7. Liturgical Asceticism

7. LITURGICAL ASCETICISM

The practice of ritual prayer three times each day including the Lord’s Prayer is attested in Christian texts of the late first century (Didache 8; Roberts 1886: 379). In the second and third centuries Tertullian (d.225) and Cyprian of Carthage (d.258) increased the goal to five or more times a day, although the form and content of these prayers, aside from the use of the Lord’s Prayer, is uncertain. In the fourth century psalmody, sung or cantillated recitation of the Psalter, became prominent in Christian worship, probably through the increasing influence of the growing monastic movement (McKinnon 1994: 505-507). Psalmody was both a form of prayer and an ascetical practice insofar as the chanting of psalms was considered an aid to attaining and maintaining the inner balance or harmony of the soul. Such power had long been attributed to music, and the philosopher-physician Galen (d.c. 200) recommended a kind of “music therapy” consisting of certain modes or types of music to be used in specific emotional or psychological states to help calm and restore the inner krasis or “attunement” of body and soul (Galen, Doctrines, V, 6.19-20; DeLacy 1978: 329-330). As has been described, Athanasius of Alexandria (d.373) recommended specific psalms to be used in a way similar to Galen’s prescriptions; and both Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian emphasized the healing power of psalmody interspersed with periods of silent prayer.

Throughout the fourth century the popularity of the Book of Psalms increased, and frequent, prolonged psalmody became common among the ascetics of Egypt, whose excesses in this regard Cassian tried to curb (Institutes 2.5.4-5; Ramsey 2000: 40). Nevertheless, in Coptic monasticism the practice of reciting the entire psalter in a single day acquired a preeminence that it retains to the present day. In the West the Rule of Benedict imposed a more moderate regime by distributing the psalms over a single week, dividing individual psalms or portions of longer psalms among the eight daily canonical offices of Vigils (Matins), Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline (Benedict, Rule 8-18; Fry 1981: 203-215). Additional daily psalmody in the Office of the Dead and the Office of the Blessed Virgin became the norm in western medieval monasteries; and occasional zealous monastic reformers such as Peter Damian (d.1072) attempted with only limited success to add one or more daily-recited psalters to the Benedictine regime. This emphasis on the quantity rather than the quality of daily psalmody led to the disappearance in the liturgy of silent intervals between psalms, which had originally served to facilitate prayer and meditation on the meaning of the sacred text (Cassian, Institutes 2.11.1; Ramsey 2000: 44). Despite commentaries stressing the poetic beauty and hidden mystical meanings of the psalms, psalmody tended to become ether a pensum, an allotted work and religious obligation of monks, nuns, and clerics, or an ascetic exercise thought to expiate sins.

From the fourth century in the Christian East and to a somewhat lesser extent also in the West, the celebration of the Eucharist was regarded as a foretaste of heaven, an opportunity to participate in transforming rituals that healed, even divinized, the participant and refocused the contemplative’s gaze on eschatological mysteries. This understanding was encouraged in commentaries such as The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies by (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Aereopagite (fl.c.500), The Church’s Mystagogy by Maximus Confessor (d. 662), and On the Divine Liturgy by Germanus of Constantinople (d.c. 733). These commentaries depict the eucharistic liturgy as a spiritual exercise in which the soul may be mysteriously transfigured and reconsecrated to God. Strict rules requiring abstinence from sexual intercourse for various intervals before presiding at the liturgy meant that in the East where married priests became the norm, the Eucharist was seldom celebrated daily outside of monasteries. In the West, however, where priestly celibacy was at least theoretically mandated, the possibility arose of daily or even more frequent celebrations of mass.

The homilies of Gregory the Great (d.604) bear witness to a growing popular conviction that the frequent celebration of mass appeases the wrath of “God the dread Lord” and that stipended masses (i.e. masses for which a donation was made) can lessen or obviate the pain of the souls in purgatory (Gregory, Homily 37 on the Gospels; Hurst 1990: 327-338). During the middle ages in the West a new cadre of priests arose who were often incompetent to preach or validly celebrate any sacraments other than the eucharist, and whose sole function was the ascetical exercise of celebrating as many expiatory, stipended masses as possible. The late medieval Golden Legend provides fanciful allegories of every part of the western eucharistic liturgy upon which the laity, who seldom received communion, were invited to meditate during mass.

The western doctrine of transubstantiation that stresses the essential presence of Christ under the forms of bread and wine led to a desire to behold the consecrated elements during the liturgy as a kind of visual communion. This in turn led to the prolongation of those portions of the liturgy where the elements are elevated for veneration, and to liturgies that focus primarily on the exposed Eucharistic wafer. These uniquely western innovations remain popular today among modern Roman Catholics and some Anglicans, for whom these liturgical exercises are considered both ascetical and mystical.

The very ancient practice of monologistic prayer, the frequent or continuous recitation of a brief prayer-phrase, became increasingly prominent in the Christian East and West from the fourteenth century, although in the East it has generally been more common in monasteries than among the laity. It has often been encouraged as a substitution for the psalter of the divine office, especially among the illiterate, and as a penitential exercise offered in reparation for particular sins or failings, or as a suffrage (expiatory sacrifice) for the dead. The Egyptian desert fathers of the fourth century knew and seem to have occasionally engaged in some form of monologistic prayer; and in the early fifth century Cassian described the practice in detail (Conference 10; Ramsey 1997: 365-393). The formula Cassian recommends, “God come to my assistance, Lord make haste to help me,” although frequently encountered in liturgical prayer, did not become a popular formula for private monologistic prayer. In the West repetitions of the Lord’s prayer, the Our Father or Pater Noster were widely-practiced during the early middle ages, and strings of beads called paternosters could be purchased as an aid to keeping track of the number of times the prayer was repeated. From the thirteenth century the paternoster was supplemented with varying forms of the Ave Maria, a combination of Gabriel’s and Elizabeth’s salutations in Luke 1.28 and 1.42. In the fifteenth century the aves and paternosters were linked to meditation on a fixed series of events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, producing the Rosary that remains popular today among Roman Catholics.

In the eastern monastic tradition preference was given to brief prayers containing the name of Jesus, most commonly the formula, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” The theologian Gregory Palamas (d.1359) felt compelled by opponents of the “Jesus Prayer” to provide a theological justification and defense of its practice. Unlike the western rosary, the Jesus Prayer does not entail meditation on any specific religious concepts or events: it is intentionally non-iconic. The goal is to allow the constant invocation of the name of Jesus through the prayer to “draw the mind into the heart” in a spirit of penthos, sorrow for sins (Ware 1986: 175-6, 182-3).

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