ASCESIS. — A methodical effort to repress the lower tendencies of nature in order progressively to attain spiritual perfection.
SUMMARY:
I. Nature
II. Means
III. Forms
IV. Analogies
V. Ascetic deviations.I. NATURE
The term, unknown to classical Italian (it is lacking, for example, in the great dictionary of Tommaso), which rather uses ascetismo, is today accepted in philosophical-moral language, in the sense of prolonged and austere labor for the attainment of virtue.«Ἄσκησις, from ἀσκέω (in the New Testament only in Act. 24:16), among the Greeks meant phys-
physical exercise, gymnastic and athletic training (Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon), then intellectual and moral effort to attain wisdom and virtue (the same authors, Isocrates, Demosthenes, sophists, Cynics, Stoics), and finally religious practice (already in Isocrates, but principally in Philo). In these last two meanings, joined and fused together, the term became familiar to Christian spirituality, beginning with Clement of Alexandria, who gives it a general sense (a life of fervent piety: ἄσκησις γνωστική, “the life of the perfect Christian”), and with Origen, who adheres to the restricted sense (continence), more common among the Greek Fathers.
Christian asceticism is a practice of life deriving from faith or adherence to Christ; it is the active exercise of methodical and progressive efforts directed toward the acquisition of the virtues through the following and imitation of Christ. It implies a method or discipline in the overall and prolonged labor, almost an art of harsh training, and has as its aim inner perfection in conformity with the divine Model. This accords with the Christian moral conception, which presupposes an aspect called “negative” (arduous struggle for liberation from sin and the overcoming of oneself) and a “positive” element (perfection). In the strict sense, asceticism is limited to the negative aspect, as “spiritual combat” (v.), but Catholic authors understand
The specific characteristics of Christian a. may be reduced to four: 1) It derives, as from its first source, from God as the cause of grace, and refers to God as the ultimate perfective end of all human activity; this distinguishes it from every a. of a Stoic or Pelagian character, or from any that tends to measure moral perfection by a human standard. 2) It is achieved through voluntary, personal, vital action, intended to develop all that is best and noble in man; this distinguishes it from the a. of ancient religions, which were superstitious, magical, and external in character. 3) It is permeated by Christ, whose sanctifying, efficient, and exemplary influence intrinsically shapes it; this gives it an unmistakable character, explains its unfailing vitality, and justifies the apparent paradox of the thirst for suffering. 4) It recognizes in the authority of the Catholic Church its primary and infallible directive norm.
A. is necessary for the moral life. Man feels within himself a struggle between sense and spirit, especially in the force that drags the former away from, or against, the direction of the latter. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26, 41). Such dualism, although connatural to man’s primordial constitution, is
in fact original sin (v.), which stripped the will of its total mastery over the sensitive part. This opposition is further aggravated by actual sin and even more by the evil habit, or vice, that results from II. Hence true and enduring virtue, which is progressive supernatural moral rectitude, is not for man a spontaneous good, but the fruit of reaction and conquest. St. Paul dramatically describes the ever-renewed war between flesh and spirit, concupiscence (v.), and the effort imposed upon the Christian to restore the disturbed equilibrium, painfully stripping himself of whatever belongs to the “flesh of sin” and clothing himself with the new man modeled on Christ (Rom. 7, 14-24; 13, 12-14; Col. 3, 5-8). Hence the Christian must be ready for combat like a soldier fully armed (Eph. 6, 10-18), like the athlete, accustomed to strenuous exercises, who strikes the enemy (himself) until he bleeds (I Cor. 9, 24-27) and is wholly intent upon the goal (Phil. 3, 12-14).
The continual effort of renunciation (v.) of self is indispensable to the moral life in order to attain likeness to God. Such is the explicit divine command. The practical aspect of revealed doctrine coincides with the obligation of moral purification accomplished in a., which is not limited to what is indispensable for the morality of an action, but tends to develop the maximum energy in order to attain the highest moral elevation (Mt. 5, 48).
In the Old Testament, in addition to numerous prescriptions concerning abstinence from certain meats and parts of animals, ablutions and purifications (v. RITUALISTI), public fasts were imposed (Lev. 23, 27-33; Num. 29, 7-12), and fasts undertaken on private initiative were practiced, especially during public calamities (Judith, Esther). The penitential spirit was manifested by dressing in sackcloth and haircloth and sprinkling the head with ashes; the Nazirite state was held in honor (v.), and the extreme sobriety of the Rechabites was praised (v.); the “schools of the prophets” also displayed an ascetical character in their common life of devotion. Practices of mortification aimed at greater interior purity, as is shown by their relation to the holiness of God (Deut. 14, 1; Joel 2, 12-13) and by the exhortations of the prophets (Is. 58, 1-9).
Jesus imposes a. as the “narrow way” leading his follower, bearing his cross (Mt. 16, 25), to the Heavenly Father, who freely regenerates us by communicating divine life to us, and with whom we must remain in an unceasing relationship of dependence, but even more of filial piety (v.), charity (v.) predominates. Love for Jesus, an essentially assimilating force, then impels the Christian to reproduce the suffering Christ within himself. Finally, Christian a. is imposed by its social value, by the beneficial influence it exerts upon the entire family of believers (v. CORPO MISTICO).
A characteristic of evangelical a. is abnegation (v.), in the joyful acceptance of purifying suffering, preferring Christ to those dearest to us (Mt. 10, 37; Lc. 9, 23; 14, 26), sacrificing oneself, one’s members, and even one’s life for Him amid the continual persecutions that await his followers (Mt. 10, 16 sgg.; Mc. 8, 35). Continuous vigilance is therefore necessary (Lc. 12, 35 sgg.), both against interior dangers (the flesh) and against exterior ones (the world).
Evangelical a. is therefore very demanding. It is conceived above all as interior religiosity, without which there is neither true prayer nor fasting nor charity toward one’s neighbor (Mt. 6, 1-33). Its ideal norm is the perfection of the Heavenly Father, to whom we conform ourselves by following his will (Mt. 5, 48; 7, 21); its immediate norm is Christ, who is to be reproduced by remaining united to him as branches to the trunk (Mc. 8, 34; Io. 15, 4-5); its reward lies in the beatitudes (v.).
II. MEANS
Christian a. is comprehensive and unified. It purifies the whole human person in order to raise it to supernatural likeness with God: the spirit is freed and at the same time elevated, while the senses—sealed within the sensible realm—are rectified and subjected to the spirit. Hence one may speak of a dual asceticism, external and interior, despite the inseparable connection by which they require and condition one another.Asceticism considered from its external aspect, aiming on the one hand to restrain and moderate the tendency toward the sensible, and on the other to make the body more docile to the spirit, mortification (v.) as its principal means; associated with it are modesty, fasting, abstinence from certain foods and beverages, vigils, and the various bodily macerations carried out with instruments such as disciplines, chains, and hair shirts. poverty (v.) and chastity (v. CONSIGLI EVANGELICI) contribute supremely to the purification of the heart and the independence of the spirit. Means directed toward separation from the external world in order to foster recollection (v.) are solitude and silence, practiced in varying forms and degrees.
Christ does not condemn earthly goods as intrinsically perverse, but imposes complete detachment, albeit by degrees, upon anyone who wishes to follow him (Lc. 14, 33), and characterizes riches as obstacles to the kingdom of heaven (Mt. 19, 23-24; Lc. 8, 14). Therefore, he prescribes for the evangelizers of the Kingdom of God a very austere manner of life (Mc. 6, 8) and absolute poverty.
Asceticism, however, must always be predominantly interior, and it employs purifying and elevating means centered on humility and prayer. humility (v.), which substitutes for self-love (v.) gradual self-denial, abandonment (v.) spiritual childhood (v.); it combats the pride (v.), especially the thirst for glory and domination, while enlightening the soul concerning its relations of dependence upon God. obedience (v.), which, correcting the illusion of self-sufficiency, subjects the will to the will of God as its supreme and exclusive norm.
Prayer, particularly in the meditation (v.), is the essential breath of Christian asceticism. Besides possessing impetratory efficacy, it gathers the spirit, purifies the intellect of ignorance, and enlightens it concerning the truths of faith, preparing it to transcend the natural knowledge of contemplation (v.), with the consequent impulse toward detachment of the heart and the energetic development of the will as a motive power. Connected with meditation is the examination (v.) of conscience, the basis of the moral introspection necessary for regulating relations with God and determining the plan of struggle against sin.
III. FORMS
The most characteristic forms of Christian asceticism through the centuries are: martyrdom, virginity or continence, and monasticism.Martyrdom (v.) constitutes the heroic ideal of the 2nd and 3rd centuries: the martyr, an image of the suffering Christ, appears as the perfect disciple. Moreover, the whole of Christian life, in its struggle against the passions and for steadfastness in the faith, is regarded as an aspiration toward, and almost an equivalent of, martyrdom.
Virginity (v.) in particular is almost equated with martyrdom. From the 2nd century onward, virgins and those practicing continence are a subject for the apologists, and in the 3rd and 4th centuries an extensive literature flourished on the merits and practice of virginity, to which apostolic activity was joined.
Monasticism (v.), both in the anchoritic form in which it arose in the middle of the 3rd century and in the cenobitic form into which it developed from the 4th century onward, channels the entire ascetic current codified by the experience of the saints and summarized in the Rules (v.) of religious institutes. All ascetic means are coordinated toward moral sanctification: from manual labor to solitude and mortifications, from liturgical and contemplative prayer to the arduous apostolic life. The common foundation is the evangelical counsels embraced through the three vows (obedience, chastity, poverty), and communal life in prayer and mortification.
The Church inculcates the ascetic life upon the body of the faithful, imposing abstinences, fasts, and prayers. But full ascetic formation is accomplished individually, under the guidance of confessors and spiritual directors, through practices and methods adapted to each person’s character, needs, and abilities.
IV. ANALOGIES
Comparisons have often been drawn and analogies proclaimed between Christian a. and the ascetic currents that developed within paganism. Leaving aside those unrelated to any contact with Christianity (v. BUDDHISMO; INDUISMO; TEOSOFIA), we shall take a brief look at those which “independent” historical criticism has at times brought into proximity with, or placed in causal relation to, Christian a.In Greco-Roman paganism, outwardly ascetic practices are not unknown: penitential processions, fasts, abstinences, ablutions, some examples of chastity (vestals), and sexual restrictions connected with worship. But the vital element of a. is lacking: the effort toward intimate moral perfection.
In the “mystery” religions, one notes a mystical sentimentalism converging toward a certain union with the divinity; ascetic practices are consequently accentuated there, especially in order to attain the rank of perfect “initiate”; ablutions, fasts and abstinences, and the temporary interdiction of sexual pleasures are common. While not denying the religious sentiment, enveloped in symbols that are often crude, we note, in addition to the naturalistic origin of these cults and the doubtful morality of the “vision of the mysteries,” the absence in these obscure practices of an adequate ascetic content. Union with the divinity is not conceived as intimate participation in and transformation into it, but rather as a safe-conduct for entering the terrifying regions of the underworld; the ascetic trials or purifications are merely a condition ensuring that initiation into sacred things will not displease the divinity.
The various philosophies with a moral and religious background offer something more elevated: proceeding from different presuppositions and by different paths, they seek an interior perfection of man and arrive at a higher conception of the relations between him and the divinity.
Pythagoreanism, or rather Neopythagoreanism, which spread from the first century B.C., begins from the presupposition (shared with Orphism, as are the theory of liberation and that of metempsychosis) of a constitutional dualism in man: Dionysian (good), Titanic (evil); and it seeks the liberation of the good element through self-transcendence, until the cycle of existences comes to an end. As means it recommends: philosophy, an effort toward wisdom that liberates from error and moderates the passions and the sensory part, subjecting them to reason; abstinence from various foods; resignation in the trials of life; examination of conscience; and silence, rigidly imposed during the “novitiate” preceding acceptance into the Pythagorean “community.”
In Stoicism, the summit of human perfection is to live according to the demands of nature, which is reasonable, upright, and free. Stoic a. aims at personal independence; it consists above all in judging correctly the impressions produced by things upon the soul, according to their relation to moral reason, and in practicing imperturbable indifference (apitheia) toward all goods and evils extrinsic to free man, according to the maxim abstine et sustine (abstain and endure). Because of its purely naturalistic ethics and its “apathy,” which kills feeling and generates antisocial individualism, Stoic a. is in spirit opposed to Christian a., although many of its wise counsels concerning contempt for worldly goods, repression of the passions, constancy in the face of suffering and death, meditative reading, and solitude were adopted by Christian writers.
A noble ideal animates the a. of Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Porphyry), which moves along the path of Platonic spiritualism and in conformity with its emanationist metaphysics. Its purpose is union with God (Being, the One) through ecstatic contemplation. It is an essentially simplifying effort: to rid oneself of the bondage of the sensible and transcend the rational world in order to reach the summit of intelligible intuition; hence indifference to, or contempt for, bodily pleasures. But, apart from its theological presuppositions, this a. is opposed to Christian a. by its intellectualistic exclusivism, which leads it to neglect the affective dimension, and by its character of practical unreality, unaware of human frailty.
In general, the ascetic conceptions of love (v.) that descends from God to man in order to rise again from man to God.
The Therapeutae (v.) and Essenes (v.) are connected with Jewish asceticism, with their common life, community of goods, manual labor, prayer, prolonged fasts, study of the sacred books, celibacy, austere silence, solitude, and obedience.
V. DEVIAZIONI ASCETICHE
Over the course of the centuries, deviations appeared, sometimes through excess and sometimes through deficiency.In the first centuries, the Montanists (v.) constituted a rigorist movement that scarcely tolerated marriage and multiplied austere fasts. Gnostics and Manichaeans, professing the intrinsic wickedness of matter, rejected the legitimacy of marriage and imposed universal abstinence from meat and wine; particularly well known were the Encratites (v.), or abstainers. The Council of Gangra (340–43) condemned the false asceticism of Eustathius (v.), and the Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Messalians (v.). The Manichaeans (v.) formed conventicles that renounced possession of the goods of the earth. In the Middle Ages, pseudo-Manichaean asceticism reappeared among the Albigensians. The Waldensians (v.) and the “Apostolic Brothers” demanded absolute poverty; Flagellants (v.) preached bloody public flagellation.
As enemies of asceticism, in the fourth century there stand out Helvidius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius, attacking virginity above all. Closer to our own time, the Quietists (v.) sacrificed asceticism to pure passivity.
The Protestants of Luther (v.), on account of the theory of the moral uselessness of good works, initially declared themselves strangers to, indeed opposed to, asceticism. Calvin (v.), however, imposed upon all an almost monastic asceticism. Asceticism then gradually made its way into all the Protestant “Churches,” at least as a practical necessity (v. BUCHMANISMO; METODISMO; WESLEY, JOHN), eventually leading to attempts, from the nineteenth century onward, at communal religious life, but without vows or irrevocable commitments.
Roberto di Santa Teresa del B. Gesù