NOTES ON THE ANTHROPOLOGY
OF DESIRE
AT THE SERVICE OF MONASTIC
FORMATION
(Conference to the General
Chapters, October 2005)
Introduction
Once again I would like to
offer a contribution along anthropological lines, in the context of our monastic
formation. What has made me reflect on this subject is the departure from our
monasteries of six or seven young adult monks during the past two years. In
almost every case there were two common factors, namely, the discovery of human
love embodied in a particular woman and the total relativity given to everything
the man had previously lived. It would seem that the discovery of human love
had converted his former search for God into something unreal.
Obviously it is not a question
now of judging the vocation of these young men. Rather, we should question ourselves
about the formation we offered them. The following could be pertinent questions
to ask: What human foundations was the spiritual skyscraper built on? What type
of anthropology was implicit in their formation process? Are we really convinced
that grace builds on nature? Are we fostering split personalities, even though
we say the opposite? Why do young nuns not have similar experiences? Are women
more realistic, while we men are more carnal? Do we perhaps repress what is
instinctive in us, so as to favor what is rational? Do we give priority to the
spirit in detriment to the body? Do we keep allegorizing the biblical texts
on love and thus empty them of their human richness? And we could continue with
more questions like this.
It is not my intention to
answer such questions directly. However, the following paragraphs will offer
an initial response. The theme we will treat can be stated like this: “anthropological
notes concerning human desire at the service of monastic formation.” Therefore
I will treat the theme only partially and incompletely, since these are simply
“notes” and my approach will be principally anthropological, yet without forgetting
that Christian anthropology finds its fullest and most adequate meaning in a
theological context.
The following text from the
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church (n.2) has been an inspiration for me and will be a good starting
point:
God himself, by creating man in his own image, has written in the human
heart the desire to see God. Even though this desire is often ignored, God does
not cease to draw man to Himself, so that he may live and find in God that fullness
of truth and happiness which he is constantly looking for. That is why man is,
by nature and by vocation, a religious being, capable of entering into communion
with God. This intimate, vital bond with God confers on man his fundamental
dignity.
This text from the Church’s
magisterium puts desire in intimate relation to the divine image in the human
being. This primordial, structural desire moves the person to search for the
fullness of the Creator and makes the person a religious being, worthy of all
respect.
It is hardly necessary to
say that this text from the Catechism has its roots in the tradition springing
from St. Augustine.
We are immediately reminded of the well known words of the Saint from Hippo,
“You have made us for yourself, Lord,
and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, I.1:1). The
Rule of St. Benedict and the writings of St. Gregory the Great were the principal
means by which the spirituality of Augustine was transmitted to western monasteries
during the Middle Ages. We are, then, at the life-giving heart of our own Cistercian
tradition, where Bernard of Clairvaux discovered the foundations of his spiritual
teaching.
The theme of desire is central
to Cistercian anthropology. The mystical language of our Fathers expresses their
experience of desiderium. There are six key words that
refer to this experience: desiderium,
affectus, amor, caritas, contemplatio and nuptiae. Moreover St. Bernard, in his
Sermons on the Song of Songs, uses other synonyms, such as suspirare (to sigh, 59:4), appetire (to crave, 47:5), sitire (to thirst, 7:2), suspendere (to hang on, 17:2), clamitare (to cry out, 74:7), se afflictare (to be distressed, 31:5),
inhiare (to be openmouthed with eagerness,
like the baby pigeon waiting for food from its mother, 28,13), deficere (to faint away, 28:13), flere (to weep, 58:11). These many expressions
show the importance of this theme and are another reason for discussing it with
you at this moment of the Order’s life.
The present conference will
deal with the following points: first we will consult Biblical revelation so
as to point out the central place which desire occupies in Judeo-Christian anthropology.
Then we will see the etymology of the word, its paradoxes and the continual
presence of desire in human experience, especially in sexuality, religion, psychology
and human cultures. We will conclude with some reflections on its relation to
the theological virtue of hope. I will try to draw some conclusions from each
of these subtopics and underline some aspects of them which have to do with
monastic formation.
1. Desire in the Context of Image and Likeness
In Biblical anthropology there
is a word whose importance is fundamental for understanding the human experience
of desire. It appears early, in the first pages of the Bible: The Lord God formed man from the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became
a living nephesh (Gn 2:7).
A simple consultation of dictionaries
and studies on the biblical theology of the Old Testament shows that nephesh
appears some 754 times in Sacred Scripture with a large variety of meanings:
breath, soul, life, throat, appetite, desire, living being, person. For our
purposes, it is enough to say that it can mean:
- A bodily
organ connected with breathing or swallowing: the throat, neck (Is 51:23; Ps 69:2; Prov 3:22; 25:25), mouth (Is 5:14; Prov 28:25), and even the stomach (Is 29:8; Prov 6:30; Ps 107:9).
- The physiological function related
to these organs: breathing (Gn 35:18; Lam 2:12; Job 11:12), thirst (Ps 78:18; Prov 16:26), desire for food (Dt 23:25; Prov 12:10; Ps 106:15).
- As a transferred meaning, the tension
of longing or desiring (1 Sam 20:4; Prov 19:2; Ps 105:22).
In other words, nephesh can be used to designate the living
person as a being of desire, structured for a relationship with the other/Other,
which relationship is necessary for his or her self-fulfillment. In this sense,
the text from Genesis 2:7 can be translated freely in the following way: and
the man became a living subject of desires. When the spouse of the Song
of Songs speaks about her beloved as the
love of my soul, she would be saying, “the desired one of my desires!” (Song 1:7; 3:1-4; cf. 5:6; 6:12). And we read in Psalm 130:6: My soul (my nephesh) is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak; that is: the structure of my person, as
a subject of desires, is ordered to God like the watchman who waits for daybreak
(Cf. Ps 42:2,6,12; 43:5).
These examples let us see that the noun, nephesh, is sometimes translated as soul, or life, or even by a personal pronoun. Thus, when it is used
in relation to human feelings it generally points to the vital center of the
person, where he or she feels things, breathes, reacts and decides (Jgs 18:25;
II Sam 5:8; 17:8; Is 19:10; 38:15; Prov 11:25; 14:10; Jer 42:21; etc.). This
Biblical teaching is taken up by St.
Augustine, who states that desire is the bosom of the heart (Confessions
10:8). Some modern philosophers adopt the same perspective, with one of them
even stating that desire is the essence
of man (Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop 18).
We humans live out of this primordial structural desire.
We are continually desiring and multiplying our desires, which stir up a whole
constellation of feelings in us, so that we live desiring and feeling. It becomes
obvious, then, that this foundational reality of our human life must be given
an important place in our programs of monastic formation. The monastery is a
school of charity to the degree that it knows how to educate human desires and
order human affections.
2. Etymology
and Meaning
A human being behaves as such
when it functions in a way that is “desiring,” affectionate, decisive, moral
and intelligent. In other words, desire, affectivity, will power, conscience
and intelligence are the basic psychological functions of behavior on the part
of any human being, whether man or woman. Desire is a basic structure before
being differentiated into various types of desires. This primordial desire underlies
our affectivity and our will power.
But what does the etymology
of the word, “desire,” teach us about the experience which it refers to? From
among its several possible derivations I think the best is the following one:
the word, “desire,” comes from the Latin, de-siderare, which is composed of a privative
prefix (de) and a noun (sidus, -eris: star, heavenly body). Thus
we have the expressions, chasing stars
or a star in one’s life.
Chinese culture also teaches
us something interesting on this point. The character for “hope” (wang in Mandarin Chinese) is composed
of two other ideograms. In the lower part of the character is a man standing
on a platform looking up. In the upper part is a crescent moon. In other words,
hope is characterized by a human being wanting and waiting for the arrival of
the full moon. This same character is used in Japanese to signify desire (nozomi) and the action of desiring (nozomu).
Therefore, when we talk about
desire we are speaking metaphorically. We are referring to the movement toward
some absent thing or person that we perceive as good and attractive. More specifically,
desire implies a feeling of absence due to a lack of satisfaction with what
is presently available. Bernard of Clairvaux describes this experience of desire
in a concise way by saying, “All rational beings, by their very nature,
are continually longing for what seems better to them and they are not satisfied
as long as they do not have what they consider to be better” (Dil., 18).
There is an important lesson
for the process of personal maturity in what we have been saying. The world
and other persons as different from ourselves, with all their intrinsic wealth
of meaning, including a personal mission for us to accomplish, can only be perceived
when we recognize our own structural “lack” of completeness.
The acceptance of this absence,
of this need, with the existential solitude it implies, which is so characteristic
of our human condition, is an indispensable requisite for establishing relationships
with others. In fact it is only when we recognize that we are beings in need
that another person, precisely as other, can become a companion on our journey.
We are not everything for anybody, and nobody can be everything for us. This
is the necessary condition for the success of any married couple, any friendship,
any group of brothers or sisters, any community, any effort towards unity. There
will always be an essential distance, separation and distinctive difference.
Everything is both presence and absence, even in the most intimate forms of
communion.
When our desire has been configured
and limited by separation, difference and absence, it becomes possible to avoid
the following three temptations:
- Fusion with the
other person, which ends up annihilating love. This is a fairly common danger
in the process of initial monastic formation.
- Manipulation
of the other person for one’s own benefit, thus reducing the person to the status
of a material object. This is possibly a danger for superiors who lack adequate
human maturity.
- Elimination of
self at the service of what one supposes to be the desire of the other person.
This is a danger for not a few young persons in formation who want to please
their formators.
3. Paradoxes and Dimensions
Desire is a paradoxical reality
in human life that is always present. Starting from a lack, with its need for
satisfaction, it puts us in motion so that we search for someone or something
beyond ourselves. To desire is to know oneself as incomplete, needy, aware that
something is missing, the possession of which appears as satisfying and enjoyable.
This is an important principle, namely, that every desire stirs up one’s feelings;
underneath all awakened affectivity lies desire.
3.1. Paradoxes
Someone has said that because
of desire we experience a certain uncomfortable anxiety and that this experience
of unease is the basis of all human activity. However, someone else replied
that, if we did not have anything to desire we might be happy, but would be
deeply unfortunate. Many of the paradoxes of desire have become popular sayings
or maxims, such as these:
- Do not try to
make things as you want them to be, but want them to be as they are.
- If you were to
get half of what you want, you would double your worries.
- The more you
want, the more you will find wanting.
- Impatient desire
is more stimulating than a glut of delight.
- A goal hard to
attain is doubly enjoyed.
- Desire wanes
when opportunities abound or when success is easy.
- Plenty becomes
little when you desire a little more.
We grow anxious when failure
looms, because we could fail and not obtain what we want, but the opposite can
also happen. Nevertheless, there is a long distance between our desire and its
achievement, because our achievements are often less than our hopes. Nothing
fully satisfies us. Satisfaction is passing. Desire leaves us this side of what
we want: it always leaves us hungry. A million kisses do not extinguish the
desire for a kiss! Desire seems to be satisfied only with what is infinite and
eternal.
If the painful inability to
be satisfied were the final result of desire, the world and we humans would
be absurdly meaningless. That is why we must always remember that desire enables
us and pushes us to become beings of hope. Waiting and hoping are radically
human experiences. If I wait with hope, I am alive. In the last resort, desire
exposes us not only to anxiety, but also, and above all, to hope.
Desire invites us to live
outside of ourselves. It puts us in contact with others and establishes relationships.
It is the experience of our finiteness and limits, but also of the possibility
to be more and better. Since it relates us with others, desire lets us become
subjects, in the sense that the look of another on me awakens my own awareness.
Attention to our desires lets us know ourselves and say who we are. Here is
a fundamental task in the formation process, above all in its initial stages:
find out what and whom you desire and you will know who you are.
It is true that desire starts
us moving. It makes us search for someone or something that is missing. It is
tension toward something more. However, this “something more” in the last analysis,
can only be received as a gift. Therefore desire is also space, openness, and
receptivity to the gift. Above all, it is receptivity to the giver.
It is also true that among
the paradoxes of desire we must recognize its goodness or its evil. Desire can
be misplaced. The verb, “to desire” (hamad), is used positively in Genesis
2:9: Out of the ground the Lord God made
to grow every tree that is desirable to the sight and good for food. In
the next chapter, however, the same verb is used to refer to the desire from
which sin is born: When the woman saw
that the tree was good for food, and that it was desirable to the eyes…
(Gn 3:6). However, in the Song of Songs we find a reference to this situation,
but prior to any sin, when sexuality was still a source of pleasure, joy and
happiness in God: As an apple tree among
the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among young men. I desire to sit in
his shadow, and his fruit is sweet to my mouth (Song 2:3).
Paul the Apostle is very clear
when speaking about this ambivalence of desire: Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify
the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit,
and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to
each other, preventing you from doing what you want (Gal 5:16-17). Anyone,
woman or man, who has embraced the following of Christ through the inspiration
of the Spirit will have to practice an asceticism of desire in order to direct
desire to what is good and away from what is evil. This asceticism needs to
be given the highest priority during the years of initial formation, but it
has permanent importance throughout one’s whole life.
3.2 Dimensions
The primordial desire, which
structures our human existence, generates a whole series of different aspirations,
anxieties, longings, drives, appetites, wishes, ambitions, fancies, whims… which
take shape with the passage of time in the life of each one of us. This all
gives rise to a most complex assortment of desires closely related to the ups
and downs (pleasures, fantasies, relationships) of one’s personal life story.
It can and does happen that
the real objects of desire are repressed, and therefore unknown. Dreams are
one way of helping these unrecognized desires to come to the surface. The wider
the field of unknown, excluded desires, the less authentic will that life become,
since the person does not know what he or she wants! Vague wishes are confused
with sincere intentions; passing whims with deep desires. Thus it happens that
totally mistaken decisions can be made, resulting in all types of frustrated
vocations.
In the same way, the ignorance
of our desires, combined with their self-contradiction, can paralyze our life
and give rise to an unbearable conflict among our many attractions. This may
be one of the most common causes of our “neuroses”, whether the latter are passing
or permanent. On the other hand, dispersed desires which lack a concrete object
are often the cause of vague, indefinable anxieties.
The deeply rooted structure
of desire and the infinite variety of objects which appear to satisfy it make
desire to be present in almost all the dimensions of our life. It is important
to have inner clarity about this so as to choose well, renounce well, put order
in our life and thus live with integrity and harmony. Let us look in a summary
fashion at how desire shows itself in some dimensions of human existence.
- The biological dimension shows itself in appetites,
attractions and sexual union.
- The affective dimension wants tenderness,
affection, falling in love, romances.
- The playful dimension is expressed in the
desire for humor, jokes and sports.
- The pragmatic dimension looks for industriousness
and service.
- The interpersonal dimension wants paternity,
maternity, fraternity, friendship, sociability.
- The hierarchical dimension leads to the desire
for authority and politics.
- The possessive dimension is expressed in desires
for property, business and commerce.
- The intellectual dimension shows itself in
research, information, discoveries.
- The aesthetic dimension produces the desire
for beauty, art and music.
- The altruistic dimension expects generosity,
almsgiving, sacrifice.
- The religious dimension desires the absolute,
the infinite, transcendence, God.
Thus desire is a basic structure
of the human being in relation to a lack and/or an absence. It is open to a
wide gamut of interdependent dimensions and experiences, some of which are more
common than others. Among the more common experiences are the two following
ones:
- Above all, desire
is present in the area of our sex and affectivity. Here is its origin and the
widest field for its growth. Sexuality is the dimension of human life offering
the greatest promise of achieving a union which can break through the limits
of differentiation, absence and distance. Affectivity, of course, feeds and
enlivens many types of interpersonal relationships, such as motherhood, fatherhood,
fraternity and friendship.
- However, it is
probably the religious dimension
which offers most possibilities of satisfying the deepest needs and longings
of human life, since in religion desire finds love, protection, survival, transcendence,
transformation. In all major religions, monks and nuns are people with an irresistible
desire for God. God is for them the dominating attraction. God’s beauty fascinates
them. It is on this foundation that a Christian, Gospel-directed monastic vocation
can rest.
4. Desire, Sexuality and Religion
We have already pointed out
that the dynamic source of human desire is the fact of being created in the
image of God. Depth psychology teaches that its more existential origin is the
fact that we are born in an act of separation from our mother. As it grows from
that two-fold point of departure, desire tends towards a double goal: full satisfaction
in the beatifying communion with God (its divine goal) and complementarity in
the joyful union with another (its interpersonal goal).
We can refer to spiritual
desire, whose goal is communion with God, as a longing for blessedness. To bodily
or affective desire, whose goal is interpersonal relationship, whether heterosexual
or not, we apply the terms “sexual appetite” and “personal eros.” According
to this terminology, we can say that sex is biological desire, eros is personalized
desire and longing is divinized desire.
We can also see that the satisfaction
of the sexual appetite causes pleasure, that of interpersonal eros produces
joy, but only longing for blessedness opens someone up to incomparable happiness.
The following table gives
a clearer and more synthetic vision of what has just been said:
Two Basic Dimensions of Human Desire
|
|
Religious
|
Bodily –
Affective
|
Origin
|
- Creation in the image and likeness of the
Creator
|
- Separation from the mother’s womb at the
time of birth
|
Name
|
- Longing
for Blessedness
|
- Sexual Appetite (sex)
- Personal Eros (affectivity)
|
Goal
|
- Comunion
with God
|
- Complementary
Union with Another
|
Result
|
- Happiness
|
- Sexual
Pleaure
- Affective
Joy
|
4.1. Desire and Sexuality
Personal eros and sexual appetite
have something in common in that they are two powers which let us go out of
ourselves and thus root out the deep-seated egoism of our being. Nevertheless,
eros and sex are different, so it is important to understand where the difference
lies:
- Sex produces
bodily tension and its release, whereas eros gives a personal meaning to the
experience by shedding its light on it and guiding it.
- Eros fosters
intimacy between persons, while sex only fosters a relation between their bodies.
- Sex without eros
terminates in one’s own body, whereas eros, even without sex, goes out to the
other person.
- The sexual act
is the most powerful symbol of relationship between two persons and eros is
the intimacy within that relationship.
- Eros goes far
beyond sex; if sex is the doorway, eros passes through it.
In so far as eros is a desire
for interpersonal fellowship, fullness and joy with someone we love, it lets
us both feel fulfilled and give this fullness to the other. Looked at this way,
eros is both attractive and frightening. It is attractive by its promise of
fulfillment, but frightening because it requires loosening the controls or giving
up all control. Eros is awakened by affectionate intimacy, which is attractive,
but at the same time the intimacy fostered by eros asks the person to keep loosening
the controls, which is frightening. Celibates and those who have chosen virginity
often do not know where to draw the boundary line so as to be faithful to their
chosen options. In the relationship between a man and a woman, eros usually
produces the following sensations:
- Pleasure, felt
from being together.
- Impulse, to create
intimacy by lessening the degree of separation.
- Silence, for
the sake of “contacting” and feeling.
- Joy which, if
left on its own, can run in search of pleasure.
The renouncements and self-control
implied in an option for virginal celibacy should not be an obstacle preventing
men and women from spending some pleasurable time together. Those who do not
know how to live these moments of healthy cordiality with gratitude often compensate
in their daydreams for what they give up or repress.
Western culture, which now
is also invading other cultures, has enslaved eros under the tyranny of sex.
It is true that we are no long tied to the sexual revolution of the 1960’s,
when there was a shift from forbidden pleasure to required pleasure. Sex was
made obligatory. A dictatorship of the forced orgasm was imposed and required.
However, most of our societies now live a sexuality which knows no moral norm
whatsoever. Sex is often reduced to a game, one in which all the players lose.
Our young people, both men and women, come from this type of culture.
On the other hand, some disembodied
spiritualities with an excessive emphasis on what is supernatural and no support
in what is natural, have produced the same effect as the secular sexual revolution,
namely, the death of eros, that is, the death of interpersonal desire. As pious
men and women pretending to subdue the flesh, we actually end up killing flesh,
affectivity, appetite, eros and the like.
Maybe we should organize and
proclaim another revolution, in order to give back to interpersonal eros all
the charm of its openness to what is absolute and transcendent. This “erotic
revolution” would not be a reclaiming of erotism as a disguised exaltation of
the genitals. It would be a promotion of eros to make our sex more truly human
and more noble.
4.2 Desire and Religion
It is well known that religion
is the source of satisfaction for the most fundamental human desires. The language
of God is the language of deep feelings, which are rooted in the fundamental
desires of the human heart. This is where we find the source of conversion,
faith, justice and love. Scripture offers many examples of these deepest desires:
Lord, you enticed me, and I was enticed (Jer 20:7); Lord,
you search me and you know me (Ps 138); Were not our hears burning within us?
(Lk 24:32) By this type of language, God seduces our hearts so as to open them
to Jesus Christ and to his Good News. Seduction by God is liberating and calls
for our free response.
In this context we can ask
whether the longing for God rests on the foundation of sexual desire. Put another
way, is there an uninterrupted continuum between desire’s biological
dimension and its religious dimension?
Many psychologists do not
hesitate to reply to this question affirmatively. Some theologians have their
doubts, saying that there is a qualitative leap between nature and grace. Other
theologians, while not denying the gratuity of divine grace, teach that there
is continuity between the human person, as a body-soul composite in the image
of God, and union with God. They agree with the medieval theologians who taught
that the human being is capax Dei!
Grace does not destroy nature, but presupposes it and perfects it!
For St. Bernard, the human being does not have a “specific desire”
which directs him or her toward God. It is the single human power of desire,
which starts from the biological appetite guided by free will and leads the
person to search for and to find God. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard’s
use of erotic sexual symbolism refers to the soul’s desire as
it searches for God and longs for union with him. For Bernard, appetite and
eros are at the service of charity.
Looking beyond this theological discussion, however, it
is clear that without personal desire and eros the search for God becomes artificial,
inconsistent, an empty mental game which falls apart like a house of cards when
there appears a concrete relationship with someone who touches our heart and
stirs up our deepest feelings. I think that we men are more vulnerable to this
than women are, since we are more inclined to abstract theoretical thought.
We have pointed out from the beginning that the desire
for God is constitutive of human nature. In all human beings there exists an
innate capacity for God and an orientation to God that precedes one’s own choice.
It is in this sense that the created human person has been made in the image
of God.
Some medieval authors, especially
the Cistercians, depart from the Augustinian tradition on a concrete practical
point. Augustine’s tradition seems to draw a clear boundary between the “exterior
man” and the “interior man,” between flesh (sexuality) and spirit. The former
is the cause of perdition, while the latter results in salvation. Such a spirituality
can establish a dichotomy which does not correspond to the inner reality of
human existence.
Several of our own Fathers
cross over the boundary between the inner and outer man, and appropriate some
land belonging to the flesh. Eros and its spontaneous affectivity, rooted as
they are in sex, are called to play an important role in the search for God.
Here is what William of Saint-Thierry says in his Exposition on the Song of Songs:
The Holy Spirit, when he was
about to deliver over to men the canticle of spiritual love, took the story
which inwardly is all spiritual and divine and clothed it outwardly in images
borrowed from the love of the flesh. Love alone fully understands divine things;
therefore the love of the flesh must be led along and transformed into the love
of the spirit so that it may quickly comprehend what is similar to itself. Since
it is impossible that true love, pining for truth, can long remain satisfied
with images, it very quickly passes, by a path known to itself, into that reality
which was previously perceived only through images. Even after a man becomes
spiritual, he still shares in the delights of fleshly love which are natural
to him; but when these delights become the possession of the Holy Spirit, the
person devotes them all to the service of spiritual love. That is why the heroine
brazenly bursts forth from a hiding place and, without even telling her name
or where she comes from or to whom she is speaking, cries out: “Let him kiss
me with the kiss of his mouth!” (Exposition, no. 24).
William is speaking from within
that wide spiritual tradition which proposes to start the search for the face
of the Lord with what we are by creation, so as to arrive by grace at what we
can become.
I am aware that this doctrine,
with its practical consequences, can have its dangers. It can cause some fear
due to the fact that the boundaries are not as clear and the inner world not
so simple. Thus some questions remain. How deep can one go inwardly so as to
find solid ground from which to climb safely back up toward the world of the
spirit?
The basic question, however,
both for monks of the Middle Ages and for us, is this: how is eros transformed
into charity? The solution to this problem may be different for men and for
women. The latter could unduly eroticize the love of charity, while we men could
“genitalize” it or not know what to do with the carnal vibrations that can sometimes
occur.
The transformation of interpersonal
eros into spiritual longing is not easy, but it is possible. It =
requires, above
all, consciously and peacefully integrating one’s own sexuality, starting with
one’s genital desires. Then it means centering this experience on eros, understood
as the desire for joyful fullness in interpersonal communion. Finally, it implies
letting eros transcend all types of permanent attachment to any creature, in
order that it be changed into a longing for unified blessedness in God.
The alternation of presence
and absence, consolation and desolation, plays a very important role in the
purification of eros and its transformation into a divine longing.
It is in this context that
we should include in our formation a solid emphasis on Cistercian devotion to
the humanity of Christ, on contemplation of his pre-paschal “mysteries,” leading
to a deeper following of this divine Person and a richer communion in his glory.
We also need to bring spousal spirituality up to date, understanding it as “reciprocal
self-gift in fruitful fellowship.” It is certainly a rich spirituality, even
though not free from its own difficulties which, however, can be overcome by
adequate formation. How much more healthy, happy and fulfilled we would be if
the words of the ascetic John Climacus were verified in our lives: “Blessed
the person whose love for God is like the eros that a man in love has for his
beloved!” (Ladder, 30:5).
5. Desire and Humanist Psychology
Contemporary psychology in
its more humanistic tendencies speaks of “human potential.” The latter phrase
tells us that a human being has a natural capacity to grow into a fully personal
mode of behavior. The teaching on human needs or tendencies was developed in
this context. We make this teaching complete with the anthropological reality
of desire.
A need has the particular
characteristic of enclosing us in the present moment and in our own little world.
Desire, on the contrary, opens us up. It thrusts us towards the future and towards
others. Needs can be easily satisfied. When the adequate object is obtained
the tension previously unleashed in one’s organism is eliminated: water satisfies
thirst. But no single object can
completely satisfy desire, because desire, in the last analysis, refers to the
past and the future, to which nothing in the present can give a fully precise
answer.
Both our needs and our desires
are “tendencies” toward satisfaction. Their goal is to escape from a state of
privation which can be physical, psychological or spiritual. It is easy to see
that this tendency toward satisfying one’s needs plays a paramount role in any
theory or practice concerning human motivation.
Let us try to classify synthetically
these tendencies, both as needs and desires. They fall into three groups:
- Biological needs: air-breathing, water-thirst,
food-nourishment, sleep-rest, sex-bonding-reproduction, house-dwelling-clothing…
- Psychological needs: security-protection,
love-belonging, self-esteem and esteem for others, living and associating with
others…
- Spiritual needs: beauty, goodness, truth,
justice, order, fullness, meaning, freedom, perfection, religion, spirituality,
mysticism…
It is easy to see that the
“biological” tendencies are needs more than desires, whereas the psychological
and spiritual tendencies belong to the order of desires.
These tendencies – both needs
and desires – do not come to the surface all at the same time, or with equal
demands. There is a certain hierarchy among them. Generally speaking, each of
the different levels makes itself felt to the degree in which the preceding
level has been satisfied. Obviously, the concrete situation of a society or
group can affect the satisfaction of the needs of its members, the multiplication
of such needs and their confusion with desires.
Experience teaches that it
is very difficult to satisfy spiritual desires when there is a serious lack
of biological needs or a frustration of psychological desires. Someone suffering
from lack of sleep can hardly give any fruitful attention to the search for
the meaning of God’s Word. Similarly, low self-esteem impedes liberty of action
or adequate appreciation for what is good in life.
These principles have a practical
importance in the area of monastic formation. In the majority of our monasteries,
the biological needs of the members are taken care of, but I am not sure that
the same can be said concerning psychological desires, which often act as supports
for spiritual desires. One might also ask whether our communities are skilled
in the art of developing the spiritual desires which lead to the mystical experience
of communion with God, and whether everything in our life is ordered to this
goal.
6. Desire and Capitalist Culture
The greatest human cultures
have had – and still have – different approaches to the reality of desire. Eastern
culture tends toward freedom from desire, with certain currents of Buddhism
considering that the person who is free from desire is free from “self” and
thus achieves full freedom. One of the names of nirvana is, precisely, “annihilation of
thirst” (tanhakkhaya): when the thirst
of desire is eliminated, all suffering and misfortune come to an end.
Classical Greek culture will
teach the control of desires. Thus Aristotle praises Plato for having stated
that education consists in teaching how to desire what is truly desirable. We
find this line of thought in Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on the
Our Father contained in the Summa Theologica: Prayer interprets our desires before God.
That is why it is right to ask for something in prayer only when it is right
that we should desire it. Now in the Lord’s Prayer not only do we ask for all
the gifts that we may rightly desire, but we do so in the order in which we
ought to desire them, so that this prayer not only teaches us to ask, but it
also directs all our affections (sit informativa totius nostri affectus) (II-II,
83,9).
During the Middle Ages, Western
culture was pregnant with Christianity and thus, as we have seen, put human
desiring at the service of the search for God. We can even think that some commentaries
on the Song of Songs were pedagogical tools written with a view to this transformation
of human desire. In contrast, contemporary Western culture on both sides of
the North Atlantic moulds human desires to
the service of its commercial economy. Let us look at this briefly.
The capitalist economic system
is dominating today’s world for the following reason: it is producing a global
“culture” by creating an anthropology for the masses which features a system
of values and needs corresponding to its economic model.
In order to achieve its goal,
capitalism deals with desires in a particular way. It intentionally confuses
them with needs and then attempts to mould them into a particular form. As we
have already pointed out, needs can be satisfied, since they are linked to social
interaction, whereas deep desires are insatiable, because they are linked to
the interiority of a person’s deepest, most original center of being.
Capitalist theories are elaborated
in terms of satisfying needs and desires, not immediately the needs and desires
for profit on the part of the business people, but rather the needs and desires
of the customers. Profit is the consequence of satisfying the needs and desires
of the consuming client.
However, besides the goal
of satisfying needs and desires, there is also the tactic of creating and manipulating
these needs and these desires. Since needs are uncountable and desire is unlimited,
the possibilities for profit will be infinite. Capitalism does not educate one’s
desires. Instead, it confuses them with needs, produces them, reproduces them
and molds them artificially. This is why the consumer – a person with the power
to acquire something – assumes and consumes what he or she desires, as well
as what they do not desire, but firmly believe that they need!
In the capitalist world, the
means of communication are governed by the law of maximum financial profit.
They are therefore not neutral. Even though they may claim to be “independent,”
they are connected to the political and economic establishment. Their profits
come from advertising. The viewer, listener or reader has a value measured by
the time he or she spends every day at the television, radio or reading newspapers
and magazines. The owner of the respective means of communication sells to the
advertiser a number of readers, listeners and viewers with the hours they spend
doing this. In other words, the audiences are sold. This explains why the purpose
of the program or publication is to captivate the largest possible audience
for the longest possible time. The mass-media, especially television, are geared
to keeping the spectator’s desire glued to the screen or speaker by means of
carefully programmed stimulations. That is how their needs and desires are manipulated
and converted into financial profit.
Within a monastic context,
the education of our desires cannot ignore this manipulation of human desiring.
Discernment is needed so that free, correct options can be made. On the other
hand, the shift in many of our monasteries from manual work to commercial work
obliges us to enter, in one way or another, into this world of capitalist advertising
with its manipulation of human desires. Moreover, it is possible to change from
being a manipulated subject into a manipulating one. It is not easy to discern
the boundary line between what is financial and what is apostolic, between what
is profitable for our industry and what is pastorally prudent. The business
ethics of a monastery cannot use the same criteria as secular business ethics.
This is a question that needs more reflection on our part, as some monks and
nuns have already done, in order to avoid ambiguities which can undermine the
foundations of any formation program and thus harm the transmission of the monastic
charism to younger generations. It would be difficult to pray the Our Father,
with its ordering of our desires and its norms for our affections, if at the
same time we are involved in the manipulation of other peoples’ desires and
affections.
7. Desire and Christian Hope
The virtue of hope corresponds
to the desire for happiness which God placed in our hearts when he created us.
This hope expands the heart as it waits for eternal beatitude. Saint
Augustine expressed it this way: The
whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire, but you do not see what you
desire. Yet by your desiring you expand the limits of your soul so that it will
be wide open when the time of vision arrives. (On 1 John, tract.IV:6).
This hopeful desire, open
as it is to eschatology, should be a very powerful force to help us live in
persevering fidelity. Hope is not avoiding the world or launching ourselves
heavenward. Rather is it a commitment in time and space to base one’s life on
heaven and eternity. The Church walks and works on earth as a contemplative
citizen of heaven. There is no doubt that, “For this we toil and struggle, because we
have set our hope on the living God” (1 Tim 4:10).
The source of our hope is
the presence of the risen Christ in the heart of the Church and in the heart
of the world. This presence incites us to desire with groanings the glorious
manifestation of the Lord and to work with eagerness for a better world.
One of the features of monastic
life is doubtless its eschatological openness combined with its earthly realism
based on desire and hope. The secular history of monasticism witnesses to this
two-fold reality: the desire for God, with a deep longing for heaven, rooted
in remarkably creative cultural achievements.
Some of our communities in
the northwestern world are undergoing a deep trial of hope at the present time.
Progressive aging, the lack of vocations, reduced numbers, diminished personal
competence and an uncertain future certainly constitute a difficult trial to
pass through. But they are also a fruitful opportunity, a chance to live a transparently
evangelical monastic life stripped of additions which have now lost their meaning.
It can be a life which has become freer and more flexible in its daily rhythm,
more of a family home in its buildings and finances, centered on its essential
search to meet the Lord in the communion of charity.
So that this can happen, it
may be necessary to go beyond just patching and mending. We need to desire a
new monastic life in a new heaven and a new earth, where new men and new women
can be reborn. We need to choose what is most impossible, most difficult and
most utopian. We need to be able to say, “Yes, but not yet.” We need to be changed into midwives of
hope, who show that the mother wolf will suckle the lambs, that war will be
an archaic word found in old dictionaries, that armed weapons will be museum
pieces, that spoken promises will be more valid than a thousand documents signed
by a notary public, that everyone will give up their power in order to serve,
that the deaf will compose symphonies, that all human cities will be paved with
green gardens, that the deserts will be filled with a divine presence, and monks
and nuns will be the yeast of communion wherever there might still be a vestige
of discord.
Keeping to our climate of
utopia, we might dare to think that a monastic life renewed like this could
prove to be attractive to the young people of today who, like those of yesterday,
are searching for God. With even less hesitation, we can be sure that this monastic
life would be an excellent way to communicate the charism of our Fathers to
new generations.
In any case, if nothing like
what I have described takes place, if we remain alone and faced with death despite
our desires to live, we can believe that all peoples will remember us with gratitude
and no one will forget that we were hopeful pilgrims in this life, who knew
how to sing to heaven while building monastic community on earth.
Our monastic pilgrimage is
fed by the “prayer of desire,” which lets us persevere at night in the desert.
This simple prayer life is a cry of hope in a world searching for the meaning
of its existence. God grant that we can all raise our eyes and unite our voices
to sing: O true noontide, fullness of warmth and light,
dwelling-place of the sun; noontime that blots out shadows, that dries up marshes,
that banishes impure odors! O perpetual solstice, day that will never be over!
O radiance of noon, with your springtime freshness, your summer charm, your
autumn fruitfulness and your winter of restful feasting! (St. Bernard, SC, 33:6).
Bernardo Olivera
Rome, August 15, 2005