The calendar and the Bible: for us, today

In a previous post, we saw how Martin Thornton (quoting Sergius Bulgakov) argues that the church calendar is a form of recollection that is not merely the calling to mind of events in salvation history, but a making present of those events for us, today:

During the service of Christmas there is not merely the memory of the birth of Christ, but truly Christ is born in a mysterious manner, just as at Easter he is resurrected. … The life of the Church, in these services, makes actual for us the mystery of the Incarnation. … [I]t is given to the Church to make living these sacred memories so that we should be their new witnesses and participate in them. (Christian Proficiency, p.69)

There is an interesting parallel to this in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s little book Life Together, in which he commends the practice of reading substantial, consecutive passages of Scripture each day, rather than just isolated “devotional” verses:

Consecutive reading of biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men. We become part of what once took place for our salvation. Forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land. With Israel we fall into doubt and unbelief and through punishment and repentance experience again God’s help and faithfulness. All this is not mere reverie but holy, godly reality. We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace. It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth. And only in so far as we are there, is God with us today also. (Life Together, p.38)

In other words, our reading of the Bible is an act of “sacramental” recollection similar to that of the church calendar: a means by which the events of salvation history become not just abstract “timeless truths”, but are made present as truth for us, today.

Readings dutiful and revelatory

I’ve just finished reading Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt. Towards the end of the novel, Byatt discusses the act of reading, as Roland (one of the two central characters) reads a work by one of the fictional Victorian poets around whom the plot of the novel revolves, Randolph Henry Ash:

There are readings – of the same text – that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that count grey little pronouns for pleasure or instruction and for a time do not hear golden or apples. There are personal readings, that snatch for personal meanings, I am full of love, or disgust, or fear, I scan for love, or disgust, or fear. There are – believe it – impersonal readings – where the mind’s eye sees the lines move onwards and the mind’s ear hears them sing and sing.

Now and then there are readings which make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like points of stars in the dark – readings when the knowledge that we shall know the writing differently or better or satisfactorily, runs ahead of any capacity to say what we know, or how. In these readings, a sense that the text has appeared to be wholly new, never before seen, is followed, almost immediately, by the sense that it was always there, that we the readers, knew it was always there, and have always known it was as it was, though we have now for the first time recognised, become fully cognisant of, our knowledge.

This reminded me of John Bunyan’s description of his experience over many years of reading the Bible:

I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under, and yet at another time the whole Bible hath been to me as dry as a stick; or rather, my heart hath been so dead and dry unto it, that I could not conceive the least drachm of refreshment, though I have looked it all over.

Another parallel can be found in the fact that Roland has read the Ash poem in question many times before, as can often be the case for us when we read familiar Bible passages:

Think of this, as Roland thought of it, rereading ‘The Garden of Proserpina’ for perhaps the twelfth, or maybe even the twentieth time, a poem he ‘knew’ in the sense that he had already experienced all its words, in their order, and also out of order, in memory, in selective quotation or misquotation – in the sense also, that he could predict, at times even recite, those words which were next to come, or more remotely approaching, the place where his mind rested, like clawed bird feet on twig.

The one place where the comparison breaks down – though Christians can be the first to overlook this point – comes in the next sentence:

Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

That’s often our (mis)perception of what reading the Bible is about. However, often the writer didn’t write alone, but were (at least) dictating to a scribe. What’s more, in most cases they were writing not to an individual, but for an audience. That is certainly true of the bulk of St Paul’s letters.

And nor do we read alone. Any true reading of the Bible (even if I am the only person in the room as I read) is with the church and in the church.

For all that, though, Byatt’s words on reading in general – or at least, the reading that is, like Roland’s “violently yet steadily alive” – strike a lot of chords about my experience of reading the Bible: at times (perhaps most times) “dutiful”; but at others, a reading in which “every word burns and shines hard and clear and infinite and exact”.

Recollecting Christ: the spiritual value of the church calendar

In my previous post, I mentioned in passing that Martin Thornton refers to “recollection” as one branch of “private prayer” (itself part of the threefold Rule of Christian devotion, along with the daily Office and the Mass).

Recollection can take many forms: brief “arrow prayers” during the day, saying grace before and after meals, saying the Angelus, and so on. Thornton particularly commends the practice of spontaneously making petition or thanksgiving at every “failure” or “success” of the day. He also suggests that fasting should be seen as falling under the heading of recollection.

As to the content of recollection, Thornton describes three overall categories: recollection of the Holy Trinity (especially the transcendence of the Father and the immanence of the Spirit, according to need), recollection of Christ (such as through mental prayer), and recollection in the Church – that is, the conscious recollection that, through our baptism we are members of Christ’s body, united with all believers on earth and in heaven.

Thornton then suggests one concrete way in which we can exercise that third form of recollection: by making use of the church’s calendar. The feasts of the church’s year are not merely arbitrary dates for remembrance, but a meeting point between time and eternity, as Sergius Bulgakov (quoted by Thornton) explains:

During the service of Christmas there is not merely the memory of the birth of Christ, but truly Christ is born in a mysterious manner, just as at Easter he is resurrected. … The life of the Church, in these services, makes actual for us the mystery of the Incarnation. … [I]t is given to the Church to make living these sacred memories so that we should be their new witnesses and participate in them. (p.69)

So, Thornton continues, “every feria has its eternal counterpart”. Thus it is healthy to recollect what each day is according to the church’s calendar, as well as according to the civil calendar:

It may seem a bit strange to decide to spend the Friday after the fifth Sunday after Trinity on the beach with the children, but it is a most real aid in the colouring of our whole life with the tints of the eternal presence of Christ.

Similarly, where our spiritual routine – our Rule – breaks down, as is inevitable at times, we should not think of having missed Mass on “Sunday”, but instead “be conscious that we are missing, not Sunday, but Trinity X, or Lent II, or Epiphany IV or whatever it is.”

Another example given by Thornton: while many people choose some form of abstinence during Lent, how many of us make a similar resolution to engage in additional thanksgiving during the fifty days of Easter? Or to mark Ascension Day (as we mark Christmas Day) by having a special meal, perhaps inviting friends to celebrate with us?

As Thornton observes, all this can greatly enrich our devotional lives:

[N]othing is quite so deadening to creative progress as a monotonous sequence of “Sundays” and “weekdays”. (p.124)

Here is the key practical lesson which I draw from all this. If one happened to belong (hypothetically speaking…) to a church tradition that had mislaid the daily Office, or the weekly (or “red-letter” weekday) Mass, or other such elements of church’s Rule, and were looking at how to rebuild it; if you wanted to rediscover how your church could, as a church, worship God “seven whole days, not one in seven”; then it seems to me that the first (and in some respects easiest) task is to renew and re-establish the church calendar.

Spiritual direction: a cry for help

If anyone makes himself his own master in the spiritual life, he makes himself scholar to a fool. – St Bernard

Having finished English Spirituality, I’ve now moved on to another book by Martin Thornton: Christian Proficiency, which aims to provide a more practical guide to living out the principles of “English spirituality”.

“Proficiency” refers to the spiritual life of “a sound ‘ordinary’ Christian” – one who is neither a beginner in the Christian life, “yet far from perfection”. The framework within which Thornton sees such a Christian engaging in prayer is the threefold “Rule” which he sets out in English Spirituality:

• Office
• Mass
• Private prayer

The last of these is then split into:

• Mental prayer (such as imaginative or intellectual meditation on the life of Christ or the doctrines of the church)
• Colloquy (which in turn consists of petition, self-examination and confession, intercession, thanksgiving, and adoration)
• Recollection (the “practice of the presence of God”, both as specific acts of recollection and as a “habitual” state of the soul)

That may sound like quite a lot to squeeze into one life, and Thornton acknowledges this. His recommended solution consists of two main elements:

• spiritual direction; and
• “Rule” (as in following a disciplined, though flexible, “rule of prayer”, rather than following a list of “rules”).

I mentioned a few months ago that I didn’t feel I had a “‘spiritual director’-shaped hole in my life”. I suspected that I was lying (or at least protesting too much) even then, and reading Thornton has made me rethink.

But what is spiritual direction? Thornton is careful to distinguish it from “counselling”, which is usually aimed at addressing specific problems, usually over a finite period of time. Spiritual direction is intended for the ongoing life of the “ordinary” Christian. Similarly, Thornton distinguishes it from individual confession and absolution: while one’s director may also be one’s confessor, this will not always be the case.

Thornton compares spiritual direction to asking for directions from a police officer:

[He] advises us to follow a certain road to get to a certain place, he may give us a choice of routes and point out their respective snags and merits. He does not order us against our will – unless it is a one-way street when it is better for us to follow his direction all the same – nor does he get out of his car and take us there himself. (pp.25f.)

As a result, spiritual direction has nothing to do with “autocracy, ‘priestcraft’, submissiveness, easy ways out, not standing on one’s own feet, interfering with the relation between the soul and God, etc., etc., etc.” – to rehearse some of the usual Protestant arguments against the practice. What it can do is to free us from the burden of having to work everything out for ourselves.

Thornton then turns to the very practical question of how to set about finding a spiritual director and starting to undergo direction. If you are interested in this topic, you’ll want to read this section of the book in full, but here is a brief summary:

1. “The Church gives you absolute freedom of choice as to who your director shall be.” If you want it to be your parish priest or pastor, and they are the right person for the job (not all are), then all well and good. But if not, you are free to choose someone else.
2. The priority should be to find a director who is competent – that is, who has “a working knowledge of ascetical and moral theology supported by a regular life of prayer”.
3. If you find it difficult to identify a potential director, ask your Christian friends (see the end of this post!), or write to your bishop. “You can be assured that you are not ‘troubling’ anyone with something trivial,” Thornton reassures us, pointing out that such a request will likely make a pleasant change from the average bishop’s usual postbag.
4. Once you have found a guide, use them. Thornton compares this to your dentist, where you will have regular periodic checkups, but can also call on them when a specific problem comes up (without ringing them for every slight twinge).
5. Don’t be afraid if you find it difficult to talk about spiritual things. A large part of the director’s job is to draw out from you what they need, just as a doctor can diagnose you even if all you can say is “I have a pain – here”.
6. Don’t be afraid to discontinue with a given director if the relationship doesn’t work or has run its course, though equally avoid chopping and changing.
7. Tell your pastor that you are receiving spiritual direction (assuming they are not already your director!).
8. Finally, and importantly: don’t leave it till you are facing a crisis. As Thornton points out, “if you are on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, it is a bit late to learn to swim” (fuller quotation here – worth reading). If possible, the time to commence direction is when things are generally going well for you.

All this brings us to the real purpose of this post. My wife and I are both interested in investigating spiritual direction (in the sense described by Thornton) further, but have no idea where to begin. It’s not something that really exists within the Lutheran tradition, and while we have a huge regard for our pastor, this doesn’t really strike us as his sort of thing.

So we’d welcome any suggestions on where to start looking for a potential spiritual director. Geographically we’d be looking at London/Kent. In terms of temperament, theology and general outlook – and especially bearing in mind Martin Thornton’s description of the role – my expectation is that an Anglo-Catholic or Benedictine director is probably what we’d be happiest with (the Jesuit approach, for example, almost certainly isn’t for us). I’m thinking we’d probably expect to meet up with them (I assume individually rather than as a couple) at say 3- or 6-monthly intervals, and then to be in occasional email contact between times.

If you have any ideas, contact me either via the comments (I’m happy to email you back if you put your email address in the relevant field) or on Twitter.

Update: several people on Twitter have suggested the London Centre for Spirituality, whose website has a section on spiritual direction. From the LCS website, it looks like the people to contact in my neck of the woods are SPIDIR. Thanks to all who have contributed suggestions.

A spirituality of everyday life

My previous post looked at Martin Luther’s guidance on prayer to his barber, Peter Beskendorf. An interesting essay from 1982 discusses how the same work, A Simple Way to Pray, can help us understand what a true “Lutheran spirituality” looks like.

In the essay, Lutheran pastor Endel Kallas shows how Luther used the story of St Anthony and the cobbler to show the spiritual value of our everyday vocations. St Anthony, seeking to discover “whose equal he would be in the kingdom of heaven”, had it revealed to him that “as yet he was not the equal of a certain cobbler in Alexandria”:

so St. Anthony comes to the cobbler and asks him what he is doing. The cobbler replies: I, a poor citizen, ply my handicraft; I daily pray that all might be saved and that I, too, poor and unworthy sinner, may gain eternal life through Christ. Hearing that, St. Anthony blushed; he was ashamed to realize that he had not come as far in his monkery as this cobbler.

This was no “passing anecdote”, Kallas notes, but a reflection of “a major turnabout in Luther’s thought” and “a significant contribution to the Western spiritual tradition”:

namely, that spirituality ought not be weighed or judged only with respect to clerics, nuns, or monks but be fully appreciated and sought in the most inconspicuous folk within society. Indeed, Luther would maintain, individuals replete with spirituality may be engaged in the most menial vocations, whether it be in the profession of a cobbler, housekeeper, tinsmith, printer, butcher, farmer, father, mother, or village barber.

Which brings us to Peter Beskendorf and his request that Luther teach him how to pray. The fact that Luther responded to this question so seriously is significant in itself. Kallas also notes the importance of Luther’s framework for prayer, based around the Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer:

Spirituality and prayer thus are rooted in, and develop from, the primary statements of faith. Luther, though, has indirectly broken that more commonly perceived link of spirituality and prayer to monastic practice through this method of exposition. Indeed, in the place of monastic piety Luther elevates the traditional symbols of faith and fixes them at the very heart of Christian prayer and spirituality.

Luther told Peter of the need to avoid mindless “babbling” and to ensure that prayer is of “the whole heart”. However, this did not mean that Luther saw spirituality in terms of “pure interiority”. Quite the opposite:

Luther most certainly is no seeker of a purely contemplative life, nor is he a searcher after an introverted form of spiritual existence. Barber Peter, moreover, is not in the least encouraged by Luther to forsake his barbershop or give up his straight razor and lather in quest of a new and profound level of spirituality. That, without question, is not how Luther understood spiritual development.

What Luther was calling Peter (and us) to was “ a vision … of the manifold ways the Lord God answers prayer and moves imperceptively within the created order”:

Through and through the prayers which Luther prepared for Peter is a concern that prayer itself help individuals integrate their lives into the ongoing activity of God within creation.

Thus prayer was not a matter of pure interiority, but rather “a reciprocal movement from inward communion with God through the Holy Spirit to outward service and support of human beings within society”. This reflects Luther’s “dynamic sense of God”:

Hardly a divine clockmaker “out there,” the Lord God for Luther is intimately related to the manifold affairs of this world. Underlying the prayers Luther writes for barber Peter is a remarkable sensitivity to the immanent activity of God within the present world. God endows wisdom, blesses physical life, counsels rulers, directs governments, helps the common folk, gives favorable seasons, comforts the distressed, assists those near death, protects the fearful. What prayer and spirituality effectively do is integrate hearts with this dynamic presence of God within the worldly context.

Thus, for Luther, “spirituality orients an individual back into the mainstream of life in order to engage more fully with the Lord God and his activity herein”. In doing so, Luther makes “a decisive and lasting contribution to the tradition of the Christian church”: namely, the rejection of any claim that the “professional religious” possess “an intrinsically superior spirituality” to that of the laity. As we have seen:

…barber Peter is not encouraged by Luther to give up his vocation in favor of being a cleric or monk. Nor is he advised to develop greater interiority apart from worldly contacts. Likewise, Luther provides his barber with no ladder on which to ascend from this world to another. Rather, Luther plainly counsels Peter on daily prayerful devotion in the hope that God might be experienced more fully within the seemingly mundane day-to-day task of a barber in old Wittenberg. Spirituality thus is brought down from the heavens and planted squarely within the realm of what, at first glance, appears “secular.”

Pragmatic and pastoral: Luther on prayer

One underappreciated gem from Martin Luther’s writings is his “Simple Way to Pray”, addressed to his barber, Peter Beskendorf, who had asked for guidance on prayer.

In this booklet, Luther shows many of the same tendencies as the English tradition described by Martin Thornton: a “speculative-affective synthesis” of doctrine and prayer, a pastoral and domestic emphasis, and a distinctly Benedictine influence in the use of a form of lectio divina and of “frequent and ardent” prayer rather than complex devotional techniques.

Luther’s guidance falls into roughly three sections:

1. A general introduction on how and when to pray in the midst of a busy life.
2. Use of the Lord’s Prayer as a structure for prayer.
3. Use of the Ten Commandments (or of a psalm or scriptural text) for further meditation or prayer when time allows.

1. Introduction

Luther emphasises that he is basing his advice on how he himself prays, again showing the same unity between priest and layperson as Thornton describes as a key element of “English spirituality”. When he feels he has become “cool and joyless” in prayer, Luther says, he says quietly to himself “the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some Psalms, just as a child might do”.

Luther also advises that prayer be made “the first business of the morning and the last at night”, and to “guard yourself carefully against those false, deluding ideas which tell you, ‘Wait a little while. I will pray in an hour; first I must attend to this or that.’” We all know how that ends, don’t we?

The most interesting and original advice given by Luther in this section, though, is his suggestion that our daily work can be “as good as or better than prayer, especially in an emergency”. This is Luther’s concept of vocation (a critically important part of Lutheran pastoral understanding) as itself a form of prayer, and indeed as a means of obeying Christ’s injunction to “pray without ceasing”.

That said, we shouldn’t allow this “vocation-as-prayer” to supplant entirely what Luther calls “the habit of true prayer”. Again, Luther is acutely aware of the human capacity for self-deception: “The devil that oppresses us is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is too ready and eager to sin and is disinclined to the spirit of prayer.”

2. The Lord’s Prayer

Having “warmed the heart” with the Commandments, Creed, psalms and so on, Luther goes on to set out how the Lord’s Prayer can be used as a basis for our own prayers, by expanding on each petition (in a similar manner to that set out in the Small Catechism).

Luther’s theology of prayer is perhaps best summed up by his comments on saying “Amen”:

Finally, mark this, that you must always speak the Amen firmly. Never doubt that God in his mercy will surely hear you and say “yes” to your prayers. Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone, rather think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, united petition which God cannot disdain. Do not leave your prayer without having said or thought, “Very well, God has heard my prayer; this I know as a certainty and a truth.” That is what Amen means.

Given how Luther is often (unjustly) accused of “individualism”, it is noteworthy how he teaches that our confidence in prayer is intimately connected to our awareness of praying in and with the church as a whole, even in our individual prayers.

Luther also emphasises that Peter (and we) should not simply repeat his words, which “would make it nothing but idle chatter and babble, read word-for-word out of a book”. He wants our hearts “to be stirred and guided concerning the thoughts which ought to be comprehended in the Lord’s Prayer”, rather than simply reciting written prayers in an inattentive and distracted manner. (A healthy warning for those of us who find the Daily Office a helpful basis for our prayers.)

In short, we need to devote the same concentration to our prayers as we do to the tasks of our daily vocations. Luther applies this specifically to Peter:

So, a good and attentive barber keeps his thoughts, attention, and eyes on the razor and hair and does not forget how far he has gotten with his shaving or cutting. If he wants to engage in too much conversation or let his mind wander or look somewhere else he is likely to cut his customer’s mouth, nose, or even his throat. Thus if anything is to be done well, it requires the full attention of all one’s senses and members, as the proverb says, “The one who thinks of many things, thinks of nothing and does nothing right.” How much more does prayer call for concentration and singleness of heart if it is to be a good prayer!

3. The Ten Commandments

In the final section, Luther describes how – if he has “time and opportunity” (again with that pastoral realism!) – he goes on to a similar meditation with the Ten Commandments, using a technique which clearly owes a debt to the monastic practice of lectio divina, in which he treats each commandment in turn as “instruction”, “thanksgiving”, “confession” and “prayer” (see this post from a few years ago for more details).

Once more, we need to maintain our spiritual attentiveness rather than working mechanically through a technique:

If in the midst of such thoughts the Holy Spirit begins to preach in your heart with rich, enlightening thoughts, honour him by letting go of this written scheme. Be still and listen to the one who can do better than you can.

Similarly, Luther concludes with a repetition of his call for a sane, pastoral balance (one which, yet again, shows the influence of St Benedict):

Take care, however, not to undertake all of this or so much that one becomes weary in spirit. Likewise, a good prayer should not be lengthy or drawn out, but frequent and ardent.

Finding A Simple Way to Pray

I’ve been quoting the version found in the latest edition of Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings. A cheap Kindle edition is available from CPH. Finally, If you google “simple way to pray” you will find various copies of Luther’s text.

Reading the Bible “ascetically”

To return to Martin Thornton’s English Spirituality (see previous posts 1 | 2), in an early chapter Thornton discusses the role of Bible reading in personal devotion. He begins by observing the difficulties that many laypeople now have concerning how to engage with the Bible:

The critical upheaval of the last century has convinced the layman that the Bible is a subtle and difficult book, put together piecemeal, out of all chronological order, repetitive, contradictory, and translated through two or three languages at least. Yet he is still glibly exhorted “to read it”, just like that. […] But if the Bible is an immensely complex record of God’s revelation of himself to mankind, then just “reading” is surely inadequate. How is it to be read, studied, approached, or used, for lay devotion? (p.31)

“Just reading” is therefore insufficient, and so (Thornton continues) is a form of Bible study that amounts to “no more than a watered down version of biblical scholarship, which, without long training in the disciplines of the craft, is not going to get the laity very far.”

One answer is to suggest that laypeople should focus on “imaginative meditation” rather than seeking “propositional truths” in their reading of Scripture. However, Thornton concludes that this is also inadequate: the English school of spirituality’s “speculative-affective synthesis” means that the question “What does the Bible mean?” should never be abandoned altogether. He continues:

The modern Christian is no fool. He knows that the Bible is a subtle volume which demands a modicum of care if it is to be used constructively, but he has a reasonable case when he accuses the scholar of turning it into an insoluble puzzle. If the English Bible is to remain “open”, the layman must be able to retain a certain confidence in it. (p.32)

What we need, in short, is “some simple key, some clear approach, which ordinary Christians can use with confidence”. Thornton suggests two ways in which ascetical theology – that is, the application of doctrine to prayer, rather than “being an ascetic” – can help with this.

The first is “affective meditation”, especially in relation to the words of Christ – which “can always safely be regarded as ‘irony’”:

[Our Lord's sayings] must mean far more than is immediately apparent, not because scholars have played games with the text but because they are spoken by the Son of God. In other words we reject the search for direct tenets in favour of an empathetic union with Christ himself. “Whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” is either an exhortation to suicide or it is “irony”. This approach, within meditation, encourages rather than detracts from intellectual endeavour: it brings in the speculative side. (p.33)

The second approach to an “ascetical” reading of Scripture is to relate it to prayer – or, more subtly, to our whole Christian life as shaped by our prayer; in Lutheran terms, both devotion and vocation. As Thornton puts it:

More generally, we can look at the Bible ascetically: confronted with a saying or passage, we can ask the ascetical rather than the propositional or moral question. Not “What does this mean?”, or “How does it teach me to behave?”, but “How does it impinge on my total Christian life which is grounded on my prayer?”. (p.33)

He gives a brief example of this, in relation to Jesus’ instruction to “take no thought for the morrow”:

As a divine proposition, “take no thought for the morrow” suggests a reasonable possibility that this world is not going to last much longer. As a moral exhortation, we must be obliged to burn all our insurance policies. As ascetic, it leads to common-sense teaching on “surrender”, “abandonment to divine Providence”, habitual recollection, the sinfulness of anxiety, temporal-eternal relations in the sacraments of the threefold Church, and so on.

At the end of the chapter, Thornton sketches out further examples based on the Sermon on the Mount: for example, observing that while the Beatitudes “make something of a jumble as an ethical system”, considered in ascetical terms they lay out “the way to the Vision of God”: “detachment, penitence, intercession, humility, progress, union, mercy, fortitude, simplicity, harmony, cross-bearing”.

Similarly, the apparently paradoxical metaphors of being “salt” and “light” can, Thornton suggests, be read ascetically as describing different ways which are both right according to circumstances: the “salt of the earth” being a Benedictine spirituality, “the light of the world” Franciscan.