Vol: 3 Issue: 5
Baramoda 1725 / May 2009
On The Relaxation of the fast during the 50 days By: St John Cassian Abba Theonas visited us in our cell, and when evening prayers were over and we had been sitting for a short while on the ground we began to question him in considerable detail as to why they were so careful that no one ever kneel in prayer during all of Pentecost or presume to fast until the ninth hour, and we sought to understand this with so much the more diligence because we had never seen it observed with such care in the monasteries of Syria. Thereupon Abba Theonas began to speak as follows: It certainly behooves us, even when the reason for it has not been grasped, to yield to the authority of the custom of our forebears which has existed for so many years, up until our own day, and to maintain it, as it was passed on of old, by a constant and reverent observance. But since you want to know the causes and the reason for this, listen for a short while to what has been passed down by our elders about this custom. In Ecclesiastes the divine wisdom has indicated that there is an appropriate time for everything that is, for all things, whether they be fortunate or be considered unfortunate and sad. As it says: “There is a time for all things, and a time for everything under heaven: a time for bringing forth and a time for dying, a time for planting and a time for uprooting what was planted, a time for killing and a time for healing, a time for destroying and a time for building, a time for weeping and a time for laughing” etc. And a little later it says that “there is a time for everything and for every deed.” It has therefore been determined that none of these things is a permanent good, except when it is carried out at the right time and in correct fashion. Thus, the very things that turn out well now, since they were done at the right time, are found to be disadvantageous and harmful if they are tried at an inopportune or inappropriate moment. The only exception to this is those things that are essentially and of themselves either good or bad and that can never be turned to their contraries, such
as justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and the other virtues. If we include fasting among those things that are understood as virtues, by placing abstinence from food among the essential goods, then eating will be utterly evil and sinful. For whatever is contrary to an essential good is certainly to be considered essentially evil. The authority of Holy Scripture does not permit us to say this, because if we fast with such an understanding and attitude as to believe that we commit sin when we eat, then not only do we gain no fruit from our abstinence but, according to the Apostle, we even bring upon ourselves very grave guilt and the crime of sacrilege: They abstain from food that God created to be eaten with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving. If someone wants to maintain an austere fast when a brother comes, in whom he should refresh Christ hospitably and embrace him with a most gracious welcome, would he not be committing a sin of inhospitability rather than gaining the praise and virtue of religious devotion? Or if someone refuses to relax a rigorous abstinence when fleshly weakness and frailty demand that he recruit his strength by taking some food, should he not be considered the cruel murderer of his own body rather than the procurer of his salvation? Likewise, when a time of celebration permits the pleasant glow that comes from eating and a meal that is necessarily abundant, if someone wishes to hold to a rigid and unbroken fast, he will certainly be seen not as devout but as confused and irrational. Consistently maintaining this understanding of the character of fasting, then, we should seek after it with all our strength, while yet knowing that it is only appropriate for us if it is practiced at the right time, with the right character and to the right extent, and not fixing all our hopes on it but making it possible for ourselves thereby to attain to purity of heart and apostolic love. From this it is clear, then, that fasting, for which not only special times have been assigned as to when it should be practiced or omitted but for which even a certain character and set measure have been determined, is not an essential good but something indifferent. But the things that are, by an authoritative precept, either commanded as good or forbidden as harmful are never dependent on particular times, such that what has been prohibited may sometimes be done, while what has been ordered may sometimes be passed over. For no measure has been set for jus-tice, patience, sobriety, purity, or love. Nor, on the other hand, has permission ever been freely given for injustice, impatience, wrath, impurity, or hatred. (From: “The Conferences� By: St. John Cassian)
The Iconostasis of the Monastery Church Page 2
The Life of St John Cassian By: Fr Anthony St Shenouda St John Cassian was a monk and an ascetical writer who was the first to introduce Eastern monasticism into the West. Born in present day Romania, near the delta of the Danube; about 435 AD. He was the son of wealthy parents, he received a good education, and while yet a youth visited the holy places in Palestine, accompanied by a friend, Germanus, who was some years his senior. In Bethlehem Cassian and Germanus began living the monastic life, but, as in the case of many of their contemporaries, the desire of learning “the science of sanctity from its most eminent teachers” soon enticed them to the Egyptian deserts. Lived in Scetis from about 380 until 399 (19 years); they may also have visited Nitria and Kellia, and may have had contact with the Pachomians as well. After their first seven years they obtained an extension of their leave of absence from Bethlehem and returned to Egypt, where they remained several years longer. It was during this period of his life that Cassian collected the materials for his two principal works, the Institutes and the Conferences. The Institutes full title is “The Insitutes of the Cenobium and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Vices”... are mainly taken up with what belongs to the outer man and the customs of the coenonia,” the monastic life in common. In the first four chapters of the Institutes he describes in considerable details the prayer rule, clothing, eating and fasting, and the rules governing the monastic life in Egypt, illustrated by examples from the author's personal observation in Egypt and Palestine. The eight remaining books are devoted to the eight principal obstacles to perfection encountered by monks: gluttony, impurity, covetousness, anger, dejection, acedia, vainglory, and pride. The Conferences are a record of the conversations that Cassian and Germanus had with the Egyptian solitaries about the interior life. In the Conferences St John deals rather with the training of the inner man and the perfection of the heart. These two works, especially the latter, were held in the highest esteem by his contemporaries and by several later founders of religious orders. After he left Egypt, he founded two monasteries near Marseilles, and it was for that audience that he wrote his Institutes and Conferences. He was not writing a history of Egyptian monasticism though there is tendency to rely on him for that. Rather he was trying to reform Gallic monasticism by showing them how the Egyptian monks lived. Page 3
The Content of The Conferances These conferences are dialogues of St John Cassian and St Germanus with different Egyptian Desert Ascetics about significant aspects of monastic life and spirituality. Listed below is the timetable of topics and the name of the ascetics whom the saints dialogued with. Confer ences 1-2 SPEAKER: Moses of Scetis TOPICS: goal/end of monastic life discernment Confer ence 3 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Paphnutius of Scetis Progressive renunciations, perfection, free will
Conference 4 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Daniel of Scetis Spiritual combat, free will
Confer ence 5 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Sarapion of Scetis Eight principal faults
Confer ence 6 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Theodore of Kellia Trials, free will, perseverance
Conferences 7- 8 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Serenus of Scetis anthropology, free will, temptation interpretation of the Bible, demons
Confer ences 9-10 SPEAKER: Isaac of Scetis TOPICS: Disposition for, kinds of, and experiences in prayer unceas ing prayer, biblical interpretation, distractions Confer ences 11-13 SPEAKER: Chaeremon, anchorite near Panephysis TOPICS: perfection, love, chastity, patience, grace Confer ences 14-15 SPEAKER: Nesteros, anchorite near Panephysis TOPICS: ascetical and contemplative aspects of monastic life, spiritual interpretation of the Bible miraculous powers, perfection, humility Confer ences 16-17 SPEAKER: Joseph, anchorite near Panephysis TOPICS: true friendship; love, patience, anger, promises, lying, acts and intentions Page 4
Conference 18 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Piamun, anchorite (former cenobite) of Diolcos the three types of monks, patience
Conference 19 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
John, cenobite (former anchorite) of Diolcos cenobites and anchorites compared, dangers of solitude, lust
Conference 20 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Pinufius, cenobite of Panephysis sorrow for sins, assurance of forgiveness
Conferences 21-23 SPEAKER: Theonas, anchorite of Scetis TOPICS: law versus freedom and perfection, fasting and chastity, Lent and Easter nocturnal emissions, grace, impossibility of sinlessness impossibility of spinelessness Conference 24 SPEAKER: TOPICS:
Abraham, anchorite of Diolcos renunciation and separation, thoughts, love for others (From: Cassian The Monk By: Columba Stewart)
Some Photos of the Monks Building of the Monastery
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The Conferences By: Boniface Ramsey By far the longest of St John Cassian's works are The Conferences, in fact it is among the longest works of Christian antiquity, running to more than seven hundred pages in Petschenig's edition. This vast treatise, composed of twenty four separate conferences, is divided into three major parts, the first containing ten and the remaining two containing seven conferences each. These three parts claim to record conversations that were had in different locations, and at different times, in the Egyptian desert. Like many writings of antiquity (and of later eras, for that matter), The Conferences are cast as dialogues, to be sure, they are not dialogues between equals nor between persons assuming the role of equals but very clearly between masters and disciples. One purpose of the dialogical form is the passing on of truth or wisdom in conversational fashion, and this is certainly the case with The Conferences. This purpose determines how both Cassian and Germanus and the old men whom they interview are portrayed. The two friends are in many respects the ideal recipients of wisdom. They have travelled a long distance and presumably subjected themselves to considerable inconvenience in pursuit of it. For wisdom's sake they have even, as we learn from the seventeenth conference, broken a solemn oath made in one of Christianity's most sacred places and put themselves in jeopardy with their religious superiors. Finally, when they are actually engaged in dialogue with the old men, they prove themselves models of submissiveness, listening to the elders with the most tense interest and eagerness.
Cassian and Germanus hardly give the impression of existing apart from The Conferences. It is the old men who are more forcefully explained; their personalities, activities, and even physical appearances are described in a way that the two friends’ are not. Abba Chaeremon, for example, is more than a hundred years old but intellectually alert; only “his back was so bent with age and with constant prayer that he went about with his hands down and touching the ground, as if he had returned to his earliest infancy”. Abba Paphnutius, again, is more than ninety years old, but once a week he carries back to his cell a week's supply of water, transporting it on his shoulders over nearly five miles; for his love of the desert and because he is so rarely seen even by the other anchorites he is popularly called “the Buffalo”. From the spiritual point of view the abbas in question are endowed with an experience and a wisdom that are equal to their years, and their charisms, ascetic practices, and discourse attest to their unusual holiness. Men like these have rich lives of their own, and in comparison with them Cassian and Germanus seem far less compelling and attractive. Nor are the elders afraid to speak, for what they say ranges on for pages at a time, in contrast to the far briefer questions and interjections of the two younger monks.
As far as their form is concerned, then, The Conferences may be reduced to the passing on of Christian ascetic wisdom from masters to disciples, and both masters and Page 6
disciples are intended by Cassian to appear as models of their types. The work's focus on teaching in this context is only rarely diverted. Apart from the descriptions of the various abbas, which must not be considered extraneous, a few words are also expended on activities other than teaching and on sketching the environment, but they are not many. (From: the preface to the Conferences) Exterior of the abbey of St. Victor, Marseilles, where the body of St John Cassian Lays in Marseilles.
The head of St John Cassian in the abbey of St Victor at Marseilles
The ancient, original sarcophagus of St. John Cassian. Page 7
Question & Answer How can one practice relaxation of fast during the Pentecost and still keep his spiritual life intact? St John Cassian answers this question in his Conferences as follows: The celebration of the aforesaid days is to be observed in such a way, that the relaxation which has been conceded helps rather than hinders the well being of the body and the soul, because neither can the joy of any festival blunt the stings of the flesh nor can the cruel adversary be appeased out of reverence for these days. Therefore, in order that on feast days the customary and established solemnity might be maintained and the most salutary degree of privation not be exceeded, it suffices for us to let the indulgence of relaxation go this far: The food which would normally be taken at the ninth hour of the day should be taken a little earlier that is, at the sixth hour on account of the festal season. But this is only under the condition that the usual amount and quality of the food not be changed, lest the purity of body and integrity of mind that was sought in the abstinence of Lent be lost in the relaxation of Pentecost and it be of no value to us to have acquired by fasting what a heedless satiety soon forces us to let go of, especially since our enemy, with his well known cunning, assaults the battlements of our purity particularly at the moment when they notices that its guard has been relaxed because of the celebration of some feast.
John Cassian, “The Conferences” Newman Press Although these conversations took place at different times and places, Cassian arranges them to work together as a primer on the fundamentals of monastic practice in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. These dialogues provide a unique and helpful overview of the significant aspects of ancient monastic life and spirituality.
Columba Stewart, “Cassian The Monk” Oxford Press This book is a study of Cassian's life, monastic writings, and spiritual theology. Drawing on both his own experience as a monk and his familiarity with the fundamental literary sources, author Columba Stewart establishes Cassian's credibility as a teacher. He pays particular attention to Cassian's view of the monastic journey in eschatological perspective, his teaching on continence and chastity, the Christological basis of biblical interpretation and prayer, his method of unceasing prayer, and his integration of ecstatic experience with an Evagrian theology of prayer. Page 8