas de Lassus, Risques et dérives de la vie religieuse (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2020),
pp. 37–38 and 59–60. See also Hildegund Keul, “Vulnerability, Vulnerance, and Resilience—
Spiritual Abuse and Sexual Violence in New Spiritual Communities,” in Religions 13 (May, 2022);
available at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13050425.
10
See de Lassus, Risques et dérives, p. 107.
11
See ibid., pp. 116–117.
12
See ibid., p. 114.
13
See ibid., pp. 123–124.
14
See ibid., pp. 139–140.
15
See ibid., pp. 111–112.
16
See ibid., pp. 220–223.
17
See ibid., pp. 251–252.
18
See ibid., p. 263.
19
See ibid., p. 298.
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Bethlehem,20 one of the new Roman Catholic communities that, under its
founder, tried to put into practice specific practices of the Apoptheghmata
Patrum. As an example of this, the customary of the Community of Bethle-
hem instructed its members: “Since their bodies no longer appear to them,
the nuns always inform their prior without delay of any unusual bodily
symptom . . . with as much clarity and sobriety and moderation. They are
careful not to let their imagination amplify the symptoms of their illness or
distort reality. They keep silent discretion about themselves, both during and
after the illness . . . according to the spirit of the desert, monks do not talk
about their health to their relatives.”21
This rule seems to be referencing two passages in the Philokalia. One
remarks that beginners who are lacking in zeal find themselves in panic and
confusion by any small need or slight illness.22 The other makes a point that
some sick persons allow their illness to possess them completely, thus vexing
the healthy who look after them.23 “The spirit of the desert,” however, is
describing the Western practice of enclosure in terms of retreat to the desert
of the early ascetics, for whom illness was not a subject of any particular
reserve. Nonetheless, in the testimony of one nun, her father came to the
monastery for a few days just after she had been released from the hospital
after a serious operation. He left without being told about it, as the nun
believed she was not to “worry anyone” about it.24 This detachment from
bodily illness resulted in the development of chronic health issues that were
left undertreated for years for some sisters.25
This conflation of Western monastic practice with Eastern terms results
in totalizing the exclusion of a nun from her family. While having the free-
dom to speak about an illness can seem trite, this can leave the religious
vulnerable to abuse in institutions subject to sectarian drift, as it cuts off any
20
Famille monastique de Bethléem, de l’Assomption de la Vierge et de saint Bruno.
21
Règle de Vie Livre III, 46—L’ascèse corporelle, le jeûne, la veille et la maladie, n° 579;
quoted in “Aide aux Victimes de dérives dans les mouvements Religieux en Europe et à leurs
Familles: Ces Temoignages Concernent la Communaute Bethleem,” p. 82; available at https://
www.avref.fr/fichiers/TEMOIGNAGE-collectif-B%C3%A9thl%C3%A9em.pdf (hereafter,
“Aide aux Victimes”).
22
See Eugenie Kadloubovsky and Gerald Eustace Howell Palmer, trs., Writings from the
Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart (London: Faber and Faber, 1975), p. 204.
23
See ibid., p. 371.
24
“Aide aux Victimes,” p. 82.
25
See L’envers du décor, “Bethléem: témoignage de Luz Mawada”; accessed February 13,
2023, at https://www.lenversdudecor.org/Bethleem-temoignage-de-Luz-Mawada.html.
19632-JES58.2.indd 155 6/27/23 10:35 AM

chance for an external party to raise a flag about inadequate or absent treat-
ment. Instead of adopting pieces of ideas and adding to them an existing
framework, a more fruitful and healthy method of ressourcement is one that
understands the underlying psychological purposes of those monastic prac-
tices and implements those principles in culturally appropriate ways.
I. Starets and Spiritual Direction

A particular example of extrinsic borrowing in the Monastic Family of Beth-
lehem was the role of the abba/starets in formation. Establishing the Virgin
Mary as the abbess had already been practiced in some French monastic
communities.26 However, in the Monastic Family of Bethlehem, the Virgin
Mary was presented as the founder, prior, and starets. This was not merely
in a metaphorical sense; as Mary was the founder of the community, it had
a celestial origin. As she was the prior, she infallibly manifested the divine
will through the earthly prior. She was the starets, who has the key to spiri-
tual life;27 because the prior spoke for Mary, each prior also became a starets.
A “starets” is a type of spiritual guide. This term is largely known in the
West through The Way of a Pilgrim, which is based on the Master-Abba figure
seen in the Apophthegmata Patrum. However, in Eastern monasticism, the
starets is usually not bound to a hierarchical position, and it may be consid-
ered a disadvantage to have a starets who is also a superior.28 A starets can
also have a role outside of an institution, usually sought out freely by a person
to provide an answer to a particular question. While some Eastern Orthodox
writers have said that the starets should be obeyed, in the Pilgrim there is
little sense that one is externally bound to follow the word given one by a
starets.29 It is also important to note that the Pilgrim describes himself as a
“homeless wanderer of the humblest birth who roams from place to place.”30
This description and the whole narrative the Pilgrim presents thereafter
26
See Mechtilde de Bar, Constitutions Sur la règle de Saint Benoît pour les religieuses bénédic-
tines de l’adoration perpétuelle du Saint Sacrement (Paris and Lyon: Périsse Frères, 1851), chap. 2.
27
See “Aide aux Victimes,” p. 13.
28
See Mother Maria, “The Russian Startzi,” in her The Fool and Other Writings, Library of
Orthodox Thinking (Whitby, N. Yorkshire, U.K.: Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Assump-
tion, 1980), p. 19.
29
It could be noted here that this construct is similar to that of a fatwa.
30
Reginald M. French, tr., The Way of a Pilgrim (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco,
1991), p. 3.
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closely resemble that which the Rule of Benedict calls “gyrovagues,” the very
worst type of monk.31
One could defend the Pilgrim by saying that he was not really a monk,
but that may be the point. The abbas of the Apophthegmata Patrum, as well
as many elders of early modern Orthodox monasticism, lived alone or with
an informal group living idiorrhythmically. Idiorrhythmic monasticism, a
noncommunal form of monasticism that does not require poverty or obedi-
ence to an abbot, was widely practiced on Mount Athos before Greek inde-
pendence.32 It was exactly this monastic form that—if one accepts Gregory
the Great’s Vita Benedicti as describing the same person who wrote the Rule
under the same name—Benedict specifically rejected and reformed into
cenobitic monasticism. The Rule of Benedict demands a vow of stability, and
it is within this stability of an organized community that the monk is to
receive spiritual formation. Without such stability, the Pilgrim found his
spiritual formation by listening to the starets.
Modern Western monasticism, in contrast, is deliberately hierarchical,
and thus this placement of the Virgin Mary as fulfilling all roles of authority
is a natural consequence of placing her within this hierarchical structure.
When combined with the authority of the earthly hierarchy, particularly
when it comes to the transparency of thoughts, this causes spiritual direction
to become an expression of divine authority. Complete openness to the
abba/starets is an idea encouraged in the East, which is not only necessary
to gain an understanding of a person in an unstructured community, but it
is also meant to prevent prelest, as will be discussed below in Part III. The
Monastic Family of Bethlehem introduced this idea into their cloistered
community and gave members no control over to whom they would be
revealing every private thought. Upon entrance, every member was assigned
an “angel” whom the member was to visit in their cell to discuss life in the
community, which the angel would relate in a detailed report to the prior.
The prior would then go to the members and tell them that they must
31
See Benedictus de Nursia, RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict, tr. Timothy Fry (Collegeville,
MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), 1.10-11 (hereafter, RB). This is quite a negative assessment of what
in the East was a common form of monasticism: two or three monks who become joint hermits
or travelers, a mode to which John Cassian himself bore testimony with his travels with
Germanus.
32
See Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, 2nd ed., rev. and extended (Limni,
Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2014), p. 275.
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practice transparency of heart in order not to fall into temptation. After this,
new members were expected to empty their thoughts to the prior.33
This led to numerous problems, with a major problem rising from the fact
that the office of prior and starets was automatically combined, even if a new
prior did not have the spiritual maturity to have the role of a starets. The
prior would also share these thoughts with the prior general, who would use
the information to make decisions about the member.34 This process closely
resembles the Jesuit practice of manifestation of conscience, a practice that
has been the subject of much controversy and that was limited by decree
from the Vatican.35 It must be considered how a practice that had been con-
sidered problematic enough to be the subject of Vatican legislation was
allowed to be observed in a new community, simply under another name.
This total openness to the starets allowed the leaders of the Monastic
Family of Bethlehem to put the members in complete emotional, moral, and
intellectual dependency to them, so that the members could no longer even
discern or judge for themselves what was right or wrong. The starets was
considered to be all-k nowing and all-w ise—the reference point for every-
thing and the judge of everything.36 In this system, the idea of “consent”
becomes superfluous, even when speaking of a nonphysical act such as spir-
itual guidance. The end result is spiritual abuse, which can be defined as:
A spiritual and psychological mistreatment of a person, which results in
weakening or even destroying him or her and making him or her psycho-
logically and spiritually dependent. Spiritual abuse occurs when someone
. . . uses his or her position of authority to control or dominate one or more
people. Spiritual abuse also occurs when a Christian leader uses others to
satisfy some of his or her own psychological or emotional needs or the
33
See “Aide aux Victimes,” pp. 19–20.
34
See “Exclusive: A Former Monastic Sister of Bethlehem Looks Back,” April 3, 2021, at
https://gloria.tv/post/8xLg7gS9pNdjALUWdnfad4SRW.
35
See The Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, “Decree Quemadmodum,”
December 17, 1890; Arthur Devine, “Commentary on the Decree Quemadmodum, of the Sacred
Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, on Manifestation of Conscience, Holy Communion,
and Extraordinary Confessors,” in his Convent Life, or, The Duties of Sisters Dedicated in Religion
to the Service of God: Intended Chiefly for Superiors and Confessors, with Commentary on the Decree
“Quemadmodum” (London: R. Washbourne, 1897); and Una Coogan, “Is the Ignatian Expec-
tation of the Manifestation of Conscience in Light of Canon 220 a Realistic Prospect?” thesis,
KU Leuven Bijzondere Faculteit Kerkelijk Recht, 2019.
36
See “Exclusive: A Former Monastic Sister of Bethlehem Looks Back.”
19632-JES58.2.indd 158 6/27/23 10:35 AM

needs of the institution he or she leads . . . Spiritual abuse is an abuse of

authority which is further aggravated by the use of divine authority to dom-
inate a person or persons.37
Spiritual abuse often happens during the course of spiritual counseling,

but, within the intensive spiritual direction of a religious institute or the
formation of novices, the risk of an abusive relationship is even more possi-
ble. This most often occurs when the counselor misunderstands the self-
disclosures and self-revelations of the counselee as indicating a real intimate
relationship, or when the counselee misunderstands their revelations as
establishing an intimate relationship. This is a delusion, because not only is
the self-d isclosure usually not mutual, as one would expect in a relationship
of true equals, but the counselee has made these disclosures within a certain
framework of presentation with the counselor, as a free expression of trust
within a certain mode of professional relationship.38
When the heart is forced open—what in canon law is called the internal
forum—an act of violence has been committed. As de Lassus wrote:
But, it will be said, she consented since she was the one who opened herself.
This would be to ignore how consent can be obtained by seduction, manipu-
lation, abuse of authority, or other means. We are not in the realm of the flesh,
but in that of the spirit, which is more subtle. It is possible to force someone
without him realizing it, or without him daring to say no because he has in
front of him an authority he respects, even if he feels in his heart that there
is something wrong. The failure would be even more serious if it came from
the prior, because authority and trust would make it much more difficult to
refuse and freedom would not be respected. . . . To ask for transparency in the
area of thought or conscience . . . is an abuse of power.39
This sort of spiritual manipulation has been recognized as a form of

grooming, putting the victim in a state of “religious duress” due to the “rev-
erential fear” of the perpetrator by the victim.40 In the East, the starets is
37
Jacques Poujol, Abus spirituel: S’affranchir de l’emprise (Paris: Empreinte temps présent,
2015), pp. 9–12; cited in de Lassus, Risques et dérives, p. 300.
38
See Sheila M. Murphy, A Delicate Dance: Sexuality, Celibacy, and Relationships among
Catholic Clergy and Religious (New York: Crossroad, 1992), pp. 33–34.
39
De Lassus, Risques et dérives, p. 276.
40
See Jason D. Spraitz and Kendra N. Bowen, “Religious Duress and Reverential Fear in
Clergy Sexual Abuse Cases: Examination of Victims’ Reports and Recommendations for
Change,” Criminal Justice Policy Review 32 ( June, 2021): 484–500.
19632-JES58.2.indd 159 6/27/23 10:35 AM

occasionally said to gain special knowledge about a disciple, but it is not

assumed that a starets is a mystic in the sense that obedience is not seen as
following any special revelation of God to the elder. Psychological freedom,
according to one elder of Mt. Athos, is absolutely basic. If the elder has a
candidate come to him who does not have psychological freedom, he will
either send him back home hoping he may mature into freedom or send him
to a monastery with a highly structured way of life. Full joy and happiness
come only with freedom, and it is the role of the spiritual father to lead the
disciple into this spiritual freedom.41 The elder should not make every life
decision for the monk. “God has to take the lead.” If they express the desire
to study or travel or work, the elder will bless them. It is most essential that
they are free and open.42 The role of the spiritual father is to encourage and
to be a mediator but not to get between God and the monk. The monk “has
to be left to face God.”43
Sometimes, it is the desire of the novices to turn over their formation
entirely to an outside authority. De Lassus said that this is a particular dan-
ger for young persons who might abdicate their responsibility and submit
unconditionally to someone who will incarnate the will of God over them,
thereby removing their will and, therefore, their task of discernment. At first,
this quickly produces results, but the end result is an imbalance “worse than
the evil it was meant to fight.”44 De Lassus carefully noted that monastic
obedience is not equivalent to a vow of total trust. “In practice, a vow of trust
is tantamount to renouncing one’s discernment and conscience, which is
never permitted and can, of course, never be demanded. Obedience is pos-
sible because it concerns acts, trust touches the deep intimacy of the person
and can never be forced, because it is simply impossible.”45 To turn over the
entirety of one’s discernment and conscience to another destroys the self,
which is the source from which the religious vocation is supposed to grow:
Obedience, which should teach us to love, can be used to enslave even the
intelligence and become servile submission, even against one’s conscience,
41
See M. Basil Pennington, The Monks of Mount Athos: A Western Monk’s Extraordinary
Spiritual Journey on Eastern Holy Ground (Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2003),
p. 195.
42
See ibid., p. 197.
43
Ibid., p. 196.
44
45
Ibid., p. 127.
19632-JES58.2.indd 160 6/27/23 10:35 AM

renouncing responsibility for one’s actions and all personal thought. The
humility that should put us in the truth about ourselves can turn to
the destruction of the legitimate self-esteem, necessary to life. The gift of
oneself, which is a capital spring in a religious vocation, can be pushed to
the point of becoming a negation of oneself, which is why we speak of psy-
chic murder.46
Mother Maria Gysi’s description of the role of the starets turned the idea
completely around; it is not the disciple who must shed his or own self but
the starets. “It is obvious that [obedience to the starets] is only safe and on
the whole possible, when the starets has died to himself and has buried his
own will in God; and only if he has the particular charisma of discern-
ment.”47 Ignatius Brianchaninov argued strongly that “it is a terrible business
to take upon oneself duties (of eldership) which can be carried out only by
order of the Holy Spirit and by the action of the Spirit. It is a terrible thing
to pretend to be a vessel of the Holy Spirit when all the while relations with
Satan have not been broken, and the vessel is still being defiled by the action
of Satan (i.e., dispassion has not yet been achieved)!”48
Discernment is the ability to recognize temptations and weaken their
influence by means of an analytical understanding of what is happening.
“This detached observation of one’s mental processes enables one to remain
tranquil and focused, so that the passions are no longer aroused and one is
no longer drawn into one’s thoughts as they arise. The ascetic who cultivates
the art of discernment is thus learning to break the affective power of his
mental content.”49 In John Cassian’s Second Conference, discernment is
learned under the guidance of an elder.50 By opening the thoughts to a spir-
itual guide, the monk is helped in the process of sorting out which thoughts
are good and which are evil. By verbalizing the thoughts to an elder, the
thought will lose some of its evil venom; as Cassian said, “an evil thought
46
Ibid., p. 40.
Mother Maria, “The Russian Startzi,” p. 18.
47
48
Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, tr. Archi-
mandrite Lazarus Moore ( Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 1983), pp. 43–45 and
92–96.
49
David E. Linge, “Leading the Life of Angels: Ascetic Practice and Reflection in the
Writings of Evagrius of Pontus,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68 (September,
2000): 556.
50
See Conferences, especially 2, XI.6, in John Cassian, The Conferences, Ancient Christian
Writers 57, Boniface Ramsey, tr. and annotation (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), p. 93.
19632-JES58.2.indd 161 6/27/23 10:35 AM

sheds its danger when it is brought out into the open . . . Its dangerous
promptings hold sway in us as long as these are concealed in the heart.”51
This sort of “manifestation of the conscience” should, or ought to be, dif-
ferent from a simple confession of sins or faults. The reason for constant
self-revelation to the elder is because the spiritual life is unseen and hid-
den, open only to the purest heart. 52 By this revelation, any developing
variance between the inner life and the outer actions is made manifest and
can be corrected. “No virtue,” said Cassian, can be “perfectly attained or
endure without the grace of discretion.”53
It must also be considered how making the Virgin Mary the starets
obscures the fact that the relationship that the disciple has with the starets
is meant to be temporary. Mother Maria said, “For his disciple the staretz
must be a clear mirror in which he can perceive his true face ‘the bearer of
divine measures on which the disciple can depend until he himself learns to
see.’ ”54 The disciple’s obedience is not to put the disciple into the position of
unchanging infantilism, but it is a way to seek interior freedom from egocen-
tric desires in order to place Christ, not the starets, in the center of one’s
being.55 Mother Maria explained that the starets functions as a sort of icon:
“The staretz only represents, transfers, is but an ikon, for the intervening
time until the disciple himself grows strong in discernment, prayer and com-
bat.”56 The disciple will, if successful, in turn also become a starets.
The elder of Mt. Athos criticized the West for replacing spiritual pater-
nity with spiritual direction, which he characterized as an exercise of power
rather than an expression of the need to have help beyond oneself to find
God. Spiritual paternity means allowing the disciple freedom, even the free-
dom to do things contrary to the wishes of the elder and to make mistakes
and sin because, through this, the disciple grows and comes back to God. In
all this, the elder prays and groans through the night for the disciple.57 This
is not dissimilar from the abbot in the Rule of Benedict, wherein Christ is
often referred to as a “Father,” which reflects the Evagrian idea of the abba
Conferences, 2, X.3, in ibid., p. 91.

51
52
See Conferences, 2, XI.7, in ibid., p. 93.
53
Conferences, 2.IV.4, in ibid., p. 87.
54
55
See Ivana and Tim Noble, “The Starets-Disciple Relationship according to Mother Maria
Gysi,” Baptistic Theologies 7 (Autumn, 2015): 93.
56
57
See Pennington, Monks of Mount Athos, p. 196.
19632-JES58.2.indd 162 6/27/23 10:35 AM

as a source of spiritual generation.58 By following the commands of the abba,

one participates in this spiritual birthing and is led from ignorance to knowl-
edge of God.59 But, if there is no good spiritual elder available, said Brian-
chaninov, “it is better for an ascetic to be without one altogether than to
submit himself to an inexperienced one.”60 He cited the saying of Abba Poe-
men in the Apophthegmata Patrum, who allowed a disciple to leave his abba
since the abba was harming his soul.61
Spiritual formation is meant to be a transformation of the self. For the
desert ascetics, the goal was “the reconstitution of the prelapsarian self in
order to unite it with God.”62 This is not foreign to Western monasticism; the
Rule of Benedict is, as the last chapter states, “one for beginners,” indicating
that it understands itself as setting a path for monastic development, not the
end goal of it.63 Once the Rule is mastered, the monk is expected to move on
to deeper work of spiritual formation. Leclercq observed, “even down to the
later middle ages, the common life was moreover considered to be one for
beginners. Once he had reached spiritual maturity, the religious had to fol-
low his own personal road face to face with God.”64 The Rule of Benedict
allows the eremitical or anchoritic life only after a period of time spent in a
monastery to rid one of the initial fervor and training to fight the devil in
single combat.65 The retrieval of nascent monasticism tended, however, to
conceptualize that ascetism through the lens of repression and mortification.
More recent research, however, has shown that the Evagrian monasticism
58
See Gabriel Bunge, Spiritual Fatherhood: Evagrius Ponticus on the Role of the Spiritual
Father (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2016), p. 29.
59
See ibid., p. 13.
60
Brianchaninov, The Arena, p. 43.
61
See Benedicta Ward, tr. and intro., The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks,
Penguin Classics (London and New York: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 61 and 102.
62
Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late
Antique Monasticism, Studies and Texts 213 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
2021), p. 6. See also Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H. Hutton, eds., Technologies
of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press,
1988), p. 18.
63
“Regulam autem hanc descripsimus, ut hanc observantes in monasteriis aliquatenus vel
honestatem morum aut initium conversationis nos demonstremus habere,” RB 73.1, p. 295.
64
Leclercq, The Religious Vocation, p. 81.
65
RB, chap. 1. That being an anchorite was allowed only after a period of formation is also
attested to in the Apophthegmata Patrum; see Benedicta Ward, ed., The Wisdom of the Desert
Fathers: The Apophthegmata Patrum (the Anonymous Series), Fairacres Publication 48 (Oxford,
U.K.: S.L.G. Press, 1975), p. 34, no. 111.
19632-JES58.2.indd 163 6/27/23 10:35 AM

that influenced Cassian and the West—and also the East—was greatly con-
cerned with the reformation of the self. This goal of becoming the ideal self
is reflected in Mother Maria’s description of the starets as an icon.
II. Obedience
If the religious are supposed to transform themselves, and the formation
includes obedience, then the path can seem relatively simple. One common
issue, however, is a misunderstanding of the virtue of obedience and how it
functions in the community. The customary of the Monastic Family of
Bethlehem instructed a member to promise obedience to the Virgin Mary
so that she would “commit herself, in the docility of Mary to every Will of
the Father . . . to the directives she receives from her leaders.”66 The way
Mary obeyed God was to be the model of obedience that the religious was
to emulate. The stories from the desert provide very striking examples of
obedience, from charming stories of the disciple John watering a dead
stick67 to the shocking story of the monk who was told to throw his own son
into the river.68 When the Rule of Benedict says that the monk is to obey
the abbot as Christ, this principle within the context of those desert stories
gives rise to an interpretation of unquestioning submission to any order.
For many religious today, “obedience” determines all of their external
actions; to raise a complaint about the conduct or expectations of a superior
often invites a charge of “disobedience,” which is grounds for dismissal in
Roman Catholic canon law.69
The warning about the “false monks,” whom the Master and Benedict
called “sarabaites,” is predicated on their lack of obedience to anyone or
anything. They “have as their law the willfulness of their own desires, what-
ever they think and decide, that they call holy, and what they do not want,
66
Règle de Vie, Livre II, 12, Je promets obéissance à la Vierge Marie, n° 230; quoted in “Aide
aux Victimes,” p. 78.
67
Institutes 4, XXIV, 1, in John Cassian, The Institutes, Ancient Christian Writers 58, tr. Bon-
iface Ramsey (New York: Newman Press, 2000), pp. 90–91.
68
Institutes 4, XXVII, in ibid., pp. 92–93; also in Vitae Patrum, Of Obedience, no. 8, in
Benedicta Ward, ed., The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, Penguin Classics
(London and New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2003), p. 142.
69
See Codex Iuris Canonici 1983, canon 696, §1.
19632-JES58.2.indd 164 6/27/23 10:35 AM

that they consider forbidden.”70 In his discussion of obedience, the Master

returned to the sarabaites and identified their problem of choosing for them-
selves their own rule as having a very basic cause: “since no one wants to be
thwarted in his self-interest.”71 The problem identified is one not unknown
to the desert fathers; the self-i nterest to become a monk runs counter to the
monastic idea of ridding oneself of self-i nterest. For this reason, the ascetic
life was described as one of renunciation and sacrifice.72 The temptation,
however, to even greater austerity and more extreme asceticism can be seen
throughout monastic history. Cassian warned about the dangers of too
much ascetic restraint.73 Basil the Great also referred to this problem, say-
ing, “since the individual cannot decide for himself what is expediency, he
often chooses for himself a work that is harmful.”74 The eagerness of the
beginner to take on such amazing feats of asceticism immediately was per-
haps an aspect of monasticism that the Master and Benedict wished to reg-
ulate carefully. By investing a great deal of authority in the abbot, the abbot
could disallow the monks from taking on extreme practices by putting them
under the vow of obedience.
The idea that “no one wants to be thwarted in his self-interest” can also be
termed “psychological egoism” in the formulation of modern psychology—
the thesis that we are always deep-down motivated by what we perceive to
be in our own self-i nterest. This idea was present in Aristotle in nascent
form.75 When Cassian praised the monk John for watering a dead stick for a
year under obedience of his abba, he said that John’s accomplishment was to
prove “whether this virtue came from genuine faith and profound simplicity
of heart, or whether it was put on and as it were constrained and only shown
in the presence of the bidder.”76 “Purity of heart,” “custody of the mind,” and
“singleness of mind” are terms in the vocabulary of early Christian desert
asceticism that “regularly denote assuming responsibility not only for one’s
70
Luke Eberle, tr., The Rule of the Master: Regula Magistri, Cistercian Studies Series 6
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1977), I.8–9 (hereafter RM). Cf. RB I.8–9.
71
RM VII.27.
72
See Graiver, Asceticism of the Mind, pp. 184–185.
73
See Conferences, 2, XVII.2, in Cassian, The Conferences, p. 100.
74
Quoted in Augustine Holmes, A Life Pleasing to God: The Spirituality of the Rules of St
Basil, Cistercian Studies Series 189 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2004), p. 190.
75
See Charles H. Kahn, “Aristotle and Altruism,” Mind XC, no. 357 (1981), p 20, at https://
doi.org/10.1093/mind/XC.357.
76
Institutes 4, XXIV, 1, in Cassian, The Institutes, p. 90.
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actions but also for one’s inward response to the mental content that wells
up within the self from beyond its control—from beyond the voluntary per-
sonality.”77 The Asketikon of Basil the Great reflects this insistence on actions
without ego when it says, “It is impossible to give accurate form to our
work unless it is completed in accordance with the will of him who gave
the charge.”78 Likewise, the Rule of Benedict says that an artisan who “feels
he is conferring something on the monastery” is to be barred from the craft
until he learns humility.79
The early ascetics may have wished to accomplish what Aristotle termed
the truly virtuous philia, one that does for the other a request with no
thought for one’s own self, even if one might gain the pleasure of another by
completing the task.80 The concept of apatheia in Evagrius is “precisely the
capacity to experience things as they are and not simply as they affect us by
advancing or thwarting our desires and interests. . . . The purpose of ascetic
discipline and the modes of reflection that are peculiar to it must be under-
stood as the transcendence of the ego and the partiality of perspective out
of which the ego experiences and acts so that one can become genuinely
open to others.”81
Overcoming a partiality of perspective is dramatically described in a
saying of Abba Macarius, who ordered a monk to go to a graveyard and insult
the persons buried there and then the next day to go back to the same grave-
yard and praise them. When the monk reported that he received no reply,
Macarius said, “You saw how you abused them and they did not say anything
to you, and how you praised them and they said nothing in reply, it’s the same
with you: if you wish to be saved, go, be dead, take no account of people’s
scorn or their compliments, like the dead themselves, and you can be
saved.”82 Learning how to do this is also, according to Mother Maria, part of
77
Linge, “Leading the Life of Angels,” p. 553.
78
The Longer Rule (Regulae Fusius Tractatae) 5.3; See Anna Silvas, The Asketikon of St. Basil
the Great (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 176.
79
RB 57, p. 265. Humility is, according to the RB, the first step of obedience (RB 5).
80
See Alexander Nehamas, “Aristotelian Philia, Modern Friendship?” in Brad Inwood,
ed., Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 39 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press,
2010), pp. 213–247.
81
Linge, “Leading the Life of Angels,” pp. 564–565.
82
Tim Vivian, tr. and intro., Saint Macarius, the Spiritbearer: Coptic Texts relating to Saint
Macarius the Great, Popular Patristics Series 28 (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2004), p. 61.
19632-JES58.2.indd 166 6/27/23 10:35 AM

the role of the starets: “The staretz takes over the battle for the soul of his
disciple; this means in practice that he helps him to discard the impediments
within his heart which darken his knowledge and make his faith tepid. The
heaviest hindrance is self-w ill, the contrary of God within himself. This is so
strong that he must distrust even his good aspirations.”83
The importance of this concept in monastic communities was noted by
Leclercq, who described the problem of persons’ choosing a community
based on affection for the founder or the order or their apostolic work but
never realizing the necessity of, nor intend to put in the individual work for,
effecting their own conversatio morum.84 This deviation can be found most
readily in orders of apostolic or charitable service. In the nineteenth century,
it became increasingly common to characterize contemplative orders as
useless and to advocate that religious orders must have a particular apostolic
ministry. This, however, runs the risk that someone enters, for example, a
teaching order with teaching as their primary objective and finds the aspects
of religious life and spiritual formation odious. Often in such cases, Leclercq
noted that the person is uninterested in aspects of the community other than
the apostolic work, including that of spiritual formation. In the case of
choosing an order or an apostolic work, the seemingly altruistic desire may
actually be egotistical; it is chosen because that is what the person wishes to
do. Life in a religious community—and living according to the vows of the
evangelical counsels—requires spiritual formation. To be a proper vocation,
any religious vocation must be an individual one, the self-g iving of oneself
to God rather than to a particular order or service.85
The issue can also happen in contemplative communities, though there
the problem is being attached to the order or monastery for its own sake and
making that the object of one’s spiritual development. The result, Leclercq
said, is very often a conservatism that attributes a sacred character to all the
outward trappings of the community at the time of entrance. He did not say
that these things have no value, but, when the religious bind themselves to
certain special forms because of their personal attachment to them, it is no
longer for the service of God, but for themselves.86 Leclercq added that the
community itself should not be the primary attachment of the religious, as
83
84
See Leclercq, The Religious Vocation, p. 79.
85
See ibid., pp. 48–49.
86
See ibid., p. 51.
19632-JES58.2.indd 167 6/27/23 10:35 AM

can happen when the institute becomes exceedingly insular, since this is a
fresh form of worldliness, in which “a religious may believe himself to be the
servant of God because he is faithful to the temporal forms which the com-
munity has established.” The result is an overemphasis on external behavior
where “egoism is concealed beneath a facade of renunciation.”87
De Lassus also spoke of the problem of affectivity’s guiding decisions
within monastic communities. In all cases, the self is making decisions based
on instrumental desires. In the Monastic Family of Bethlehem, the idea of
overcoming egoism was clearly known; however, it was taught in an infan-
tilizing way with an emphasis on external actions, with the anecdote:
“Brother Regis is in the kitchen and he does not want to do his own will. He
says to his staretz: ‘Father, I don’t want to do what I want. Tell me how I
should make the sauce’!” presented as the ideal attitude every member was
to emulate.88 To do something entirely without self-interest cannot be
learned on one’s own. At the same time, it should be clear that obedience
simply for obedience’s sake does not fulfill the goal of forming the ideal self.
In The Rule of the Master, obedience is not conceived as something that
could, or should, be given without formation in the virtue of obedience.89
Also, in the Rule of Benedict, the obedience of a monk is communitarian,
due not only to the abbot but “is a blessing to be shown to one another as
brothers.”90 The vow of obedience, de Lassus pointed out, is never to the
abbot. Obedience can be practiced to the Rule, to the service or to one’s
brothers or sisters.91 Likewise, obedience can only affect exterior actions:
“On the one hand, obedience requires the submission of the will and always
concerns an action, which means that the superior can ask a subject to do
something, but he cannot ask him to think something.”92 While the submis-
sion of the will is a part of monastic growth, the freedom of the will must
remain, as it is the will that is being reformed into virtue.93
87
Ibid., p. 42.
88
89
RM VII.10–15.
90
“Oboedientiae bonum non solum abbati exhibendum est ab omnibus, sed etiam sibi
invicem ita oboediant fratres, scientes per hanc oboedientiae viam se ituros ad Deum,” RB
71.1–2, p. 293.
91
92
Ibid., p. 118.
93
See Conf. 13.9.4. “Nisi quod in his omnibus et gratia dei et libertas nostri declaratur arbitrii,
quia etiam suis interdum motibus homo ad uirtutum adpetitus possit extendi, semper uero a
19632-JES58.2.indd 168 6/27/23 10:35 AM

Leclercq concurred that the point of obedience is spiritual formation,

which must be taught during the novitiate: “The novice has no human aim
to pursue, no work to accomplish other than that of spiritual formation;
obedience is thus purely an instrument of formation for him, the essential
instrument for dying to self.”94 By dying to self, Leclercq did not intend a
complete erasure of one’s own agency; obedience cannot be given simply out
of a desire to escape personal responsibility. “This obedience can also be
called obedience of personal formation. Its aim is not to make life go
smoothly, but to preserve humility.”95 While the submission of the intellect
is a part of monastic growth, the freedom of the will must remain. As an
exterior act, whether or not one obeys should not be subject to human affec-
tion; the obedience is a task that exists outside of favors or feelings of friend-
ship. It must be free, not only in the sense of the liberty of the person to say
no96 but also in the sense that obedience is independent of social constructs
of interrelational dependency.
The spiritual formation of the novice is intended to lay down a solid foun-
dation by teaching a novice to overcome his or her will in all things. This is
not a passive process by which the novice becomes detached from things but
a constructive process by which the novice overcomes attachment by uniting
his or her will with the Holy Spirit. Between the novice master and the nov-
ice, it is not a breaking of the will but an active retraining of the will in order
that, no longer being a slave to one’s own individualistic will, one can build
a will that is capable of critical self-reflection and the strength to overcome
baser actions.97
This formation is unlike the practice that developed in some religious
institutes, especially female institutes, where the religious had to ask permis-
sion for every daily task, including the ones that were already part of their
domino indigeat adiuuari?” Cassian in Conf. 13.12.7. also cited The Shepherd of Hermas, VI.2, as
teaching that “freedom of will is at a human being’s disposal to a certain degree. In it two
angels—that is, a good one and a bad one—are said to be attached to each one of us, but it is
up to the human to choose which to follow.”
94
95
Ibid., p. 134.
96
See Michel Labourdette, Morale spéciale, Cours de théologie morale 2 (Paris: Parole et
Silence, 2012), pp. 739–740. Cited in Henry Donneaud, “Les enjeux théologiques de l’obéissance
dans la vie consacrée,” Vies consacrées, vol. 88 (2016), p. 156.
97
See Thomas Merton and Patrick F. O’Connell, Cassian and the Fathers: Initiation into
the Monastic Tradition, Monastic Wisdom Series 1 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications,
2005), p. 148.
19632-JES58.2.indd 169 6/27/23 10:35 AM

service, causing one sister to reflect, “I rarely questioned the judgement/

wisdom of superiors. I often repressed my own judgement; in many ways I
did not develop critical thinking and my responses were often childlike,
sometimes childish.”98 Proper spiritual formation in a disciplined yet non-
normative way of life must develop the ethical self-agency to “think differ-
ently” and be able to take a different perspective on previously unexamined
norms.99 Discernment and wisdom are necessary on the part of the leaders
to understand the risks into which they are leading the novices in this recon-
struction of the inner self. When the leader tries to mitigate the risk by ask-
ing the novice to submit unconditionally in obedience, it may produce
short-term gains.100 The leader has, however, put her or himself at the center
of the novice’s monastic journey, thereby stunting the novice’s ability to
grow in discernment.
It should also be pointed out that the Benedictine vows do not include a
vow of poverty. The Rule sets out ways that the community shares every-
thing in common,101 but the “vow of poverty” as a defining feature of the
ascetic life is not expressed in nascent monasticism and was not defined in
Eastern monasticism until later.102 In Russia, the idea of poverty or holding
goods in common was uncommon until the Possessor Nonpossessor con-
troversy.103 Byzantine records show that not every monastic alienated her or
himself from all goods or possessions.104 In Orthodox monastic typica, abso-
lute poverty has not always been demanded,105 and Eastern religious today
98
Rosemarie Joyce, “That Was Then, This Is Now: The Understanding of Authority and
Obedience by a Selected Group of Women Religious in Australia,” Australasian Catholic Record
94 ( July, 2017): 308.
99
See Niki Kasumi Clement, Sites of the Ascetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical
Formation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), p. 40.
100
101
RB 33. I interpret “quippe quibus nec corpora sua nec voluntates licet habere in propria
voluntate” as a statement concerning the monastery as a legal entity’s having corporate owner-
ship. See Michael Paulin Blecker, “Roman Law and ‘Consilium’ in the Regula Magistri and the
Rule of St. Benedict,” Speculum 47 ( January, 1972): 1–28, at https://doi.org/10.2307/2851213.
102
Canon 6 of the Council of Constantinople (861).
103
See Tom E. Dykstra, Russian Monastic Culture: “Josephism” and the Iosifo-Volokolamsk
Monastery, 1479–1607, Slavistische Beiträge 450 (Munich: Otto Sagner Verlag, 2006).
104
See Alice-Mary Talbot, “Personal Poverty in Byzantine Monasticism: Ideals and Reality,”
in Mélanges Cécile Morrisson, Travaux et Mémoires 16 (Paris: Association des amis du centre
d’histoire et civilisation de Byzance, 2011), pp. 829–841.
105
See John Philip Thomas, Angela Constantinides Hero, and Giles Constable, eds., Byz-
antine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika
19632-JES58.2.indd 170 6/27/23 10:35 AM

conceive of ascetical poverty in a slightly different way than in the West—

more in the sense of owning nothing of the communal property, rather than
complete economic disenfranchisement. It should be considered in what way
obedience to a superior or spiritual elder that is performed in the context of
economic freedom rather than total economic dependency mitigates the
danger that obedience might become a platform for psychological abuse.
III. Mysticism and Prelest

In the Monastic Family of Bethlehem, obedience was not just submission to
instructions but, since the Virgin Mary was foundress, prioress, and staretsi
and because Christ himself obeyed the Virgin Mary, the religious were also
to be instructed directly by the Virgin Mary and submit themselves to her:
I was told: no one can teach you this unless the Virgin instructs you
‘directly’. I was therefore waiting for the moment of this revelation which
would allow me to enter into the heart of the Bethlehem charism . . . when
the Virgin would take possession of my heart, without taking away my
weaknesses, but as if hiding them in her, which would be, for these weak-
nesses, a way of disappearing and therefore of leaving me in peace. . . . while
praying the daily prayer of Bethlehem and reciting: “May I be faithful in
your faith, unshakeable in your hope, ardent in your love without limits”, I
felt that I was “in” the faith, hope and love of the Virgin. Brother Seraphim
[myself] no longer existed, what he experienced no longer existed, the only
real thing was the spiritual life of Our Lady poured into my heart at that
moment by the Holy Trinity . . .
From then on, I had to stop several times a day [for] . . . sixty seconds in
which I “put myself ” in Mary’s place, or better, in which I let Mary take my
place, in an annihilation of all that could live in me, at all levels of my being,
in order to make this substitution conscious in me until it became like sec-
ond nature, a very deep-rooted habit. . . . I no longer had a psychological and
spiritual life of my own. My life had been reduced to a continual pseudo-
spiritual dive into the bosom of “Mary” where I thought I would find light
and an answer to all my problems. I know now that these beliefs were false
because in reality it was a dissolution and a negation of my deepest self. I
and Testaments, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 37 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection, 2000), p. 511.
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even seemed to hear her voice in my heart telling me to go ahead, to con-

tinue on the path, that she knew for me and that this should be enough for
me. And I know . . . that these voices, these “certainties” that Our Lady is
telling us this or that, are commonplace in Bethlehem . . . this life of obedi-
ence to the Virgin presupposes that we can hear her voice. It is customary
to say: “When we pray to her, Mary always answers.”106
To scholars of Evagrius, these words will seem distantly familiar, calling

on themes of the thoughts, enlightenment of the Holy Trinity, and birth of
the spiritual self,107 though with a particularly totalizing and Marian lens by
which Mary’s womb becomes the locus of the rebirth of the soul into unity
with the Trinity. That fusion seems to be predicated on both the idea from
Louis-Marie de Montfort that one must be formed into the mold of the Vir-
gin Mary108 and what the seventeenth-century Abandonment to Divine Prov-
idence described as the most ancient and simplest form of spiritual direction:
receiving direct communication from God, which was epitomized in Mary,
who was “most closely united to God” by her fiat, such that “in all things she
was ruled by the Divine Will.”109
The kenosis of the ascetic’s soul is an idea that gained particular traction
in the West under the Rhineland mystics of the fourteenth century.110 Aban-
donment to Divine Providence was written to a community of nuns and stands
in the tradition of Western asceticism’s becoming intertwined with mysti-
cism, as particularly exemplified by St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of
Avila. In St. John of the Cross, the kenosis functioned similarly to dissem-
bling the self-w ill seated in psychological egoism: “It is, therefore, plain that
no distinct object among those in which the will rejoices, can be God; and
for that reason, if it is to be united with Him, it must empty itself, cast away
every disorderly affection of the desire, every satisfaction it may distinctly
have, high and low, temporal and spiritual, so that, purified and cleansed
from all unruly satisfactions, joys and desires, it may be wholly occupied,
106
“Aide aux Victimes,” p. 14.
107
See Monica Tobon, “Raising Body and Soul to the Order of the Nous: Anthropology and
Contemplation in Evagrius,” in Studia Patristica 57 (Leuven: Peeters, 2013), pp. 51–74.
108
109
Jean Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder,
1921), pp. 1–2.
110
Gérard Rossé, The Cry of Jesus on the Cross: A Biblical and Theological Study (New York:
Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 78–83.
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with all its affections, in loving God.”111 St. John of the Cross went further
than this, however, in speaking of this spiritual development not as the trans-
formation of self but as its annihilation, such that the self-emptiness becomes
not just the removal of disordered affections but their replacement with God.
As he wrote, “for the more He is minded to give us, the more does he enlarge
our desires, even leaving us empty that there may be the more space for Him
to fill with blessings.”112
This process is part of what St. John of the Cross called the teaching of
the dark night of the soul. As it was summarized by St. Therese of Lisieux,
the suffering is the purification that leads a person to total abandonment,
and pain becomes the empty space into which Christ can pour his life.113 In
psychological terms, what is being described is positive disintegration, the
theory that unpleasant experiences, especially existential shock and anxiety,
assist in the development of an important stage of psychological growth.114
After going through her own time of spiritual dryness, St. Teresa of Avila is
best remembered today for her visions, including one of an angel piercing
her heart with a fiery spear, causing it to be on fire with the love of God. “The
pain was so great,” St. Teresa said, but the end result was that her soul “is
satisfied now with nothing less than God.”115 Abandonment, in Evagrius, was
not abandonment to God but the abandonment of God. Abandonment of
God most often occurred, according to Evagrius, to establish humility. This
could happen even to the just, such as Job, for the purpose of testing.116
It is here that the desert fathers were in sharpest disagreement with later
Western mysticism. As Evagrius put it starkly, “Do not give your soul to
111
David Lewis, tr., The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, of the Order of Our Lady
of Mount Carmel (London: Longmans, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1864), Letter IX,
p. 27.
112
Ibid., Letter X, p. 330.
113
See Joël Guibert, Abandonment to God: The Way of Peace of St. Therese of Lisieux, tr. James
Henri McMurtrie (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2019), p. 150.
114
See Kazimierz Dąbrowski, with Andrzej Kawczak and Michael M. Piechowski, Mental
Growth through Positive Disintegration (London: Gryf Publications, 1970), pp. 35–36.
115
Teresa of Avila, The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, including the “Relations of Her Spiritual State”
Written by Herself, tr. David Lewis (London: Burns & Oates, 1962), p. 226.
116
See Jean Baptiste Pitra, Analecta sacra spicilegio Solesmensi, parata (Paris, 1883), 3:12;
quoted in Jeremy Driscoll, Steps to Spiritual Perfection: Studies on Spiritual Progress in Evagrius
Ponticus (New York: Newman Press, 2005), p. 114.
19632-JES58.2.indd 173 6/27/23 10:35 AM

pride, and you will not see chilling fantasies.”117 The monastic progression—
as described by Evagrius, from Praktike (virtue/ethics) to Physike and the
Kephalaia Gnostika (created nature/physics) and finally to Theologike
(knowledge of God/metaphysics)—brings all these parts into perfect unity,
resulting in the contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity.118 Cassian stressed
that the monastic life is a profession, much like that of a farmer, sculptor, or
others, and, just as those workers must learn the skill for their profession, so
must a monk.119 For Cassian, ascetic formation was the gradual habituation
of body, heart, and mind and the integration of these multiple dependent
sites of subjectivity into a coherent whole.120 Certain bodily actions become
evil only when accompanied by evil thoughts. Thoughts are evil only if they
are “let to nest” and influence the body or soul. One may even posit that the
interconnection among the body, the mind, the heart, and the soul lies at the
very basis of Christian monastic theory.121
The danger, as seen by Evagrius and his contemporaries, was when this
all went horribly wrong. Abba Paphnutius, in a recension of the Lausiac His-
tory, gave the story of five monks as examples of the dangers and risks of the
ascetic life. The monk Stephen was “abandoned by divine providence on
account of his arrogance and pride beyond all measure.”122 His problems
began when he claimed to be a better monk than Macarius, to whom he was
in submission, and he left for the city. There he accused the monks of useless
asceticism because “in the perfect there is no law,” and he had overcome
passion. This passionlessness was why, for him, there was no sin of fornica-
tion. He made his own monastery, in which an orphaned young woman also
lived, supposedly as an act of charity. Another monk, Ptolemy, also came to
despise the ascetical rigors of the desert, in his case because he “became a
117
Eight Spirits 17; quoted in Driscoll. Steps to Spiritual Perfection, p. 115.
118
See Tractatus ad Eulogium 15, in Robert E. Sinkewicz, tr., intro., and commentary, Evagrius
of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford
University Press, 2006), p. 42.
119
See Niki Kasumi Clements, Sites of the Ascetic Self: John Cassian and Christian Ethical
Formation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), pp. 66–67.
120
See ibid., p. 41. This was done, according to Cassian, in the context of a community that
was both social and liturgical; see ibid., pp. 154–155 and 158–162.
121
See Inbar Graiver, “Possible Selves in Late Antiquity: Ideal Selfhood and Embodied
Selves in Evagrian Anthropology,” Journal of Religion 98 ( January, 2018): 59–89.
122
Lausiac History 72:1; E.T. from Jeremy Driscoll, Steps to Spiritual Perfection: Studies on
Spiritual Progress in Evagrius Ponticus (New York, and Mahwah, NJ: Newman Press, 2005), p.
103 (hereafter LH, with Driscoll’s pagination).
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stranger to the teaching and the company of holy men, as well as communion
in the mysteries.” After fifteen years of extreme ascetical labor, he came to
believe that those things have no value and that he had become self-
sufficient. This viewpoint was echoed by the monk Heron, who told Eva-
grius, “Those who obey your teachings are deceived, for there is no need to
listen to other masters than Christ himself.”123 Despite Heron’s asceticism
and knowledge of scriptures, he was bound by pride and left for Alexandria
where he fell into worldliness and sin.
Listening to others is an important part of discerning thoughts with a
starets or living in a community, as seen in the previous sections. There is a
deeper spiritual danger identified here: the pride of visions. The monk Valens
had lived many years in the desert, but he developed “such a level of pride
that the demons were able to fool him.”124 When Valens lost a needle in the
dark, a demon provided light so he could find it. Valens, however, thought
that it was his own holiness that produced the miracle. This idea caused him
to believe that it was no longer necessary for him to “participate in the mys-
teries,” and he even resented other monks’ sending him a portion of sweets.
Seeing this, the demon appeared to Valens as Christ himself in the midst of
thousands of angels, one of whom told him that Christ was pleased with him.
Valens then told the community at church the next day, “I have no need of
communion, for I have seen Christ today.”
Satan himself appeared to the monk Eucarpios as an Angel of Light and
offered him a very deceiving message that praktike was unnecessary in the
ascetical life, that monks should move immediately to gnostike. Eucarpios
was instructed to teach the rest of the brothers that they “should no longer
concern themselves with the reading of the scriptures or the office of psalms,
nor should they do bodily labors or wear themselves out with hunger, thirst,
and fasting. Instead they should be concerned with the labors of the soul so
that they could more quickly be capable of being introduced to the supreme
degree and gaze on me constantly in their understanding. Then can I show
them my glory.”125 Based on this instruction in “divine” revelation, Eucarpios
the next day told the other brothers that he was now the leader in Scete.
These things happened, Paphnutius said, because virtue was pursued with a
123
LH 26:1, lines 5–8, p. 101.
124
LH 25:1, lines 4–5, p. 98.
125
LH 73:3, p. 105.
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perverse purpose to gain the praise of others or as a way to promote one’s

own opinions. For this reason, God abandoned them “to fall for their own
good, so that through such abandonment they can feel the difference of the
change and correct either their purpose or their actions.”126
This desire to “shortcut” spiritual formation via a direct mystical experi-
ence was, according to Evagrius, one of the primary dangers of achieving pure
noetic prayer, free from the passions. When the demons saw this, they
changed their type of temptation by proposing “some divine radiance to it,”
so that the monk came to think that he had perfectly gained his goal in prayer.
Once this mindset was in place, the monk believed that he had achieved such
perfection that he was standing before God in purity and was able to have
divine, substantial knowledge. Therefore, he thought that he was truly seeing
a divine apparition, though it was actually just a result of the demon’s manip-
ulating the light of his mind.127 The pride of ascetical accomplishments left
the monk vulnerable to demonic fantasies; “often,” it was warned, “even virtue
becomes the occasion for a fall.”128
While Evagrius and Cassian are credited with creating the system of the
Seven Deadly Sins, when one understands the integrative system in which
they spoke of the logismoi (the thoughts), the vices and virtues become more
complex.129 The demons could send thoughts toward the monk, but the
thoughts were not always evil thoughts. Thoughts, in and of themselves,
could actually be quite neutral. The flip side of the deadly sins is the godly
virtues, and it may be that the thoughts themselves became deadly or godly
based only on how the monk allowed a thought to enter his mind. Thoughts
could come from both the left and the right, so only with discernment could
the monk prevent a thought from giving rise to sin.130 Furthermore, the
monk needed to guard against letting some thoughts “come to nest” at all, as
even a seemingly positive thought, such as self-control, could be a snare to
126
LH 47:6, line 48-15, p. 107. For further discussion of this topic, see Driscoll, Steps to
Spiritual Perfection, pp. 94–122; also published in Jeremy Driscoll, “Evagrius and Paphnutius on
the Causes for Abandonment by God,” Studia Monastica, vol. 39, no. 2 (1997), pp. 259–286.
127
See Evagrius, Chapters on Prayer, nos. 72–73, p. 67 (see note 6, above); and Sinkewicz,
Evagrius of Pontus, pp. 200–201.
128
LH 25:4–6, p. 99.
129
See Praktikos, 6, in Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus, pp. 97–98.
130
See Institutes XI.4, in Cassian, The Institutes, pp. 241–242. See also Christopher J. Kelly,
Cassian’s Conferences: Scriptural Interpretation and the Monastic Ideal, Ashgate New Critical
Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies (Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 48–50.
19632-JES58.2.indd 176 6/27/23 10:35 AM

create a vice. As de Lassus noted, “the unfit monk who performs an act of
humility in the desire to be praised, unites humility with vainglory.”131
Gregory of Nyssa made a similar warning in On Virginity:
Therefore, since most embrace virginity while still young and unformed in
understanding, this before anything else should be their employment, to
search out a fitting guide and master of this way, lest, in their present igno-
rance, they should wander from the direct route, and strike out new paths
of their own in trackless wilds . . . Some . . . in their enthusiasm for the
stricter life have shown a dexterous alacrity; but, as if in the very moment
of their choice they had already touched perfection, their pride has had a
shocking fall, and they have been tripped up from madly deluding them-
selves into thinking that that to which their own mind inclined them was
the true beauty.132
The Apophthegmata Patrum put it much more bluntly, warning monks that
if they saw another monk “climbing up to heaven by his own will, grab his
foot and pull him down, for this is good for him.”133
The goal was to avoid what was later termed in monastic literature “pre-
lest,” which can be translated as “beguilement.” The concept seems derived
from Col. 2:18, “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humil-
ity and worshiping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not
seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind” (KJV). The translators of the
Philokalia explained it by paraphrasing Brianchaninov as “the corruption of
human nature through the acceptance by man of mirages mistaken for
truth.”134 It is the state of spiritual deception or delusion after excessive ascet-
icism or prayer that causes one to think one is righteous when one is not,
usually manifesting as self-conceit or by claiming visions or miracles. This
is the purpose of the starets, as the elder of Mt. Athos said; he is to “help the
monk in discernment so that he will not take sensible feelings or imagination
as being the work of the Spirit.”135 Cassian also related the story of Heron
131
132
Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., On Virginity, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd
Series 5, tr. William Moore and Henty Austin Wilson (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Pub-
lishing Co., 1893), chap. 23.
133
Ward, Wisdom, p. 34, no. 112.
134
Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Writings from the Philokalia, p. 22.
135
Pennington, Monks of Mount Athos, p. 196.
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and his fall into delusion,136 as well as the problems of illusions and self-
deceptions and “testing the Spirits.”
While the Apophthegmata Patrum devotes an entire chapter to experi-
ences of visions, both true and diabolical, Cassian usually spoke of delusions
in terms of developing worldly philosophies and counterfeit readings of the
scriptures or adopting ascetical practices that, under the form of virtue, led
to vice.137 This is in keeping with the thesis Cassian presented in the preface
to his Institutes, wherein he expressed his reticence to relate to his readers
the “marvelous works and miracles” he had seen, since “apart from wonder-
ment they contribute nothing to the reader’s instruction in the perfect
life.”138 The monastic plan Cassian wanted to present was “improvement of
our behavior and the attainment of the perfect life,” for which he thought the
“marvelous works of God” were simply a distraction.139 Historically, this
emphasis on behavior caused Cassian to be accused of Pelagianism. How-
ever, his purpose clearly was to remove any promise that the ascetical life
would result in experiencing something supernatural. To have that as an
expectation risks the beginner’s becoming ingenuously accepting of any
mystical experience, of themselves or others, and a reliance on those mystical
experiences that would stunt their own spiritual formation. Cassian related
a story of a desert monk who thought himself perfect, who received a mes-
sage of warning from the “angel of the Lord.” Cassian was careful to note that
the monk “did not, to be sure, take upon himself the dangers of the divinely
revealed test.”140 Even a true revelation from God is free to be disobeyed.
A particular sign of sectarian drift is when a community under a charis-
matic founder claims special revelation, creating a system in which one can-
not question or engage critically with the founder’s desires and/or demands,
as any opposition is considered to be the same as opposition to the will of
God.141 When Mary is made the founder, starets, and prior, and she speaks
through the leadership, any ability to question instructions from the leader-
ship becomes unthinkable. Mother Maria, in her description of the starets-
disciple relationship, pointed out that it comes with great risks, especially
136
See Conferences, 2, V, in Cassian, The Conferences, pp. 87–88.
137
See Conferences, 1, XX.2–6, in ibid., pp. 59–60.
138
Institutes, Preface, 7, in Cassian, The Institutes, p. 13.
139
Institutes, Preface, 8, in ibid., pp. 13–14.
140
Conferences, 15, X.4, in Cassian, The Conferences, p. 544.
141
See de Lassus, Risques et dérives, pp. 59–60 and 116–117.
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when such relationships are idolized or when misplaced forms of authority

prevent healthy spiritual development.142 The Monastic Family of Bethlehem
went further, however, in making the connection between Mary and the
religious immediate and total. By simply handing one’s soul over to Mary,
religious were being instructed to exchange the communal process of
reforming their own soul with a totally independent mystical replacement.
For those to whom this did not cause a psychological breakdown, it runs the
real risk of creating a spiritual delusion.
The necessity for others to prevent self-deception indicates a fundamen-
tal tension in Christian monasticism between the eremitical model of
Anthony and the coenobitic model of Pachomius. “Monachos” basically
means being solitary, but, in the description of monasticism given by Euse-
bius of Caesarea, it is neither physical solitude nor celibacy that defined the
monachos but being single-m inded in a common vision of Christian life.143
This concept of monasticism as a singularly focused community of individ-
uals was sharply advocated by Cassian, as well as in the Rule of the Master
and the Rule of Benedict, which spared no derision of individual gyrovagues
or the untethered self-made monasticism of the sarabaites.144 The Rule of
Benedict suggests that Cassian be read after mastering the Rule, and it is in
this context that the Rule of Benedict’s authority of the abbot and instruc-
tion on obedience and following the Rule should be understood. These
actions are, in Foucauldian terms, “technologies of the self” to achieve a true
reordering of the inner person.
Gregory the Great, in speaking of the ascetical life, used the analogy of
caging a lion. One can dig a pit and put sheep in it to snare the lion and also
create a tunnel for the lion to try to get out, but at the end is a cage, which is
then lifted out, with the lion and its temper neutralized.145 So it is with a
monk, after falling into a pit of temptation; the sinful desire can be caged,
and thus, within the cage, the monk becomes free. Such also is the imagery
in the conclusion of the commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in The Rule of the
142
See Noble, “The Starets-Disciple Relationship,” p. 93.
143
See Greg Peters, The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian
Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), pp. 24–26.
144
See Conferences, 18, VI, in Cassian, The Conferences, pp. 642–643; RB, chap. 1; and RM,
chap. 1.
145
Moralia 9.57.86; see Carole Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, Transfor-
mation of the Classical Heritage 14 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), p. 128.
19632-JES58.2.indd 179 6/27/23 10:35 AM

Master; the Devil is the roaring lion seeking to poison the monk’s heart with
evil suggestions, but by prayer the monk asks the Lord to surround him with
a “wall of his grace” so that they are not made captives of the enemy, “pro-
vided we do not on our part give our consent to the temptations of this same
enemy and do not, so to speak, make ourselves his captives, inclined to desire
our enemy rather than flee him.”146 This sort of interior freedom builds on
the earlier commentary of “Thy will be done.” By replacing the will of the
“ancient serpent” with the will of Christ, the will becomes holy, and there
will be no self-w ill that is subject to condemnation.147 The conquering of the
self-w ill does not mean abolishment of the self. To Gregory, the soul was
encased in the body, and it was only through the windows of the senses that
the soul could learn to replace carnal senses with their similar, yet also oppo-
site, spiritual senses.148
Gregory of Nyssa made a similar point in his Commentary on the Song of
Songs that bodily sensations must be transposed to their spiritual percep-
tions.149 The monastic progression is one that brings all these parts into per-
fect unity such as the example of the dead stick; it was not to force the
disciple to perform an impossible task nor to teach John obedience. It was a
demonstration the disciple gave the abba that his virtue of obedience was
already unified with his simplicity of heart. The connection between the
body and the heart is also attested to in medieval Western monastic litera-
ture.150 Discernment is important to know the difference between good and
evil, and it is learning this discernment that takes up the greater portion of
a monk’s development.151 The third Benedictine vow, conversatio morum, may
have as its basis this practice of learning how to see what is good and what is
evil.152 To discern between the two very often requires listening to the elder
146
RM Theme Pater, lines 74–75, p. 100.
147
See ibid., lines 24–30, p. 97.
148
Moralia 9.57.86; see Straw, Gregory the Great, p. 129.
149
See Hans Boersma, Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach,
Oxford Early Christian Studies, 1st ed. (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 94.
150
It is especially evident in chap. 100 of The Crown of Monks; see Smaragdus, The Crown of
Monks, Cistercian Studies Series 245, tr. David Barry (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publica-
tions/Liturgical Press, 2013), p. 229.
151
The definition of discernment as a monastic concept is best expressed in Macarius of
Egypt’s Fourth Homily: Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies; and, The Great Letter, tr.
George A. Maloney (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), p. 50.
152
Paul the Deacon, in his commentary, interpreted this vow as the promise of the monk
to the “rooting out of vices and implanting of virtue.” See Justin McCann, tr. and ed., Saint
19632-JES58.2.indd 180 6/27/23 10:35 AM

who evaluates what is virtue and what is vice; by obedience, the desire to do
things for the sake of ego is overcome. If this path is followed carefully, the
danger of falling into prelest dissipates while spiritual maturity grows.
Conclusion
In setting down his guidelines for a monastic community in his Institutes,
Cassian admitted that he believed the practices of the desert were perfect;
nonetheless, for his audience in Gaul he injected a bit of moderation. What-
ever might be impossible or arduous in Gaul, whether because of a difference
in climate or behavior, he replaced with other monastic practices of Palestine
or Mesopotamia since, “if reasonable possibilities are offered, the same per-
fection of observance may exist even where there is unequal capability.”153
The same liberty to adapt was also common in Byzantine typica, which often
allowed local customs to be followed, especially for matters of conduct and
rules for behavior.154 Using this allowance to select for the best practices
should take the whole history and pre-existing expectations of the members
into account, as well as the entire spirituality of the community. In the con-
text of the Virgin Mary’s being inserted into the hierarchy as the spiritual
leader, it must be considered how elevating obedience to spiritual direction
as a matter of obedience to the will of God becomes dangerous when it is
combined with other monastic vows and the charism of the community.
When an interior matter of cultivating the virtue of a radically reordered way
of personal intersocial dynamic is made external and becomes proscriptive
and subject to external enforcement, there is a risk that the ascetical life has
become ripe for abuse. In a system with a historical dependence on ascetical
mysticism, it should also be considered how the recovery and reimplemen-
tation of nascent or Eastern monasticism can run into danger by not also
implementing the warnings about prelest.
To prevent abuse, there must be a mechanism to ensure that the religious
institutes themselves are authentically achieving the purpose and goals of
Benedict (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1937), p. 147. Cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, ed. and tr. Henry
Chadwick (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1:9; and Conferences, 10.VI.1–2,
in Cassian, The Conferences, pp. 374–375.
153
Institutes, Preface, 8, in Cassian, The Institutes, pp. 13–14.
154
See Bernard Hamilton and Andrew Jotischky, Latin and Greek Monasticism in the Cru-
sader States (Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), p. 407.
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Christian monasticism. In both Western and Eastern churches, there are

institutional procedures to ensure that new communities are legitimate. As
newly formed communities are most susceptible to sectarian drift and abuse,
a first line of defense is a careful evaluation when these communities are
formed and approved. Roman Catholic canon law was recently amended to
tighten the approval of new religious orders, which may guard against the
erection of deviant new orders.155 However, the most important defense may
be in the review and approval of the constitution and other secondary doc-
uments of new communities.156 Loic-Marie Le Bot emphasized the necessity
of the constitution to protect a community, saying that there are “three prin-
cipal canonical conditions for a conscious institutional avoidance of sectar-
ian aberrations or attacks on the person of religious: a clear constitutional
text in conformity with the principles of religious life, institutions function-
ing according to the constitutional text, and effective internal and external
ecclesial control.”157
Leclercq also emphasized the necessity for church authority to ensure
that new communities provide proper formation in Christian life: “[A]s soon
as Christians come together and put forward a way of life in which they
invite others to join them, the Church owes it to her children that she should
exercise a prudent attitude, so that she may give her approval to those ways
of life which will lead to holiness, and cast aside those likely to lead to devi-
ations.”158 Having these foundational documents reviewed before approval
by persons knowledgeable about systems of abuse, the proper safeguards
necessary to protect the internal forum and the civil and canonical protec-
tions of privacy would help to prevent poor practices from being enshrined
in private law. When a new community is of a “mixed” nature, the evaluation
155
See Pope Francis, “Apostolic Letter motu proprio Authenticum Charismatis, amending
Canon 579 of the Code of Canon Law,” no. 1, November, 2020; published in L’Osservatore
Romano, Weekly Edition, November 6, 2020, p. 45.
156
In Roman Catholic canon law, this approval is required by Canon 587, no. 2, and is usually
performed by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
In most Anglican jurisdictions, this task usually falls to a standing committee or to the Episcopal
Visitor.
157
Loic-Marie Le Bot, “Le Respect du Droit Comme Prévention des Dérives et des Abus
de Pouvoir en Quoi les Institutions Normales de Nos Communautés Peuvent-Elles Aider À Ne
Pas Tomber Dans des Dérives ‘Sectaires’?” in Vie religieuse et liberté—Approche canonique, pas-
torale, spirituelle et psychologique (Paris: CORREF [Conférence des religieux et religieuses de
France], 2018), p. 29.
158
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of their structure and spirituality may be hampered by a lack of understand-

ing of the foreign elements. This may present the further danger that canon
law and the system of recourse are not designed to respond to these foreign
elements, leaving members in danger of malformation or abuse.
When there is a failure in a religious community, such as abuse or depar-
ture of a religious, it is important to learn what went wrong. The community
must learn what must change to prevent another failure.159 In such a situa-
tion, the structure of monasticism has been perverted to create a system that
is not only abusive but that also fails to form monastics properly. Too often
when considering preventive measures, there is too much focus on the for-
mer rather than the latter. A monastery that fails to form monastics properly
will always be abusive, as spiritual abuse is a contradiction of religious life.
More importantly, foremost in the mind of any bishop or superior having
authority over a religious institute ought to be whether the monastery is
properly fulfilling the purpose and goal of Christian monastic life, whether
formation is effective, whether internal forum and freedom of the will are
being preserved, or whether the institute is falling into unhealthy patterns
indicating sectarian drift. If the third Benedictine vow, conversatio morum,
does mean the discernment of virtue and the absence of prelest, any sign that
a monastery has failed to allow the monks or nuns to fulfill this principle—
or have perverted obedience into tyranny or the manifestation of conscience
into spiritual abuse—ought also to be considered with great seriousness.
A healthy retrieval of the shared history of monasticism must not only
respect how certain concepts and ideas grew in East and West but must also
look past superficial application of rules and structures. In particular, the
program of ascetical practice of Evagrius and others should be studied for its
intention of developing ethical agency and the fashioning of the ascetic self.
By understanding the teleology of asceticism first and then applying the
practices that lead to it, our shared heritage may be applied in different ways
in different contexts—but with the understanding that, in the diversity,
there is unity of purpose.
Sarah A. Wagner-Wassen (Anglican) has a B.A. from Cornerstone University, Grand

Rapids, MI; a Graduate Certificate in Biblical History and Geography from Jerusalem
See de Lassus, Risques et dérives, pp. 15–27.

159
19632-JES58.2.indd 183 6/27/23 10:35 AM

(Israel) University College, an M.A. and Master of Theology from St. Vladimir’s Ortho-
dox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, NY; and both a Master of Society, Law, and
Religion and a Master of Canon Law (Juris Canonici Licentiatus, 2022) from Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), with other studies in Armenia and the Netherlands. She
is currently a remote freelance assistant to an independent canon law practice, following
an internship for the marriage tribunal of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, GA. Since 2017,
she has worked for Stichting Orvelte Poort (Orvelte, The Netherlands) as a webmaster
doing design and marketing for the historical/cultural museum. She has also worked
in business administration positions in the U.S. and the Netherlands, as well as positions
as a teaching assistant at Cornerstone University and at Marquette University, Milwau-
kee, WI . She was Vice Chancellor of the Anglican Catholic Church, Diocese of the
United Kingdom, 2019–20, and since 2021 has been an ad hoc member of the Constitu-
tion and Canons Committee of the Original Province of the Anglican Catholic Church.
She published an article in the St. Shenouda Coptic Quarterly in 2005 and has presented
papers at eight professional conferences.
19632-JES58.2.indd 184 6/27/23 10:35 AM

New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering The Shared Ascetical Heritage

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New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering The Shared Ascetical Heritage

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New Communities, Old Traditions: Dangers in Recovering the

Shared Ascetical Heritage

Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Volume 58, Number 2, Spring 2023, pp.

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press

For additional information about this article

For content related to this article

I n 1864, an English literary journal reviewed the controversial memoir of

jour na l of ecumenica l studies

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practices by becoming monks or nuns themselves. Father Ignatius (Joseph

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I. Starets and Spiritual Direction

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needs of the institution he or she leads . . . Spiritual abuse is an abuse of

Spiritual abuse often happens during the course of spiritual counseling,

This sort of spiritual manipulation has been recognized as a form of

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occasionally said to gain special knowledge about a disciple, but it is not

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Conferences, 2, X.3, in ibid., p. 91.

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as a source of spiritual generation.58 By following the commands of the abba,

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that they consider forbidden.”70 In his discussion of obedience, the Master

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Leclercq concurred that the point of obedience is spiritual formation,

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service, causing one sister to reflect, “I rarely questioned the judgement/

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conceive of ascetical poverty in a slightly different way than in the West—

III. Mysticism and Prelest

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even seemed to hear her voice in my heart telling me to go ahead, to con-

To scholars of Evagrius, these words will seem distantly familiar, calling

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perverse purpose to gain the praise of others or as a way to promote one’s

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when such relationships are idolized or when misplaced forms of authority

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Christian monasticism. In both Western and Eastern churches, there are

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of their structure and spirituality may be hampered by a lack of understand-

Sarah A. Wagner-­Wassen (Anglican) has a B.A. from Cornerstone University, Grand

See de Lassus, Risques et dérives, pp. 15–27.

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needs of the institution he or she leads . . . Spiritual abuse is an abuse of

Sarah A. Wagner-Wassen (Anglican) has a B.A. from Cornerstone University, Grand