Your basket is currently empty!
A monk either drinks or prays
In 2021 I contacted Dr Paul Pearson, Director and Archivist at the Thomas Merton Center, Bellarmine University, to help me identify a quote that I thought was written by Thomas Merton: ‘a monk either drinks or prays.’
He wrote back and said that he has never come across the quote as being written by Thomas Merton and added that Merton also did not say another quote about beer that he is often quoted as saying. ‘I drink beer whenever I can lay my hands on any. I love beer, and, by that very fact, the world.’
The reason for my enquiry was, like so many other people post-lockdown, I was trying to cut back on an increasing amount of alcohol consumption. What fascinates me about the phrase “a monk either drinks or prays”, is that the phrase implies that a person can choose either to drink or pray. The choice is made, maybe to; fill a void, alleviate stress, lift a low mood, reduce over excitement, the list goes on. It’s not ‘rocket science’ to understand that prayer may have better health benefits: physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional, but the point is, the person has a choice.
It’s not ‘rocket science’ to understand that prayer may have better health benefits: physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional, but the point is, the person has a choice.
Over time, if the choice becomes regular it can lead to a behavioral change that becomes harder to regulate and where often the ‘control’ shifts from the person to the choice. When I asked one of the monks at Mount Saint Bernard’s Abbey how he copes with saying the liturgy seven times a day, his reply was that it was like an ‘addiction,’ he was addicted to prayer.
To challenge an over-active behavioral condition, we need to recognise that in fact prayer is life and life is prayer, our whole being and everything we do we offer to Christ, our suffering collapses into His suffering.
From this we can ask some questions. What am I called to do, what is my dream, where am I, where have I come from and where am I going, who has God given me to care for this day, where is God’s provision for me at this stage of my life? We start to view life as a pattern of behavior that is always inclined towards the Cross, yet with our gaze into the world. Our compassion and repentance at the foot of the cross becomes other peoples, as we intercede for the world and the ones we love.
Once we embrace that our whole life is prayer, we can then ask, how then shall we live? In the deserts of the near-East during the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Christians who lived there often approached an ‘old man or woman’ (someone who had grown in wisdom through living longer in the desert) for a ‘word’ for life. These words were often taken as if from the lips of Christ and were embraced into the fabric of their being and life. Sometimes instead of words, the early Christians chose to live next to an old man or women and learnt through example and experience.
When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert, he was beset by accidie (spiritual and mental apathy) and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved? A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him. ‘Do this and you will be saved.’ At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.
I would suggest this quote is one of the most primitive and earliest of monastic rules. It is also the most accessible to non-monastics, born out of real life, suffering, struggling, sin and an acceptance that one cannot do it alone! Turning to God and posing the question how then shall I (we) live, amid my (our) reality? God simply offers a ‘way of life’ that caters for all our human needs. Over time, you could imagine Anthony developing a pattern of life that centered around the need to: pray, eat and drink, work, alms giving and hospitality. His whole life was an offering to Christ, restrained by his earthy body and temporal needs, but stretched heavenly.
What does all this mean for our quote, ‘a monk either prays or drinks.’? Some people who class themselves as alcoholics and others who view themselves as having an illness, rightfully need to seek medical to help, but those of us who have pampered too long to a particular choice as a way of coping, (this does not just need to be alcohol), then a pause, a moment of compassionate reflection, lifting of our head from our ‘belly’ to look at the world outside us and the ones we care for and a renewal of our life in Christ and our particular calling or vocation. In this way we learn from the monastics of how to regulate our life around our vocation.
Most of all, we must be prepared to make it a daily occurrence at the start. Abbot Antony encourages us in saying that we should meet each day as if a new foundation is being built.
Abbot Antony encourages us in saying that we should meet each day as if a new foundation is being built.
If we notice from the story above, after Antony pleads to God for His intervention, we are told that he ‘gets up’. For those who suffer with apathy or mild depression and anxiety, then often the feelings and thoughts draw us to ‘belly’ watch, to sit back and dwell on ourselves and not long after self-pity may set in, forcing us backwards to sit and dwell on well warn paths of negativity. The Fact that Antony gets up shows us that we need to be physically active in our prayer for help. It’s no different to what modern psychology tells us today, physical exercise and being active, within our capabilities, can help towards our own wellbeing.
The dividing line between ourselves as fully human in Christ and our over-activity behavioral habits, is wafer thin. It just sometimes feels as if we are looking through a brick wall; for our part, we tell God our hopes, dreams and things we want to change, then we go about trying, not on our own, for we are part of the body of Christ, the Church, then we wait for the Grace of God to descend.