Month: July 2016

“The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.”
~ St. Maximus the Confessor, Third Century on Love

The so called Areopagitic texts have been read and quoted by many theologians and philosophers for over a thousand years. Scholars are still debating for their authenticity. However, they are a great source of information of the early Christian life.

They offer a valuable interpretation of the rite of monastic profession and tonsure. It is loosely organized in the same literary format as the preceding chapters of “Hierarchy”. But it begins with a discussion not of the monks but rather of the other lay people (who do not have a comparable ceremony), and it includes a summary of the entire human hierarchy. Furthermore, and far from the subject of monastic tonsure, it concludes by expanding on the discussion on how purification can apply to the angels.
Spanning the spectrum from catechumens and penitents through the communicants to the select group of monks, the lay orders are hard to designate by a singular collective noun. The author calls them all initiates, meaning both those who are already initiated and also those who are in the process of becoming initiated. The lay people are frequently subdivided into three groups: those being purified, the communicants, and the monks. The first group is liturgically identifiable at the dismissal (532A, 243). This group that is “yet being purified” is itself subdivided into three categories: the catechumens, the possessed, and the penitents. 

The intermediate, contemplative rank consists of the communicants, who are entrusted to the priests. This identification of the laity, employs the second mystery of the Church which is illumination (photismos, φωτισμός). Accordingly, the  most exalted order includes all purification (catharsis) and all contemplation in its elevation to the power of perfection. The order of monks is entrusted to the perfecting power of the hierarchs, who have completed or perfected the order’s understanding of the sacraments contemplated: “Thanks to their understanding, it has been uplifted into the most complete perfection proportionate to this order” (PG Migne volume 2, 532D, 245).
Because of this exalted status, the tradition has called them by more than one name; “therapeutae” indicates their servanthood, (also connotated as healing in koine) and “monks” indicates their singular way of life.

Although they are at the peak of the lay orders, they are completely subject to the clergy, as Letter 8 reminded the monk Demophilus. Their rite of profession is a secondary ceremony in the hierarchy, presided over not by a hierarch as in the clerical ordinations, but by a priest. (Yet this would seem to be inconsistent with the author’s principle that the monks’ perfection needs to come from the perfecting order, the hierarchs. The perfecting rite of monastic profession and tonsure would seem beyond the priest’s purifying and illuminating powers. This apparent inconsistency and others may stem from some differences between the author’s theoretical system and the practices of his actual historical context.)
Having in mind that the first coenobitic life starts with St Pachomius from 4th century we cannot place the priest in the desert but in a parish or paroikia (παροικία mentioned elsewhere in different chapters but yet to find exactly where). As for the rite that makes monks, the full passage reads:

“The priest stands before the divine altar and chants the invocation for a monk. The person being initiated stands behind the priests and does not kneel on either one or both knees. The divinely granted scriptures are not put on his head. He simply stands while the priest chants the secret invocations over him. When this is finished the priest approaches the initiate. First he asks him if he will not only renounce but even refuse to phantasize anything which could be a distraction to his way of life. He reminds him of the rules gov- erning a fully perfect life and openly asserts that he must surpass the median way of life. After the initiate has devoutly promised to do all this the priest makes the sign of the cross on him.He cuts his hair and invokes the three persons of the divine blessedness. He takes away all his clothes and gives him others. Then, together with all the other sacred men present at the ceremony he gives him the kiss [of peace] and confers on him the right to com- mune in the divine mysteries. (533B, 245-46)”
This rite is distinguished from the clerical ordinations in that the monk does not kneel on both knees, or on one knee, but stands. Continuing:

“We must now sum up. The holy sacraments bring about purification, illumination, and perfection. The deacons form the order which purifies. The priests constitute the order which gives illumination. And the hierarchs, living in conformity with God, make up the order which perfects. As for those who are being purified, so long as they are still at this stage of purification they do not partake of the sacred vision or communion. The sacred people is the contemplative order. The order of those made perfect is that of the monks who live a single-minded life.” (536D, 248).