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Complementarity between cenobitic and eremitic life.

Roland Barths said that there are two ways of life that have guided the social thinking of
western Christian civilization: eremitic and cenobitic life. The hermit lives alone, with the
possibility to be accompanied, and the cenobite lives accompanied with the possibility to be
alone. Our purpose is to show that both ways are not opposed to each other, but they are
complementary and each of them needs the other to be complete. With this in mind we consider
the works of some of the most important monastic authors, as well as the opinions of other great
theologians that have dealt with this matter.
Life of Antony.
To begin, we must consider the man who has been seen as the pioneer of monastic life.
Although we could say that he was a kind of hermit, he also acted as spiritual father for many
monks and other people who sought for his advice. Of course there was a tension between his
desire for solitude (as a hermit) and his willingness to serve others (as a cenobite), but he
acquired a good balance between them.
The tension between withdrawal and ministry in the Life of Antony.
The first basic characteristic of Antonys life was his withdrawal to the desert. This withdrawal
was different from that of the monks who lived before him. It was progressive: he began living
near the town, then he went to the tombs, afterwards to the outer mountain and finally to the
inner mountain. He was always looking for greater solitude, but many times interrupted by his
visits to the towns and by the people who came to see him in search for spiritual directions. At
the end, his flight to the desert was not because he feared or hated the world, but because he
wanted to be closer to his fellow humans.
Nevertheless, he [Antony] loved more than everything else his way of life in the mountain.
(Life of Antony # 84). This is a remark that we find after some story about Antonys
involvement in the affairs of the people. He was subjected to pressure of the people in need.
Only because of this would he leave his loved inner mountain to deliver a few statements about
salvation and remarks pertaining to those who required help. (# 85). After this he hastened to
return.
There was always a tension between Antonys desire to be alone with God and his compassion
for those afflicted with different infirmities, needing his presence and his help. This is similar
to what Paul felt when he said, I am pulled in two directions. I want very much to leave this
life and live with Christ, which is a far better thing; but for your sake it is much more important
that I remain alive. I am sure of this, and so I know that I will stay on with you all, to add to
your progress and joy in the faith. (Phil. 1, 23-25).
The solution to the tension between withdrawal and ministry is not shown in Antonys life
because it is a tension inherent to all monastic and Christian life. There always will be this dual
dimension in the following of Christ. The ideas of solitary holiness and selfless ministry are
profoundly intertwined. We could say that the first is necessary for the second: if you do not
learn to surrender the self to God in solitude, then you will not be able to open your heart to
others and to help them.
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This is the paradox of the eremitic life. For even though the hermits act in secret and may want
to be forgotten, nevertheless the Lord shows them like lamps to everyone, so that those who
hear may know that the commandments have power for the amendment of life. (#93).
In Antonys life there was no opposition between action and contemplation. These were
complementary to each other. Much later Thomas Aquinas emphasized this point when he said
that the contemplative life should be combined with the ministry. The fruits of the personal
prayer and the closeness to God should be brought down and offered to mankind (contemplata
tradere as he called it). Antony worked good things for others just as Christ had worked good
things for him.
Some monastic spiritualities of later centuries have stressed very much the importance of
absolute withdrawal and so accorded to the monk a very small role in society. This is a narrow
view of the meaning of the monastic life. In the life of Antony we can see that he became holy
not only because of his solitary retirement; but also because the other episodes that took part in
his advance in sanctity: contests with demons, debates with Greek philosophers (# 72), and
denunciation of heretics (# 68). The progressive character of his withdrawal included periods of
complete solitude and also times to recognize his responsibility to the Church and to the people
in need.

The Life of Antony and The Bohairic Life of Pachomius
Pachomius, contrary to Antony, believed that cenobitic life was the most perfect kind of
monastic life, because only in community men could live as the first Christians in Jerusalem,
with one heart and one mind. However, we must say that there is the possibility of self-
discipline and mutual love in any kind of authentic monk.
Asceticism and Service in the eremitic and cenobitic ways.
There are two aspects of monastic life, asceticism (discipline) and service (mutual love), that are
considered by some very distinctive respectively of the eremitic and cenobitic way. But both are
qualities that can be found either in the hermit or in the cenobite. Nevertheless, we can say that
the stress in the eremitic life is much more on the ascetical practices of the desert, while the
cenobitic life emphasizes principally the love among the brothers.
The eremitic and the cenobitic life are not opposed to each other. On the contrary, they are very
similar, and it is hard to establish a sharp limit for them. We could say that there is a continuum
in which can be found the two extremes: absolute withdrawal and intense community life. And
yet, even in these extremes there will be some elements of the other kind of life.
In chapter 105 of the Bohairic life of Pachomius we read that the cenobites are better than the
anchorites, because the first can exercise the commandment of mutual love. Besides, they can
see and imitate the examples of others. On the contrary, the anchorites are served by others and
can become proud or vain. (# 35).
On the other hand the asceticism of the anchoritic life can be more rigorous. The hermits can
dedicate more time to prayer in solitude and to silent contemplation without being entangled in
the troubles of the community life. Perhaps, the polemic remarks of the cenobites against the
anchorites show some envy for the tranquil life of withdrawal.
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In any case, asceticism and loving service are inherent to every kind of monastic life. Further,
these virtues are necessary to each other. The discipline leads to the love for oneself, for God
and the others. And loving service is acquired through the discipline of self-surrender.
This does not imply that chronologically the eremitic life must come first in the life of a person,
as was the case of Pachomius. Nor that to go to the desert one must be first trained in the
cenobitic life, as Saint Benedict established. In the life of any monk, and of any person, God
sets the time for tearing and the time for mending, the time for silence and the time for talk.
(Ecc. 3, 7).

Saint Basil
The same as Pachomius, Basil thought that the cenobitic life was superior to the eremitic life.
Notwithstanding, he wrote that the aim of ascetic life is to keep the mind in tranquility
(hesichia) and the way to attain this is to avoid distraction. To achieve this it is necessary to
separate oneself from the world altogether, which means a severance of the soul from sympathy
with the body and a readiness to receive in ones heart the impressions engendered there by the
divine instructions. To this end solitude (eremia) is the greatest help since it calms our
passions and gives reason leisure (schole) to severe them completely from the soul. ( Letter to
Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep.2).

Cassian
Adalbert De Voge, in his book The Rule of Saint Benedict. A doctrinal and spiritual
Commentary, establishes a comparison between common life and solitary life. He studies the
tradition that ended up with the affirmation of Benedict in RB 2, 3-5: Second, there are the
anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time,
and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life
According to De Voge, in his letter to Eustochium, Saint Jerome states summarily but in all
clearness the fact that the anchorites go forth from the cenobia. This letter is the certain source
of Conference 18, in which Cassian attests, as in many other passages of his work, this
affirmation which leaves no room for exception.
Thus, as early as 384, or some forty years before Cassian began to write, a Latin observer held
as an obvious fact that every Egyptian anchorite received his first formation in a cenobium.
When the author of the Institutes and the Conferences presents eremitic withdrawal as a sublime
way of life for which one should prepare oneself in the cenobium, he is expressing not a purely
personal idea based on his own experience, but the common doctrine and practice of a whole
milieu.
Confer. 18.6.2 says that according to Piamun, the cenobite is the object of the insidious attacks
of a hidden enemy, while the anchorite confronts the same adversary face to face. So, for
Cassian, cenobitism and eremitism are the two successive phases of one progressive struggle.
Thus the relations of the cenobium and the solitary life are envisaged in the perspective of
combat or of abnegation. If the solitary life is superior to the common life, this is because the
monk there has a more dangerous combat and imposes on himself more costly restrictions.
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For Cassian, contemplation is the aim of the anchorite, and it supposes the active life meaning
praktik or ascesis- which the monk ought to have led to perfection in the cenobium. This
theme of life in society as preparation for the retired life of the contemplative had been well
presented in Philo, and already applied by him to the two forms of Jewish monasticism of his
time.
Even in its praise of anchorites Conference 18 was intended as a recommendation of the
canobium. The celebration of the anchorites is itself, after all, only an element of this
demonstration. Not that there is room to suspect its sincerity, but if our authors admit with
Cassian that the anchorite is great and admirable, this is precisely because they see in him a
perfect cenobite, capable of doing without cenobitic discipline after having fulfilled it to
perfection.
The Rule of the Master.
The Master adhered to the monastic doctrine of the author of the conferences, who held
eremitism to be a fully legitimate way, even superior to the common life. In this he parts
company from Basil who did not admit the solitary life at all. The masters cenobitism, like
Cassians regards the common life as a means and not as an end. Only the definition of the
monastery as a school could allow such openness towards eremitism.

The Rule of Saint Benedict.
Commenting on RB 2, 3-5, De Voge points to the fact that certain readers are chiefly sensitive
to the praise for anchorites which follows the definition of the cenobites. This second paragraph
seems to them of great importance to the understanding of cenobitism itself; for beyond it a
more difficult and sublime career opens up, for which the common life is a necessary
preparation. Benedicts attitude toward eremitism therefore gives rise to discussion. The first
interpretation insists on the doctrinal significance on the paragraph on the hermits, and in fact,
this is remarkable. The opposite interpretation, which sees the Benedictine chapter as a choice
of cenobitic life matched by the polite exclusion of eremitism, seems no less problematic when
we examine the Rule of the Master, who considered eremitic life as superior.
Fr Terrence Kardong ( Benedicts Rule : A Translation and Commentary. P. 44.), says that
since the main charge against the sarabaites and gyrovagues is self-will and lack of order, it is
easy to forget that anchorites are vulnerable to the same criticism, since they have neither a rule
nor an abbot. However, there is a big difference because hermits have gone through of
conversion. The very etymology of the word conversation shows that it is a matter of process
rather than sudden change. Anchorites have experienced this long process but sarabaites have
not. The latter are compared to soft lead which is not purified like gold in the furnace.

Dialogues Book II. St Gregory the Great.
The apparent dilemma between eremitic and cenobitic life was also present in the life and
writings of Saint Benedicts biographer, Pope Gregory the Great.
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The life of Benedict is a description of the ideal life that Pope Gregory the Great wanted for
himself and for all Christians of his tumultuous time, the perfect life that all of us will find after
death. Though the historical Benedict is barely discernible in the Dialogues, the figure that
Gregory does present is very interesting, for if the book is not biographical, it still tells us a
great deal about Gregorys own spiritual ideals. Perhaps Benedict is a projection of Gregorys
own personal regrets about his career choices. While Benedict spent his young manhood hiding
in a cave, Gregory functioned as the prefect of Rome. The latter reproached himself for having
waited until he was thirty to become a monk (Dial. I Prol.).
Yet, Gregory is aware that the solution does not lie simply in a flight from the world. In the
Commentary on the Book of Kings, he says that preaching is in some cases a greater vocation
than the contemplative withdrawal. Hence, monks should often function as guides for personas
advanced in spiritual life. Benedict too, though a deep lover of solitude, became an able
administrator, willing to sacrifice his own peace for the faithful discharge of his duties. By his
establishment and prudent administration of monastic communities, he demonstrated a sense of
social responsibility which, often combined with evangelical fervor, is a proper virtue of
monasticism at its best.
Benedict is the center of the whole Book of Dialogues, where he is shown as the model of
sanctity. His life in this world is an anticipation of what will be the future eschatological life.
With this description, Gregory reveals his preoccupation with the end of the world, which he
was eagerly awaiting, because he thought it would put an end to his chaotic era. The
eschatological character of Benedicts life conforms completely with the advice he give to his
monks: mortem cotidie ante oculos suspectam habere (have death daily before your eyes,
RB 4, 47).
Book II presents Benedict as escaping from successive occasions of temptation and situations of
danger, and moving through different geographical and spiritual stages. Each time he reaches
higher states of perfection, culminating in his death at Montecassino. In this respect, The Life
of Benedict is similar to the Gospel of Luke. The ascent of Benedict to his death at
Montecassino recalls Jesus ascent to his cross at Jerusalem.
Gregory wrote The Life of Benedict as the expression of his own ideal and his own drama, that
of a monk forced to serve as bishop. Benedicts story offers him precisely an example of the
combination of desire for God alone and concern for people. This tension between withdrawal
and involvement was the God-given law and cross of Gregorys life.
For all that, Gregory acknowledges that the pastors who unite action and contemplation lead a
life more perfect than the pure contemplative (Moralia in Job 6, 57). But the mixed life that
Gregory declares as superior to the contemplative life, is not a life in which action turns away
from contemplation, but a life in which contemplation itself brims over in action. This is an
idea that we will see Thomas Aquinas was to borrow from Gregory seven centuries later. (S. Th.
2.2 q. 182).

Christian Traditions of the East.
The history of Spirituality in the Christian eastern churches also shows the progressive character
of the mystical way as an advance from the community life to the solitude of the desert.
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The Syriac tradition.
Joseph Hazzaya, the Seer, born in 710, was the abbot of the monastery of Qardu (Turkey). He
wrote The Letter on the Three Degrees of the Spiritual Life. His synthesis of the various traditions
provides the following correspondences: 1. stage of the body (the terminology derives from
John the solitary), concerned with external practices, fasts, vigils, psalmody, etc; this belongs to
the cenobitic life and its aim is purity; it corresponds to the Evagrian practik and the
Dionysian purification. 2. stage of the soul, concerned with the interior virtues such as
humility, patience; this stage belongs to the solitary life and its aim is shaphyutha, lucidity,
etc.; it corresponds to the evagrian natural contemplation and the Dionysian illumination. 3.
Stage of the Spirit, concerned no longer with the activities of the senses or the soul, but with
those of the mind; characteristic of this stage, which represents perfection, is the vision of the
formless light of the Trinity and of the risen Christ; the stage corresponds to the Evagrian
theologia and the Dionysian unification.

The Greek Tradition.
Symeon the new theologian. (949-1022). For a quarter of a century he was abbot of the
monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople; his last thirteen years were passed outside the city,
in a small hermitage on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus. In his understanding of monastic
life he blends the cenobitical approach of St. Basil the Great and St. Theodore the Studite with
the more solitary, eremitic spirit of St. John Climacus.
The Russian Tradition.
Serafim of Sarov. (1759-1833). During the main part of his monastic career he was to retire
progressively into ever greater solitude. Ten years of unceasing prayer in a hermitage which he
established near his monastery (during which a vigil of about three years was spent in the
manner of a stylite (pillar hermit), standing or kneeling on rock), culminated in the five years
seclusion which he spent immured in the monastery itself.

St. Anselm.
The great theologian of the Benedictine Order, although an excellent abbot, a model archbishop
and a political figure of his time, always praised the solitary life in his works. The Proslogion
was written in the form of a meditation. It contains not only the specifically Anselmian
approach to the relationship between prayer and thought (Faith seeking understanding) but also
a demonstration of the method of withdrawal into solitude, for intense self examination leading
to compunction and adoration, which is also involved in the Prayers and Meditations.

Camaldolese, Carthusians, and Cistecians.
Underlying the various new orders was a movement which reaffirmed the ancient traditions of
hermit life as a valid expression of monastic spirituality. This impulse was widespread and
characterized by the desire for a simple, solitary life without many of the structures of
established monastic houses and their involvement with society. Poverty, solitude, silence,
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fasting, manual work characterized these new ventures; their inspiration was the literature
surviving from fourth century monasticism, interpreted according to the outlook of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries. This movement took two forms: there were many hermits, living alone in
individual solitude; there were, secondly, groups of monks living together in corporate solitude.
These groups overlapped and produced the new orders of the twelfth century. At both
Camaldoli and the Grand Chartreuse, monks or conversi living a community life were essential
to support the solitaries.

St. Bernard.
St. Bernard was the most prominent man among the Cistercians. In his commentary on the
Song of Songs, he urges the process of conversion, compunction and the purification of the
heart to desire God in terms of the imagery of the Song of Songs, making the pursuit of love the
sole aim of the monk: Remain alone in order to preserve yourself for him whom alone of all
things you have chosen for yourself among all (Song of Songs, XL.4).

Peter Abelard. (d. 1142)
The underlying motive of desire for God which characterized this new spirituality is perhaps
best expressed in the hymn O quanta qualia, by one who was himself the epitome of the
tensions and glories of the age, and had a point of view different from St. Bernard about the
forms that this desire for God could take.
O what their joy and their glory must be,
Those endless Sabbaths the blessed ones see!
Crowns for the valiant; for weary ones rest;
God shall be all in all ever blessed.
Truly Jerusalem name we that shore,
Vision of peace that brings joy evermore!
Wish and fulfillment can severed be neer,
Nor the thing prayed for come short of the prayer.

St. Peter Damian.
In the letter of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Camaldolese Order, for the feast of St. Peter
Damian (February 2007), the Pope points to this saint as a perfect synthesis of how a person can
integrate eremitic life with the service to the Church. In his life, St Peter Damian was proof of
a successful synthesis of hermitic and pastoral activity. The whole of his human and spiritual
life was played out in the tension between his life as a hermit and his ecclesiastical duty. . For
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him, the hermitic life was a strong call to rally all Christians to the primacy of Christ and his
lordship.
St Peter Damian felt the presence of the universal Church in the hermitic life so strongly that
he wrote in his ecclesiological treatise entitled Dominus Vobiscum that the Church is at the same
time one in all and all in each one of her members. After each ecclesial mission he would return
to the peace of the hermitage at Fonte Avellana. St Peter Damien was the soul of the "Riforma
gregoriana", which marked the passage from the first to the second millennium. With his pen
and his words he addressed all: he asked his brother hermits for the courage of a radical self-
giving to the Lord which would as closely as possible resemble martyrdom.

In an age marked by forms of particularism and uncertainties because it was bereft of a
unifying principle, Peter Damien, aware of his own limitations - he liked to define himself as
peccator monachus - passed on to his contemporaries the knowledge that only through a
constant harmonious tension between the two fundamental poles of life - solitude and
communion - can an effective Christian witness develop.

St Thomas Aquinas.
In his Summa Theologica. (Q 188 Art. 8. Pt. II-II), the angelical doctor says that solitude
befits those who are already perfect: wherefore Jerome says: Far from condemning the solitary
life, we have often commended it. But we wish the soldiers who pass from the monastic school
to be such as not to be deterred by the hard noviciate of the desert, and such as has given proof
of their conduct for a considerable time.
Accordingly, just as that which is already perfect surpasses that which is being schooled in
perfection, so the life of the solitaries, if duly practiced, surpasses the community life. But if it
be undertaken without the aforesaid practice, it is fraught with very great danger, unless the
grace of God supply that which others acquire by practice, as is the case of the Blessed Antony
and the Blessed Benedict.

Thomas Merton.
After living as a cenobite, Merton spent the last part of his life as a hermit. Following Cassian
and the Master, he thought that there was a progression from one life to the other. He said: "Do
not flee to solitude from the community, find God first in community then He will lead you to
solitude." He was not sure of his decision, so he prayed: MY LORD GOD, I have no idea
where I am going, but I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope
I have that desire in all that I am doing. In the end, What other possible importance can life
have than to belong entirely to Him whose will is life, and to belong to who is life most
perfectly.
Notwithstanding, Merton was aware that eremitic life was difficult to be accepted by many.
With all that said, there is a certain foolishness that a choice of hermitic life entails. It lacks
certain wisdom in the world. Even from other good Christians there may never be complete
understanding from others, making it difficult. No need to quote the gospel or common wisdom
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to know small towns have no place for a prophet, especially one of their own. If it is your call to
life as a hermit, it is your call.
In any case, Merton was very respectful of the essentials of monastic life. The traditional
Liturgy of The Hours, Book of Hours etc..., form the foundation for the vowed life for the
solitaryThe temporal aspects of the Opus Dei have a communal aspect for the solitary. When
praying one is aware of the fact that he or she is joining with other Religious worldwide who do
the same thing each and every day. The spiritual communion of members of the Body is
reinforced.
The solitary is a visible icon which says to the church and to the world there is another way.
The solitary stands just outside the conventional structure of the Church, both praying for the
Church and calling it to be what it is: the Body of Christ.

Pope Benedict XIII.
Those who study the early days of Popes often watch the name they choose and the content of
their first homily for clues to their pontificate. When Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger chose the name
Benedict he sent a signal concerning the centrality of prayer, as well as the way he viewed the
current age and the mission of the Church. One of the young priests offering commentary
during those historic days noted that then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger visited Subiaco before all
the events in Rome began. He prayed and rededicated himself to the work of the Church for the
future. Interestingly, a short while later he was called to occupy the chair of Peter he took the
name Benedict. Finally, Benedict chose to end his life as a hermit in the Vatican.
The Popes address to Carthusian monks (Oct. 11 2003) summarizes very well his view about
solitary life. He states there that: "A Whole Life Barely Suffices to Enter into this Union with
God." Benedict encourages them: Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl
of great value (cf. Mt 13:44-46); you have responded radically to Jesus' invitation: "If you
would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven; and come, follow me" (Mt 19:21).
Technical progress, markedly in the area of transport and communications, has made human
life more comfortable but also more keyed up, at times even frantic. Cities are almost always
noisy, silence is rarely to be found in them because there is always a lingering background
noise, in some areas even at night by withdrawing into silence and solitude, human beings, so
to speak, "expose" themselves to reality in their nakedness, to that apparent "void," which I
mentioned at the outset, in order to experience instead Fullness, the presence of God, of the
most royal Reality that exists and that lies beyond the tangible dimension. He is a perceptible
presence in every created thing: in the air that we breathe, in the light that we see and that
warms us, in the grass, in stones.... God, Creator omnium, [the Creator of all], passes through all
things but is beyond them and for this very reason is the foundation of them all.

The Pope reassures to the monks: Your place is not on the fringes: no vocation in the People of
God is on the fringes. We are one body, in which every member is important and has the same
dignity, and is inseparable from the whole. You too, who live in voluntary isolation, are in the
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heart of the Church and make the pure blood of contemplation and of the love of God course
through your veins.

The speech for the World Communications day in 2012, by Pope Benedict, shows a very similar
way of thinking. He says that: Preparing ourselves for the possibility of a meeting means
learning to silence the clamor of the age, stop the ever accelerating pace of the futile quests that
so often occupy our hearts, and live in the eternal now by surrendering ourselves and even our
best aspirations- to the One who created us and now re-creates us- in His Son Jesus Christ. It
is there, in the emptied place, in the stillness of the eternal now, where we prepare a room for
the King of all hearts. And, in this encounter, we soon find the longing of our heart fulfilled.

The Holy Spirit is calling for a generation of contemplatives in every state of life and vocation
in Christ. We tend to believe that the contemplative life is reserved for those who, by special
vocation, can leave the world, such as contemplative monks and nuns. They are a true
treasure and a prophetic sign of the life to come. However, all who are baptized into Christ are
called to the same encounter with a different response.


Conclusion.
From this short overview of the considerations of some Christian authors on the subject of
cenobitic and eremitic life, we can say that both of them are very important in monastic
spirituality. They are so profoundly intertwined that the one is impossible without the other.
Some authors believe that one of them is more perfect than the other, or that there must be a
chronological progression from one kind of life to the other. But opinions differ and we cant
affirm categorically which is correct. Finally, we can say that all monks (and all human beings)
have longings for both communion and for solitude, but some find easier to encounter God
living among other people and some search for Him in the desert. Pope Benedict says: all
who are baptized into Christ are called to the same encounter with a different response. The
Cloud of Unknowing puts it this way: For silence is not God, nor speaking; fasting is not God,
nor eating; solitude is not God, nor company. He is hidden between them, and cannot be found
by anything your soul does, but only by the love of your heart.