Love of Letters and Learning

 Thus Jean Leclercq, a Benedictine scholar in the past century, entitled the essay in which he presents the characteristics of monastic theology: L'amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu (Love of words and the desire for God). In fact, the desire to know and to love God which comes to meet us through his words to be received, meditated upon and put into practice, leads us to seek to deepen our knowledge of the biblical texts in all their dimensions. Then there is another attitude on which those who practise monastic theology insist: namely an intimate, prayerful disposition that must precede, accompany and complete the study of Sacred Scripture. Since, ultimately, monastic theology is listening to God's word, it is impossible not to purify the heart in order to receive it and, especially, it is impossible not to enkindle in it a longing to encounter the Lord. Theology thus becomes meditation, prayer, a song of praise and impels us to sincere conversion.   BENEDICT XVI,GENERAL AUDIENCE 2009

I am rereading the book that Pope Benedict XVI mentions here, by Dom Jean Leclercq, and I want to blog some notes as I go.     Dom Leclercq was a well known scholar of medieval monasticism, from the Abbey of St Maurice and St Maur of Clervaux, in Belgium.  The abbey is of the Solesmes Congregation, which has a whole history in the monastic revival of the earlier part of the last century.    

The book, which in English is called Love of Learning and the Desire for God, a study of monastic culture, was originally embodied as a series of lectures given to young monks in Milan and Rome in 1956 and 1957.    So right away you can see that though the book was informed by deep and careful scholarship, it is in itself not meant as a book for scholars, but for young people actually living the life he is trying to delineate, and be guided by the specific features of Benedictine spirituality he brings out.

Incidentally, Pope Benedict's translation of Amour de Lettres into Love of Words seems more targeted to the theme of the book than "love of learning".  Or at least, it points to another connotation of the French word.     Lettres can mean as they do in English letters you send to someone, or letters of the alphabet, but it can also mean literature, or philology, and even the arts.   And also learning in general.  

There is an overview of the themes of the book at the Prior's Blog at Holy Cross in Chicago.    From another post on the blog:

Let’s use LeClercq’s book as an illustration. Monks seek the Kingdom of God, according to St. John Cassian. But what does that look like, and how do we get there? And more importantly, LeClercq forces monks to ask this key question, “Is our method of study consonant with this goal, as commonly conceived by monks?” When he wrote, the answer was, “No.” Vatican II’s Perfectae Caritatis invited all religious to a rediscovery of the spirit of their founders and traditions. LeClercq’s work was vindicated as monasteries dropped scholastic and Ignatian methods of formation and returned to the Desert Fathers and medieval Cistercians. 

Leclercq's influence went beyond monasteries.    For example, here is an article about Love of Learning and the Lay Desire for God, written by a teacher.    Margaret Mooney writes, in part:

Pope Benedict described the monastic approach to learning as Quaerere Deum—setting out in search of God both through revelation and through nature. He called this a “truly philosophical attitude: looking beyond the penultimate, and setting out in search of the ultimate and the true.”

To know God is not only to know Scripture; to know God is also to know his action in the world as revealed in the history and world of human beings. God not only created the world, but continues to work in the world. As such, our work in the world can be seen as “a special form of resemblance to God, as a way in which man can and may share in God’s activity as creator of the world.”

Because the monks believed that God was at work in whatever was beautiful, in his book The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Jean Leclercq describes how monks studied not only Church Fathers and Scripture, but classical texts simply because they were beautiful. Monks believed that, in some real way, everything that is good or beautiful comes from the hand of God, even if the author was not a Christian.

 Though the world owes much to St Dominic and St Ignatius as teachers, it is important not to forget that St Benedict started it all, in a certain way.    Newman speaks of this:

 ...what the Catholic Church once has had, she never has lost. ....She did not lose Benedict by finding Dominic; and she has still both Benedict and Dominic at home, though she has become the mother of Ignatius. Imagination, Science, Prudence, all are good, and she has them all. Things incompatible in nature, cöexist in her; her prose is poetical on the one hand, and philosophical on the other......

St. Benedict, then, like the great Hebrew Patriarch, was the "Father of many nations." He has been styled "the Patriarch of the West," a title which there are many reasons for ascribing to him. Not only was he the first to establish a perpetual Order of Regulars in Western Christendom; not only, as coming first, has he had an ampler course of centuries for the multiplication of his children; but his Rule, as that of St. Basil in the East, is the normal rule of the first age of the Church, and was in time generally received even in communities which in no sense owed their origin to him. Moreover, out of his Order rose, in process of time, various new monastic families, which have established themselves as independent institutions, and are able in their turn to boast of the number of their houses, and the sanctity and historical celebrity of their members. He is the representative of Latin monachism for the long extent of six centuries, while monachism was one; and even when at length varieties arose, and distinct titles were given to them, the change grew out of him;—not the act of strangers who were his rivals, but of his own children, who did but make a new beginning in all devotion and loyalty to him.

 So we are not talking about a dichotomy here, an either/or (aut..aut).    Dom Leclercq, in writing his book, was speaking to monastics, yes, but also to the larger Church, which at the time was in some danger of forgetting the foundational contemplative charism.   Of course, the danger has not passed since that time -- this was a major keynote of Pope Benedict XVI's papacy, and was one motivating force for the liturgical renewal desired by Vatican II, unexpectedly as it may have turned out in the short term of the last fifty or so years.    We are in the middle of the story! 

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.”