From My Present Reading...

Father Zossima to Alyosha Karmazov and the other monks while lying on his deathbed in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov:

"Love one another, Fathers... Love God's people. We are not holier than the laymen because we have come here and shut ourselves up within these walls, but, on the contrary, everyone who has come here has by the very fact of his coming here acknowledged that he is worse than all the worldly and than all men and all things on earth... And the longer the monk lives within the walls of his monastery, the more deeply must he be conscious of that. For otherwise he would have had no reason for coming here at all. But when he realizes that he is not only worse than all the worldly, but that he's responsbile to all men for all people and all things, for all human sins, universal and individual - only then will the aim or our seculsion be achieved. For you must know, beloved, that each one of us is beyond all question responsible for all men and all things on earth, not only because of the general transgressions of the world, but each one individually for all men and every single man on this earth. This realization is the crown of a monk's way of life, and, indeed of every man on earth. For a monk is not a different kind of man, but merely such as all men on earth ought to be. It is only then that our hearts will be moved to a love that is infinite and universal and that knows no surfeit. It is then that each of you will have the power to gain the world by love and wash away the sins fo the world by his tears..."

A couple comments: First, this quotation reminds of a comment my first pastor once made to me when I was about 18 years old and gaining a keen interest in the practice of spiritual disciplines. He said to this effect: "A person doesn't fast or practice solitude because they're holy or more spiritual than the rest. On the contrary, the practice of spiritual disciplines is the result of a realization that something in you needs purging, and therefore, should provoke a spirit of humility rather than spiritual pride." So too it seems with any kind of "spiritual" position - be it monks, nuns, priests, pastors, evangelists, or any kind of "full-time vocational ministry" position. For a long time, I was told (both explicitly and subliminally by the words and actions of others) that full-time ministry was not only an honourable vocation that requires great responsibility (which of course is true) but one that is to be given high regard because those in ministry are more spiritual, closer to God, etc. It is this second point I have a problem although it is an extremely common mindset within the Christian bubble. Not only does it create a hierarchy of importance within the church (one that has been carried on since Tertullian named the common people "plebs" [nobodies] and clergy "ords" [those of order/power], I might add), but it grates against the very mindset of Jesus, who, famously said, "The first will be last and the last will be first." Should it come as any surprise that this is one of the most recorded phrases by Jesus ... and that we in the Church are prone to liken our definition of leadership to that of the world than what Jesus taught?

Perhaps, like Father Zossima, has said, those in "Christian ministry" (I put that in " " because all of life no matter one's vocation is supposed to be an opportunity to show the love of Christ, and hence, do ministry - or be a minister), are actually the weaker ones. They are the ones too weak to deal with the temptations of the world, too weak to deal with the many gray issues and ethical dilemmas that face us in a world of global atrocities and concerns far too many to list. Maybe its the secluded "spiritual" people of the world who sometimes need the Gospel preached to them by the "worldly" - that gospel that promises to bring good news to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the hurting, the despised, the forgotten, the people at the margins of society.

And a second point: Zossima's statement, "For you must know, beloved, that each one of us is beyond all question responsible for all men and all things on earth," is an oft-quoted line by Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (one of my favorite contemporary thinkers, I might add). Levinas, in both his philosophical and theological writings, was highly critical of mysticism, or perhaps at what it had become. His critique was aimed at the mystic claim one could have a personal encounter with God, a one-on-one relationship, as if one could live alone on an island constantly communing with God in order to achieve his purpose in the world. The natural outcome of such a view results in a complete forgetting of the Other, of ethics, of our responsibility towards our neighbor - of a complete forgetting of 1 John's exhorting that one cannot love God if he hates his brother. Consequently, spiritual disciplines - and most of systematic theology for that matter - has become cut off from its very purpose of existence - of enhancing our love and ministry to those God has placed in our lives. The only true setting for the solitary kind of spiritual disciplines - we shouldn't eradicate them completely! - is in their use to prepare us and accentuate our interaction with others. As Levinas said, “Interior piety is always subordinated to its social form. One is always three, never two” [I.E., there's no such thing as a one-on-one personal relationship with God - it always involves our relationship with our neighbor, with justice, with love.]