Four Distinct Flavors of Catholicism: Benedictine, Franciscan, Ignatian and Carmelite Spiritualities

Is it idealistic to assert that many disillusioned Catholics have a warm cozy place in the Church, and they just haven't found it yet?

Father took us to the Poor Clares convent and there I experienced a sort of contraction of my heart...the opposite effect which Carmel produced in me, for there everything made my heart expand.

St. Therese of Lisieux¹

When depicted in imagery and art, it’s easy to be swept away by Catholicism. Take Michelangelo’s Pieta, which stuns gazers with its beauty while compelling them to contemplate Mary and her deep sorrows. Why then is the lived experience of Catholicism so often less than inspiring?

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It's so common to be taken with Catholicism in the ideal, yet repelled by it in the everyday.

Like the aroma of fresh bread emanating from a bakery, so many are allured by images of Mother Teresa spooning rice into mouth of a child in the slums of Calcutta, or the 6^th Century Monastery on Skellig Michael, where in centuries the past hermits renounced the world for a life of contemplating God in the silence and the waves. After these stimulating whiffs pass, a compulsion lingers; to explore a little further, to sit in the calm and the wonder the imagery evokes.

Yet the experience of “going to Church” often yields something else altogether. Whether it's a congregation engaged in a bloody liturgy war, an intellectual priest who reduces Jesus to series of logical arguments, or cold stares from parishioners at anyone who dares to sit in “their” pew, so often a Church environment feels flavorless and meh, like chewing on a piece of cardboard.

And the wonder palls. It's easy to conclude that any captivating notions one entertained about Catholicism are sheer fantasy.

A community breathes a spirituality; a real feeling, or atmosphere is generated when specific individuals gather together in prayer and worship. And as it turns out, more than a few distinct spiritualities have developed in the Church over the centuries, shaped by the circumstances of their genesis and molded by their members over the years. Although originating within orders, each is well accessible to the laity. And spiritualities are more than “prayer time.” They are a way of being, they inform daily actions and give life a particular rhythm.

Just like pairing a wine to a certain cheese, some say that people's personalities or even the charisms they're gifted with draw them to one spirituality over another. So discovering the pith of whatever has captured one's imaginations may simply mean burrowing through what appears to be a dead end. To this end, this essay delves into four of the Church's foremost spiritualities, and uncovers the essence of each.

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Contents

» Benedictine: Balance and Stability

» Franciscan: Simplicity and Poverty

» Carmelite: Detachment and Silence

» Ignatian: Reflection and Discernment

» A Suitable Pairing

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Benedictine: Balance and Stability

Let nothing be preferred to the Work of God.

The Rule of St. Benedict

St. Benedict is often called the father of Monasticism, and although this is not strictly accurate, he certainly played a central role in shaping the monastic lifestyle. Born into a noble Roman family in Italy near the dawn of the 6^thcentury, Benedict found as a young man that excesses within the Church and society made it impossible for him to live a God-centered life. So he absconded from the world and lived as a hermit. Through various adventures and misadventures, including two attempts on his life by fellow monks, he eventually founded two monasteries and a rule that instructs monks around all aspects of daily living, including meals, work, education, and rest.

The rule established a sturdy foundation in the midst of a wobbly Roman Empire. As the monks watched the culture decay around them, they set out to preserve what they could by copying manuscripts. And within these enclaves emerged a spirituality with a few distinct characteristics.

» Balance

St. Benedict's rule provides specific guidelines around the activities of the entire day. It also punctuates the day with prayer by weaving the office, or liturgy of the hours, in and amongst all these activities. The ritual offers predictability and discipline; it etches deep habitual grooves into the daily life of the monk, which frees up the mind to pray and contemplate.

» Hospitality

Although he unabashedly fled the influences of the world, St. Benedict did not ignore Jesus' command to welcome the stranger. The monk's mode of living in fact makes a space for God within the walls of the monastery. As Timothy P. O’Malley writes,

“They pray the Office together, with no voice standing out above the others. They eat dinner in specific places. They set the table in a specific way. And in these practices that make a monk, they always ensure that there is space for the guest among them. They learn, through an embodied spiritual formation, that not all space is theirs. Not all time is theirs. Everything is gift from God.”

» Prayer with Scripture

Many 6^th Century monks transcribed scripture, a careful, studied occupation that yielded only a small portion of text in a day's work. This physical and mental connection to the text, day-in and day-out, imbued the monk in God's word and in turn yielded a contemplative prayer known as lectio divina, or divine reading.

Lectio divina presupposes that scripture is much more than a historic text for intellectual study, but rather the voice of God, speaking personally to an individual in the present moment. It consists of four steps: read, meditate, pray, and rest.

1. Read. In this first step, the practitioner reads a short passage of scripture as though it's addressed to him or her personally. In slowly mulling over the passage, a word, phrase or image presents itself.

2. Mediate. The second step contemplates the revealed word or phrase, attempting to grasp God's gentle whispering. It entails suspending the intellect and listening with the ears of the heart.

3. Pray. This step is a give and take where the practitioner speaks back to God, seeking to unearth the full meaning of the message and to identify concrete takeaways for the present moment.

4. Rest. The final step is to sit in the quiet, peace and love of God's presence, appreciating His awe and majesty.

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This briefly summarizes one of the more ancient spiritualities in the Church. Benedictine spirituality offers a means to encounter God personally and a stable daily routine that eases cognitive overload and enables continual meditation.

Many more spiritualities developed in the ensuing centuries.

Franciscan: Simplicity and Poverty

Praise be you Lord, through Brother Wind...through Sister Water...through Brother Fire...through our Sister Mother Earth.

Excerpt from Canticle of the Creatures by St. Francis of Assisi

The notions so many entertain about this hugely popular saint are perhaps tainted with hues of 1960s mantras about peace, grooviness and love. Yet it's hardly accurate to align St. Francis with a generation that conflated freedom with iconoclasm and love with sexual experimentation. —But then again, these notions aren't entirely inaccurate, as St. Francis purportedly did deliver a homily to a flock of birds.

In Franco Zeffirelli's 1972 movie, Brother Sun Sister Moon, St. Francis and St. Clare run through meadows of flowers in Italy's countryside. (And in another scene, they weave macrame together 😜). Yet were they really so like the flower children of the 60s?

St. Francis' life spanned 45 years around the turn of the 12^th century. The son of a silk merchant, he enjoyed revelry, fine clothing, and rich food in his early years, but purportedly due to dreams, visions, and an inborn affinity for the poor, became agitated by his wealth and privileges. In a well-known spectacle in Assisi's town square, St. Francis stripped himself bare of his finery, to the horror of his parents and the townspeople looking on, and betrothed himself to Lady Poverty. A crucifix in the nearby dilapidated Church of San Damiano spoke to St. Francis, asking him to rebuild the Church, and St. Francis immediately set to work erecting walls from the crumbles around him.

St. Francis' dramatic example invigorated many, and within twenty years 5,000 followed in his footsteps. In order to make his band of friars official, he embarked to Rome and met with Pope Innocent III (who in turn dreamt that St. Francis single handedly held up the collapsing Cathedral in Rome's diocese). Alongside his childhood companion Clare, Francis established a rule and founded an order, both of which flourish to this day.

The characteristics of Franciscan spirituality are reflected in the life and person of St. Francis.

» Openness and Listening

St. Francis recognized God everywhere. He communed with animals, he listened to the wind, the water, he received messages in dreams, he heard Jesus speaking to him in a crucifix. Perhaps silencing the noise of the world heightened his sensibilities to this voice of God emanating from everything around him.

» Manifestation of the Gospel

“Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary,” is a common misnomer attributed to St. Francis. He in fact did spend much of his time preaching, and not only to the birds. But Francis also embodied the values he preached, and his rule ordered the friars to do likewise. Francis preached a radical dependance on God, and he demonstrated this in his devotion to Lady Poverty. He preached humility, and embodied it in refusing ordination and the title of priest.

» Simplicity

St. Francis' interpretation of the Christian way is almost comically literal, like a child's. As Jesus had no place to lay his head, St. Francis too went to live with the birds. When Jesus tells Francis to repair His Church, Francis immediately sets to work mixing mortar and stacking stones from the crumbles around him.

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Anyone walking in the footsteps of St. Francis is freed from grasping after wealth, status and success and finds peace and joy in the possession of nothing. Franciscan spirituality attunes one to the voice of God, working and breathing and communing through all of His creation.

Carmelite: Detachment and Silence

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your torrents,
and all your waves and breakers sweep over me.

Psalm 42:8

The Carmelite order cites its origins as far back as the 800s, when hermits began to congregate near Mount Carmel in Northern Israel, mostly living alone in cells and coming together to garden and share meals. The ancient prophet Elijah is the order's spiritual founder, as in the Book of Kings he demonstrated God's omnipotence before the worshippers of Baal atop Mount Carmel. Around 1210, the hermits established enough unity to codify a rule. Due to persecutions in Israel later that century, many of these initial communities disbursed to found Carmels throughout Europe.

The order grew lax over the ensuing centuries, with Carmels sometimes functioning more as social centers than communities of prayer. In the 1500s, the great mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross founded the discalced (shoeless) Carmelites and rededicated the order to ascetic lifestyles centered around prayer.

Carmelite spirituality approaches prayer as a journey toward union with God, and the writings of St. John and St. Teresa use several metaphors to describe this journey.

» An Interior Castle

In her book Interior Castle, St. Teresa describes the stages a soul progresses through as it draws nearer to God. In the initial stages, a soul encounters God with vocal prayer. Next it communes with God through meditation, or mental prayer. In the final stage, a soul achieves complete union with God through contemplative prayer (or as complete as one can achieve in this lifetime). Growth in prayer is nothing to boast of, however; St. Teresa says that a soul advances into higher stages of prayer through growing in the virtues of humility and obedience.

» Water

St. Teresa loves to use water as a metaphor for prayer. The soul is like a garden, she writes, and at the onset of a prayer journey, the soul must draw water by his or her own effort, through praying devotionals such as the rosary and reading scripture. Later, in the contemplative stages of prayer, God supplies the water of his own accord and the graces of peace and consolation flow in abundance.

» A Dark Night

St. John of the Cross writes at great length about achieving mystical union with God by means of a dark night. God exists outside of His creation, St. John explains in The Ascent of Mount Carmel. Drawing near to Him, then, requires suspending the senses, imagination, and intellect and pursuing God by means of faith alone.

Detachment is central to passing through the dark night. As a poor person may well grasp after wealth, this detachment isn't a practical renunciation of things like status and possessions; rather, it is an interior disposition.

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Carmelite spirituality is about developing the interior life, and so it emphasizes being rather than doing. It further teaches how the dark nights that everyone passes through, of loneliness, disillusionment, trauma and loss, can be a means to grow in holiness and nearness to God.

Ignatian: Reflection and Discernment

There are three kinds of thoughts in my mind; namely: one which is strictly my own, and arises wholly from my own free will; two others which come from without, the one from the good spirit, and the other from the evil one.

St. Ignatius of Loyola²

As a young man in Spain around the turn of the 16th century, St. Ignatius prayed alone in a cave for several months and developed a series of spiritual exercises that include meditations, vocal prayer and an examination of conscience. He codified these exercises when he founded the Jesuits around 15 years later. All novices complete them upon entering the order, and incorporate the principles into their priestly ministry.

A distinct spirituality has emerged out of these exercises with its own characteristics and practices.

» Discernment

Ignatius says that ultimately three voices speak to us: the voice of God, the voice of ourselves, and the voice of the devil. Through daily listening and reflecting, one can learn to distinguish each of these voices and in doing so, orient one's life toward God and His call.

This clarity is achieved first by removing inordinate worldly attachments, and next by routinely identifying the consolations and desolations one experiences in daily life. Consolation occurs when “an interior movement is aroused in the soul by which it is inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord.” Desolation, rather, is “a darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit, inclination to what is low and earthly, relentlessness rising from many disturbances.”³

» The Daily Examen Prayer

A daily “examen” is the principle means by which this discernment is achieved. In the same way that lectio divina postulates that God speaks to us personally in scripture, the examen postulates that God engages with us in the activities of our day. Its aim is to identify His voice; a tricky endeavor as most lives are full of bustle and noise; and so the examen reflects on the day in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. It consists of five parts.

1. A prayer for enlightenment. In this step, the practitioner asks the Spirit to guide his or her thoughts over the events of the day.

2. A prayer of thanksgiving. This step acknowledges one's poverty and fundamental dependance on God for everything, and a particular gratitude for the day that has just passed.

3. A practical survey of the actions of the day. This step doesn't catalog individual actions as either good or bad, but more so considers the day's activities in light of the questions: “How has God been working in my day?” and “What is being asked of me?”⁴ Again, as the voice of God is identified through consolations, answering these questions requires good emotional granularity (the ability to identify the range of emotions one feels), sensitivity to the various moods of the day, and an acuity to the tiny whisperings sounds addressed to one throughout the day.

4. Contrition and sorrow. This step acknowledges one's fallen state and ongoing tendency to turn away from God, to say no to His requests and to give in to the promptings of the dark spirit.

5. The examen ends with an orientation to the future. It looks ahead with a resolve to continue with God into the upcoming day. If one faces the future with dread or anxiety, he or she uncovers the cause.

» Prayer With the Senses

For St. Ignatius, contemplative prayer means bringing all of the senses into a scripture meditation. His exercises include placing one's self into a Gospel scene such as the Annunciation, Peter walking on water, or Jesus feeding 5,000, and using the full range of senses to become present in the scene, identifying the sounds, the smells, the landscape and colors, the feel and even the taste of the Gospel event.

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Ignatian spirituality allows one to recognize God in all aspects of life, and to draw close to Him by routinely ordering daily actions to His call. When practiced regularly, the examen guides one to make life-giving decisions around all the events of life, both large and small.

A Suitable Pairing

The Church is a banquet, rich in spiritualities, and this briefly summarizes only four of them.

While these spiritualities bear distinctive trademarks, they spring forth from the very same divinely established Church. Collectively they speak to the richness of Christ, who, as St. John of the Cross writes in his Spiritual Canticle, is “like an abundant mine with many recesses of treasures, so that however deep individuals may go, they never reach the end or bottom, but rather in every recess find new veins with new riches everywhere.”⁵

Which one is the best? Franciscan, of course. Ho, ho. Simplicity and humility are endearing qualities, to be sure, which perhaps helps to explain why this spirituality bears so much longevity. But the truth is, they're all very good. And each provides tools to achieve a variety of ends and flavors to suit a variety of preferences.

Going back to the opening quote, why was The Little Flower put off by a monastery seeped in Franciscan spirituality, yet enraptured by the Carmel she eventually made her home? It's a mystery, and one which we've all experienced, to the extent that we've encountered various spiritualities in the Church. Some draw us in, while others repel. And within one in particular, an individual may well find a spiritual home.

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And with this simple overview, it's your turn to chime in. What do these summaries leave out, what have they distorted? What are some other Catholic spiritualities not covered here? And where is your “Carmel” within the Church?

1. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux. Translated by John Clark O.C.D. ICS Publications, 1996: Page 92.

2. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Translated by Louis J. Puhl, S. J. Loyola Press, 1951: Page 18.

3. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Page 142.

4. “Consciousness Examen” by Father George Aschenbrenner, SJ: January, 1972.

5. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Vatican City, Alfred Knopf, 1994: Page 128.