Heroic Virtue: an interview with Bro. David Steindl-Rast O.S.B. by Richard Smoley Gnosis, Summer 1992

“Asceticism” means “training.” It comes from the athletic vocabulary.  That is the goal: training in the spiritual life.

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Smoley: Earlier you alluded to the saint as ascetic.  Much of the emotional charge that the ordinary seeker has toward monastic life relates to the renunciation and asceticism that have been part of monastic discipline for a long time.  People feel a bit apprehensive about it, maybe because of the weakness of modern people, maybe because they’ve seen abuses of the body in past and present.  What is the proper role for asceticism now, particularly in a monastic context?

Brother David: Well, when you start out with the very word “asceticism,” it means “training,” it comes from the athletic vocabulary.  That is the goal: training in the spiritual life.  We know that our athletes do many of the things that ascetics in a religious context do; they have a certain diet, they fast, they abstain from liquor and drugs, and so forth.  They often have to have sexual restrictions, or at least some of them think that they have to, so there are all sorts of restrictions they have to undergo.  You take upon yourself a certain discipline.  But that is only the negative aspect of something very positive, that you are radically committed to something for a high goal; you want to win the prize.  And you know how ancient that is in the Christian scriptures, the comparison between spiritual and athletic discipline.         

So monastic asceticism is something very positive; you’re striving for single-minded attention, single-minded presence to the present moment, and for a single-minded orientation of your life.  For the sake of that, you take on certain restrictions that other people do not take upon themselves.  Unfortunately there have also been many abuses in the past, examples of a very misguided asceticism; as you hinted, asceticism can develop into something life-denying into enmity toward the body and disregard for common sense.  That has all happened, and if you put side by side the excesses of indulgence and the excesses of asceticism, they might hold one another in balance over the course of history.  Some indulge themselves to insanity, others restrain themselves to insanity.  Some flip from one to the other.  I remember Father Thomas Keating telling about those types that come to the monastery: “Formerly they drank everybody under the table and now they fast everybody under the table.”  It’s all competition, and that has nothing to do with monastic life.  So that would be my main point: asceticism is a means to an end and not an end in itself by any means.         

Another thing is that we always address the asceticism of the so-called ascetics, but very few people speak about the asceticism of family life.  At least from the perspective of a monk, the asceticism of family life is greater than that of the monastery.  That is not something I have invented.  St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke about it already as long ago as the eleventh century: how monks should have the greatest respect for householders, because if they’re serious about living their Christian faith, we have a lot to learn from them.  There’s a built-in asceticism in a householder’s life that you can’t avoid.  Monks get up to pray during the night, but if they decide not to do so, they don’t get up.  There is no built-in absolute necessity to do so.  But if your baby cries in the middle of the night, you have to get up; there’s no maybe about it.  And so with almost every one of the ascetic disciplines; in their own way, they’re imposed on the householder.         

Monks are aware of this, and not only in the Christian tradition.  In the Buddhist tradition, the Sufi tradition, and the other traditions too, you will find stories about an ascetic, a very holy person, who prays to God: “Now I have climbed all these rungs of perfection, where is there another teacher?”  And then he is led to the most despised layperson as the great model.  The Buddhist will be guided to a butcher.  St. Anthony of the Desert was sent to Alexandria to a doctor.  Today a doctor is somewhat respected socially, but in those days the surgeon was cast with the barber as not being very respectable.  So he was sent to this despised doctor, who was helping the sick.  Typically in these stories some monk or monklike figure is sent to a layperson to learn what perfection really is. 

Smoley: And of course in the Gospels Jesus preferred the company of whores and tax collectors to that of Pharisees and scribes. 

Brother David: Right. 

Smoley: What about celibacy?  What are the uses of celibacy?  Is sexual energy transformed into something higher? 

Brother David: I can only tell you about it from my point of view.  I don’t want to talk about things that I have not personally experienced.  I know of people whom I very much respect who would give you a totally different interpretation of celibacy.  Mother Tessa, for example, is a Carmelite monastic; she speaks beautifully about celibacy in terms of bridal symbolism.  Carmelites inherited the imagery of the bride of Christ from St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross.  It’s beautiful and poetic, but it’s a bit foreign to my personal experience.

I approach celibacy from a very practical point of view.  I see sexuality as the bodily expression of our relatedness to others.  It’s present in every relationship, even the most casual, and we do well to make sure that the expression is genuine.  If monastics totally belong to everyone they meet — and that’s their calling — how can they genuinely express this in the realm of sexuality?  Total promiscuity might be one way, but that’s not very practical.  The most realistic form is that of relating to everyone as brother or sister — celibacy. The restrictions on our sexuality are not imposed on celibates because there is something wrong with sexuality, but only because if you have set yourself certain goals in life, you have to fit the use of your sexuality to these goals.  And the goal that monastics have set themselves — mindfulness, full belonging to all, full availability to all — this goal puts very severe limits on the use of sexuality. 

The real glory of celibacy comes not from having freed yourself from something that is inglorious; on the contrary, you let go of it with the greatest regret.  The glory comes from having so single-mindedly set yourself on something that you’re holding up — that quest for total mindfulness and universal belonging — that you’re even willing to deprive yourself, and others possibly, of something so glorious as sexuality.

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