Sunday, April 10, 2011
Monasticism 2
I intended neither to praise nor condemn monastic life but to simply state a fact of life that monasticism and asceticism is the foundation of the Eastern Orthodox church for centuries in a way that is alien to Western denominations and one can only comprehend it as a living experience. It may be glimpsed through much reading of things like the Philokalia but most people do not bother to immerse themselves in such readings and those who DO are attracted to it because they have a calling for that life whether they ever enter into it, or if they enter and find themselves "weighed and wanting" to quote the "handwriting on the wall" in the Book of Daniel.
