The ASCETIC is one who practices an unusual amount of discipline for the purposes of spiritual simplicity and devotion to Christ.
In a world which prefers all things to the excess, asceticism says "no" sooner than later.
In a world that is supersaturated with diversionary pleasures (food, sex, enticements of endless varieties, mind-numbing video, TV and internet), asceticism chooses the less instead of the more.
In a world that is convinced of its urbane ways, asceticism prefers the simple over the sophisticated.
In a world that has grown soft and bored, asceticism chooses the rigors of the wilderness as better than the indiscretions of Vanity Fair.
In a world of mushy, "I'm okay, you're okay" sentimental love, asceticism knows the way of sacrificial, redeeming, purgative love.
It is the way of self-denial. It is the way of self-discipline and self-control. It is the way of taking up a cross. It is the way of "dying to self." It is way of radical, counter-cultural living in a ways that believes excessive acquiring and gathering is what life is all about.
Asceticism was the spirituality of John the Baptist, of Jesus the Christ, of Paul the Apostle and of so many of the greatest and wisest writers of the spiritual classics from the Desert mothers and fathers to the medieval mystics to Thomas a Kempis (the Imitation of Christ) and most of the monastics and mendicants.
Of course, my favorite, Ignatius of Loyola, was both commiited to this way as well as cautious and moderate (for his time) in how he instructed the Jesuits to practice this way of spiritual formation.
Moderation and simplicity as a way of life . . . this is the (beginning of the) way of the ascetic. It offers the alternative of wonderful clarity and laser-like focus to the excessively cluttered, distracted spiritualities of our time.
Brian K. Rice
Leadership ConneXtions International
www.lci.typepad.com
