6.

 Are there orders in Orthodox monasticism?

            Orders do not exist in Orthodox monasticism. Orders are a particular development within the Roman Catholic Church, which has preserved the institution of monastic life but has strayed far from the original spirit of primitive monasticism. As orders in the West came to assume a vast sociological range of functions, Catholic monastics became functionaries who today, often in street clothes, typically act as advocates of social justice and political reform. As Catholic monasticism was transferred from the quiet of the wilderness to the tumult of the city, it became worldly, and Catholic monks and nuns thereby became directed to social activity and worldly things, rather than to prayer and the internal life, to ascesis and inner purification.

            Nothing of the sort took place in the East, where monastics, in the manner of primitive monasticism, dedicate themselves entirely to the work of human transformation. Orthodox monastics labor to cleanse the mind and body through the conquest of the passions, even as an angel instructed St. Anthony the Great to remain in the desert to struggle against himself, and against languor and the passions. This struggle is undertaken in order to be united to God, for as was noted above, St. Gregory Palamas explained that only one thing is impossible to God: to enter into union with a man before he has been cleansed.

            Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos gives further development of the difference between monasticism in the West and East. Western monasticism, he notes, exhausts itself in societal work and external worship, which is intellectual worship. He states that there are isolated cases of Western monastics who live an interior life, although even they cannot be freed from a barren ethicology. He goes on to note that in Orthodox monasticism, on the other hand, a perfect therapeutic treatment exists, consisting of purification, illumination and divinization. The metropolitan also notes that Western monasticism was created in an effort to regenerate the Church. In Orthodoxy, however, monastics are not struggling to revive the Church or to save it, for it is not the Church they need to save. Instead, they struggle to be healed living within the Church, and they seek their own salvation within the Church, from Christ, in His Holy Mysteries. Thus, Orthodox monasteries function as hospitals which cure people and lead them to life before the fall.

            Some people condemn Orthodox monasticism because of its unworldliness and its emphasis on the interior life, and they put the outer life and its activities first. However, it is sufficient to recall that Christ did not bless the activist Martha, who was “burdened about much serving.” Instead, He blessed the quiet Mary, who sat at His feet to hear the words of eternal life (Lk 10:38-42). Also, Christ specifically blesses those who engage in ascetic labor, saying that those who see Him are the pure of heart (Mt 5:8).