Enjoyment and Abstinence

Reflections on the Ascetic Life

There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.

— Ecclesiastes 3:5

Why I Became a Friar in 1971

Today, a widespread conception of Christian life holds that, under the pretext of being based on love and freedom, Christians are joyful, merciful, inclusive, and understanding. Everyone, it is thought, has their path to happiness, and God gives grace to all and accepts us as we are. Consequently, absolute and universal moral principles are rejected; morality is no longer seen as obedience to a law, nor as the arduous exercise of duty. Any notion of suffering, effort, labor, and renunciation is avoided. There is no concern for avoiding sin, as it is presumed that God forgives everyone. There is no willingness to refrain from sin if doing so involves suffering. Hence, for example, the legalization of euthanasia. For such thinkers, the evil lies not in sinning but in suffering.

For the proponents of goodness without rigor and hedonists, fleeing evil does not mean avoiding sin but escaping suffering. Actions that cause pain or hardship should not be performed—only those that bring pleasure. Alternatively, great sacrifices are made to pursue vain and fleeting goods. Concepts like expiation, satisfaction, reparation, and sacrifice hold no meaning for them. No one should be made to suffer. Thus, if sin exists, it lies in the imposition of a penalty or in punishing someone. The real evil is the belief that it is possible to will or do evil. On the contrary, according to this view, everyone is inherently good; they merely have different ideas about good and evil. Each person should be free to follow their morality.

I have never accepted these ideas, finding them false. For this reason, in defiance of these lax and false Christians, I became a Dominican friar in 1971. I made this decision trusting in Christ’s words when He promises that those who have left everything for Him will receive a hundredfold in this present life, along with tribulations, and in the next life, the reward of eternal life.

This is exactly what happened to me. I received from God even more than I expected, imagined, or anticipated. When I no longer thought of what I had left behind and lived easily in this state of abstinence, fully capable of mastering my impulses thanks to long ascetic practice—and content with this—Christ Himself, of His own accord, gave me that promised hundredfold, offering concrete proof of the truth and reliability of His promises.

I never experienced concupiscence in the manner of Luther or Rasputin, as something irresistible that must be satisfied because it inevitably conquers us. Therefore, I carefully refrained from justifying Luther’s rejection of the vow of chastity under the pretext of physical needs. On the contrary, I have always embraced and practiced the Catholic understanding of chastity, and I am still very content to have remained faithful to my religious vow until now.

In examining Maritain's thought, and learning about his marvelous, almost miraculous, sixty-year virginal marital union with Raïssa [1] —rich in spiritual fruits and a true blessing for the Church—I came to realize that being human is not about being an individual, but about being a couple. As St. Paul himself says, "Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman." (1 Corinthians 11:11) Indeed, an individual is not fully human without union with the opposite sex, whether this union is virginal or sexual.

This is why God says, "It is not good for man to be alone." Therefore, chastity is not merely a personal virtue but a virtue of the couple. It is not just about self-control but about realizing love. God says, "They shall become one flesh." Love requires two.

Furthermore, I came to realize that for a couple to truly align with God’s plan, their relationship must transcend the merely human and secular level, rather, it must be a consecrated couple [2], whether in marriage or in religious life.

In 1970, upon completing my degree in philosophy at Bologna, I defended a thesis inspired by the prophetic couple Maritain. With the reform program of the Second Vatican Council—concluded only a few years earlier—firmly in mind, I realized, in light of the unsettling and disheartening spectacle of the so-called '1968 protest,' that the remedy to 'the crisis of the intellectual in modern society'—the title of my thesis—was a man-woman couple modeled after the Maritains. Such a couple need not be virginal, as virginity is a rare charism; an ordinarily married couple would suffice.

For a moment, I dreamed of being able to realize this rare ideal myself. But, realizing that the Lord was not granting me this path, and at the same time fully understanding the value of religious life, I felt called to it. Thus, in 1971, I entered religious life by becoming a Dominican in Bologna.

As I studied the lives of the Saints, particularly the Fathers and Doctors of the Church—for I felt a burning love for wisdom—I became aware of the importance of the vow of chastity in the pursuit of wisdom and in attaining the highest form of spiritual freedom and union with God. I understood that the achievement of mystical experience requires an ascetic life.

My model, nonetheless, remained the virginal marriage of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. This may seem an incongruous example for someone who renounced marriage to become a friar. However, I felt that God, in His way and in His own time, would fulfill this most noble desire that He had placed in my heart.

Thus, I entrusted to God this desire to realize, like Maritain, a consecrated couple, certain that, in His own time and manner, He would give me the hundredfold of what I had left for His love. In the meantime, I threw myself with all possible zeal into the practice of the observances of Dominican religious life, with its strong intellectual focus, continuing along the line of thought that had formed the basis of my thesis.

In studying St. Thomas Aquinas—of whom I have been a passionate disciple since 1960—I realized two things [4]: first, that he conceives the essence of the marital union independently of the procreative aspect, which may not always be present, as an indissoluble spiritual union between man and woman; and second, that this union is destined to reappear at the future resurrection of the dead, at which point, while the numerical increase of the human race will have ceased, love will not have ceased.

The New Wojtylian Concept of Chastity

In 1980 and 1982, I published two articles on this subject in Sacra Doctrina [5], the journal of the Dominican Theological Institute of Bologna, where I was teaching. These articles caught the attention of the Secretariat of State, which recruited me as an official and collaborator of the Pope. Indeed, my ideas aligned precisely with those that St. John Paul II was developing in his General Audiences from 1979, which concluded in 1983.

In these Audiences, the Pope presented a new concept of chastity, referencing the Edenic nudity, and implicitly signifying the overcoming of the old conception of womanhood, which had dominated for millennia and underpinned the traditional understanding of chastity up until his time.

This anti-feminist view had roots even in the Biblical Proverbs and among the Church Fathers, who did not realize that such ideas were foreign to the true content of divine revelation. These were beliefs tied to the anti-feminist mentality of the time, but unfortunately, they were interpreted as if they were the Word of God [6]. This is why the anti-feminist prejudice has been so difficult to eradicate and persists even in some contemporary circles that consider themselves progressive.

This vision of womanhood was wholly negative, with the sole exception of the prolific, economically beneficial mother. Woman was reduced to the status of a minor—one who needed to be controlled and kept in check. She was portrayed as sensual, impulsive, emotional, talkative, fickle, tempting, unintelligent, unreliable, and seductive—in essence, a perilous figure for anyone seeking an ascetic life or striving for mystical experience. As such, she was to be kept at a distance and treated with coldness and severity, entirely devoid of intimacy

There certainly existed a profound devotion to the Virgin Mary, but it was forgotten that she too was a woman, and indeed, her femininity was effectively erased—just as the image of a saint is stripped of anything that might seem impure or inappropriate.

Conversely, St. John Paul II embraced with frankness the new vision of woman, the truly biblical one, derived from Genesis, the Apocalypse, and the teachings of Christ. This view, already introduced by Pius XII, presented woman as the companion of man, of equal personal dignity and nature, willed by God so that there might be reciprocity between the two in every aspect of life and society.

As for St. Thomas Aquinas, he helped me to understand the distinction between the enjoyment of certain goods in the future life and their abstention in the mortal life. Enjoyment concerns the realization of protological values culminating in eschatological ones.

Abstinence, on the other hand, is an emergency practice, necessary but provisional and temporary, justified by the miserable condition of our current fallen nature. Given the rebellion of the flesh against the spirit and the tendency of the spirit to disdain the flesh, the spirit can only reach its full strength, freedom, and union with God through the practice of moderate abstinence, which does not harm or compromise the fulfillment of legitimate essential needs but rather ensures their honest and necessary satisfaction.

No proud or hypocritical rigorism, no violence or cruelty, are permitted or admissible against instincts and passions in true asceticism because they are good in themselves and created by God. Therefore, they should not be crushed under the pretense of domination, for as Freud and experience have always shown, they will exact revenge, and the humiliated subject, instead of rising to the level of the spirit, will fall into the mire of the flesh and the snares of the devil.

However, the reproduction of the species is not one of those essential needs. Hence the possible benefit of renouncing marriage as an ascetic practice for a deeper union with God. One can live without procreating, but certainly not without eating, sleeping heating, or social interactions. Luther’s error was in believing that one could not live without sexual relations, just as one could not live without eating or sleeping.

Thus, fasting, mortification, vigils, poverty, penances, solitude, silence, sexual abstinence—all are good and useful practices, even if painful, in the current condition of fallen nature, though not all correspond to God’s eschatological plan. Practices excluded from this plan, such as the separation between man and woman, the so-called “cloister,” will be absent at the resurrection.

Some practices, such as reproduction, nourishment, and rest, are tied to the present life. Others, such as dominion over nature, technology, sociality, linguistic communication, and the union between man and woman, possess absolute value and are properties of the eschatological plan. Therefore, we will find them again at the future resurrection.

The eschatological perspective applied to sexuality is an ancient theme in Russian mysticism. The Slav Wojtyla, a scholar of Russian mysticism, has offered us this eschatological vision, purified of all Lutheran or Kabbalistic impurity. It must be stated with absolute clarity that the doctrine of the eschatological union has nothing to do with a hypocritical, pseudo-mystical cover for unconfessed libidinal needs. Instead, it is a doctrine of faith that St. John Paul II illuminated in his commentary on Genesis chapter two.

This doctrine should not, therefore, be subjected to a Freudian psychoanalytic reading, but rather to a genuinely theological one, expanding the traditional view of chastity beyond its limitation to the present life.

This doctrine does not arise from lust but is an exquisitely and rigorously theological deduction. It is not a trick to justify secret concupiscent desires by presenting them as sublime love; on the contrary, it arises from the soul of a believer and a perfectly chaste saint—moreover, a universal Teacher of the faith, none other than St. John Paul II. To some, pious souls with narrow views, these ideas may have appeared demented or scandalous. Yet, we can trust them, as they come to us from the Vicar of Christ.

To shed light on these surprising and almost incredible matters, and to provide an adequate framework within which they can be understood, we must turn to the teachings of St. Paul. He explains that our present life is a transition from the 'old man' to the 'new man,' from the 'animal man' to the 'spiritual man.' This journey takes us from a state of fallen nature to one of redeemed nature, and ultimately toward the future resurrected nature. Through baptism, we become a 'new creature,' reborn as children of God, in the image of the Son, and moved by the Holy Spirit.

According to St. Paul, ascetic life is a systematic mortification of the old man until he dies completely at the moment of physical death. Ascetic practices, therefore, must continue until the old man is entirely dead. This is the meaning of the promise we religious make at the solemn profession of vows, to maintain the practice of chastity usque ad mortem, until the old man is fully dead.

The future life of the resurrection will be the fullness of a risen life that can and should begin even now, albeit amidst the miseries of the present life and the ascetic practices connected to them. This is what St. Paul calls “the first fruits or the pledge of the Spirit.” It is the hundredfold promised by Christ to those who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God, who pluck out an eye or cut off a hand or foot to avoid falling into Gehenna, who sell everything to buy the precious pearl, who leave everything to follow Christ.

P. Giovanni Cavalcoli, OP

Fontanellato, August 8, 2024

Feast of St. Dominic

source: https://oraetcogita.substack.com/publish/post/150311318

Notes:

[1] See Jean-Luc Barré, Jacques e Raissa Maritain. Due intellettuali anarchici testimoni di Dio (Jacques and Raissa Maritain: Two Anarchist Intellectuals Witnessing to God), Edizioni Paoline, Milan 2000; Nora Possenti Ghiglia, I tre Maritain. La presenza di Vera nel mondo di Jacques e Raissa (The Three Maritains: Vera’s Presence in the World of Jacques and Raissa), Edizioni Ancora, Milan 2000.

[2]See my book La coppia consacrata ( The Consecrated Couple), Edizioni Viverein, Monopoli (BA) 2008.

[3] A very rare case of a virgin married couple, modeled after Mary and Joseph. Indeed, St. Thomas discusses this about that most holy marriage: Sum. Theol., III, a.2.

[4] In the aforementioned article of the Summa.

[5] LA CONDIZIONE DELLA SESSUALITA’ UMANA NELLA RESURREZIONE SECONDO SAN TOMMASO (THE CONDITION OF HUMAN SEXUALITY IN THE RESURRECTION ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS), Sacra Doctrina, 92, 1980, pp. 21-146; THE RESURRECTION OF SEXUALITY ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS, in Proceedings of the VII International Thomistic Congress, edited by the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, Vatican Publishing House, Vatican City, 1982, pp. 207-219.

[6] Thus, for example, it was believed that the subjection of woman to man was a natural state, without recognizing that it was instead a consequence of original sin.