Monk wanna be

Pithless Thoughts did it to me again!

When I saw this “magazine cover,” I laughed and laughed. And, then, I wondered whether I should be crying. Yes, it challenged me again. Sadly, we have some monk wanna be people in Orthodoxy. It is a serious enough problem that our bishops had to address the issue more than once. What do I mean by “monk wanna be?” Well, let’s just say that we have had some converts that began to adopt a significant part of the outerwear of monastics and many of their spiritual practices. They do grow their hair and beard long, always go around with a prayer rope, and, yes, have been known to walk around in cassocks.

For all too many of them, there was a sadly judgmental approach that began to grow. They began to look down on people who were not as “spiritual” as they. They began to quietly criticize priests who did not do the “full” services, which meant the monastic version of the services rather than the cathedral version of the services. Anything which the hierarchs changed was seen as a compromise with modernity and the explanation for all the ills that have beset the Orthodox Church. Many saw themselves as heirs to the courageous monks of yore who maintained the faith and held firm against the apostate and the heretic.

Yet, here was the problem. None of them were under authority. None of them were a part of a monastic community in which you receive spiritual direction and in which you are given aid to purge yourself of the sin which so easily besets all of us. Saint John Climacus (Saint John of the Ladder) in his Ladder of Divine Ascent warns that the spiritual practices that he recommends are only for the monastics and are not to be taken on without the guidance of a spiritual director. Lorenzo Scupoli in his Spiritual Combat (edited by Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and revised by Saint Theopan the Recluse) says exactly the same thing. The consistent warning by the monastic writers is that their practices are not to be undertaken by lay people outside a monastery, and are most certainly not to be undertaken without spiritual guidance. And these converts were the precise demonstration of why the monastic writers insisted on this rule. The schema of a monk when carried on outside a monastery most surely leads to error and arrogance. Only in the hothouse atmosphere of the monastery (or the hermitage) can the schema of the monastic grow a beautiful flower for the Lord rather than a corrupted plantling. In fact, even among the monastics few are allowed to take on the Great Schema, and that only after years of service and a life that shows the holiness of the Lord.

But, you know, it is all too easy for all of us to take on some part of the attitude of these converts. I get to wear a collar. On Sundays I am outfitted in holy vestments. I am called Father, honored and revered by most Orthodox (yes, I have a few problem children who are trying to teach me patience by their behavior and lack of respect for me). And, it is so easy for me to begin to believe that my outerwear makes me holy. Yet whenever I look inside myself, I end up having to say, “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” When I look inside myself I have no doubt as to why the main Orthodox prayer response is, “Lord, have mercy.” And so, I find that I must fight against the same tendencies as those converts who fell into such sin. In Spanish speaking countries there is a saying:

El hábito no hace al monje — The habit does not make the monk

There is tremendous wisdom in that saying. Our Lord Jesus Christ says something very similar.

Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.

I need to always remember both what my culture teaches me and what my Lord teaches me on this subject. Thank you Pithless Thoughts.