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Pre-Benedictine Monasticism: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 2 (Monastic Wisdom)

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This book is the second volume of a recent collection for Cistercian Publications by Prof. Patrick O'Connell presenting Father Merton's own typsecripts of his talks given to novices while serving as Novice Master at Gethsemane.

The first volume of this series, Cassian and the Fathers: Initiation Into the Monastic Tradition, publishes Father Merton's notes on Cassian, the influential author of the The Institutes and 57. John Cassian: The Conferences (Ancient Christian Writers) as well as on other very early Catholic monastic authorities, such as Saint Anthony of the Desert, Saint Pachomius and the great Saint Basil, whose Rule Saint Benedict himself recommends for the stronger of his own followers.

This present volume continues the current welcome Cistercian publication of these typescript notes for novices, continuing and extending the earlier material on Basil, Pachomius and Cassian, and extending this to other Desert Fathers, principally in Palestine and Syria.

Prof. O'Connell's lengthy introduction is as welcome as his redaction of the lectures themselves. He mentions in passing an evocative mention by Father Merton in a letter to the famous Father (now Cardinal?) Hans Urs Von Balthasar of his intent to move swiftly beyond the Syrian material and discuss early Celtic (Irish) monasticism, still pre-Benedictine, and even presented this project to the novices in his introductory schema. Nevertheless, by the time he moved to his hermitage many years later, Father Merton was still discussing the Syrian monks and hermits, as the field is so rich. I for one eagerly await that third volume in this series, the one which would theoretically focus on those heroic early Irish monks shivering by the sea in their stone skelligs, the ones like Saint Malachy or Saint Columbanus who would return civilization and Catholicism to darkened Europe!

Certainly, in the meanwhile, this volume of notes for classes to novices is of gripping interest to anyone interested in our monastic past, to anyone who would give anything to have been a fly on the wall in Father Merton's classroom of novices, elbow to elbow with, for instance, his most famous novice, Father Ernesto Cardenal, author for instance of Salmos (Coleccion Estructuras y Procesos) and El Evangelio En Solentiname.

This present volume may be found to be too scholarly or specialized for the popular or casual reader, but a vast wealth of information and reflection for anyone with some background and strong commitment to this study and its practice. Through this book we find the evolution of Saint Benedict's Rule and thus western monasticism, as he turned to the earlier fathers to formulate his own community. For instance we find here in the discussion of Saint Pachomius the evolution of and reasoning for the monastic vow of poverty, pragmaticly as well as theologically.

Highly recommended for our present age.