I’d like to begin a series of reflections on the Brief Rule of Saint Romuald, the spiritual charter of our community.
Saint Romuald was not a modern man. Like the people of his time, he was not interested in being (or sounding) “original”. He knew that wisdom is something we receive, not something we come up with on our own. And so his Rule is really nothing more—or rather, we should say, nothing less—than the wisdom of the desert in a few brief words. The advice to “sit in your cell” is, of course, well known. It is associated with the desert fathers; and is, perhaps, best known coupled with “…and your cell will teach you everything.”
But from where did the desert fathers get their inspiration? The idea comes from the Gospel of Matthew, and Jesus’ rather rare teaching on prayer: “But when you pray, go into your room [tameion] and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret [kryptō]; and your Father who sees in secret [kryptō] will reward you” (Mt 6:6; RSV translation).
The Greek word tameion, here translated simply as “room”, can also be translated as “private room” (Jerusalem Bible), “inner chamber” (American Standard Version), even “closet” (King James Version). But the word originally meant “storehouse” (which is the obvious meaning in Luke 12:24, the only other time this exact form of the word is used in the New Testament). I think that all these possible meanings are interesting; and all of them point to one other possibility: a reference to the inner chamber of the Temple, to the Holy of Holies, which “was” Paradise (metaphorically, perhaps even sacramentally, speaking). “Sit in your cell as in Paradise”, then, takes on a deeper meaning and offers a richer insight when it is understood in the context of both the scriptures and the desert fathers.
The Temple in Jerusalem “was” the whole cosmos in symbolic form; and the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber of the Temple, “was” the dwelling place of God on earth. This “inner chamber” represented the source of creation, the “Day One” of Genesis, the “First Day” before time, space and matter came to be (these emerge on the following days). In the biblical understanding, it was the “navel of the universe”, which is to say, the point at which all creation was connected to its Creator in the “womb” of its conception. It was most “private” and “secret”(kryptō), where God alone was. No one was allowed to enter this most sacred place, except the high priest, and only briefly on the most sacred day of the entire year, the first day of a new year: the Day of Atonement, the day that God brought creation back to “at-one-ment” with itself and with God.
In the time of the First Temple, the Holy of Holies was not empty (as it would be later, after the Exile, and in the time of Jesus). It was, in fact, a “storehouse”. It stored the most sacred symbols of Israelite faith: the Ark of the Covenant (containing the Ten Commandments), the Mercy Seat (covering the Ark), and the Cherubim Throne (filling the space of the Holy of Holies). On the Throne (made by the outstretched wings of the Cherubim) was seated YHWH and his “Presence” or “Glory” (shekinah in Hebrew). YHWH’s presence, his “glory”, was called “Lady Wisdom” (hokmah), the “Queen of Heaven”, or “the Holy Spirit”. In developing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the early church fathers were drawing on this First Temple imagery (which had been purged from the Second Temple by the time of Jesus, but was still remembered by many Jews). Israel’s “God Most High” (El elyon) is the utterly “other”, the transcendent “Father in Heaven” and source from whom all is; Jesus is God Incarnate, that is to say YHWH, the “I am who am for you”, the God we encounter in our history, active in our lives and our world, and through whom all that is came to be; and the Holy Spirit is the abiding and all-pervading presence of God with us, the only way we “know” God in the paradoxical Wisdom of “unknowing”; the divine matrix (the Latin word means “womb”) in which we live and move and have our being. The Trinity, at the inner core of all that is, in the secret chamber of the “Holy of Holies”, is revealed as God for, God from, and God with.
When we enter into that “inner chamber”, the sacred “storehouse” at the heart of creation, we find it both mysteriously “empty” and “filled-to-overflowing” with Mystery … Mystery that loves us into being.
“Go,” says Jesus, “into that inner room, and pray to your Father who is [there] in secret,” and who “sees in secret”.
The Greek word kryptō, which is here translated as “secret”, can also mean “hidden”, “concealed”, “covered” or even “inmost”. To God, who “sees in secret”, in a “hidden” way, nothing is secret or hidden or concealed. Here the innermost secrets are revealed. We enter this most inner and secret place only to find it utterly exposed and illumined by the One who dwells there—the One whom nothing can contain since he contains all that is. Indeed, he doesn’t just “contain” it; he brings it all into being by bringing it out of the closet where it languishes and dies, where it hides its true identity even from itself. Little wonder, then, the desert fathers spent so much energy counselling total disclosure of thoughts, the radical self-honesty that marks their spiritual practice and wisdom.
On the Day of Atonement, when Israel celebrated the liturgy of how God brings all things back into communion (“at-one-ment”), this is what happened: The high priest, dressed “like an angel” (in white priestly garments), with God’s name YHWH fastened to his forehead, entered into the inner chamber of the Temple, the Holy of Holies, while the people sang, “Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord”. He went through the “door” to the inner chamber, the Veil that represented the created universe, carrying the blood of the sacrificial “lamb of God” (not “for” God, but from God), the lamb that “was” YHWH. He then emerged — or rather God emerged (symbolically in the person of the high priest, bearing the divine Name) — sprinkling YHWH’s own blood, the symbol of God’s own life, of the Spirit of God, the Wisdom “who sits by his throne”, by which he “made all things”, and therefore now, in the Atonement, “makes all things anew”.
“But when you pray, go into your inner chamber, your sacred storehouse, your Holy of Holies, and shut the door, draw the Veil, put the whole world behind you, and pray to your Father who is in secret, who is unseeable and hidden and innermost; and your Father who sees in secret, whose sight sees all that is hidden and innermost, will reward you.” And the “reward” (the Greek word can also mean “fulfillment”) is the revelation of our being at-one with One who loves us into being, who draws us out of ourselves and our isolation into communion, at-one-ment.
Next time I want to take up this idea of putting the whole world behind us, drawing the Veil, and letting go of the world, of being liberated from our attachments.
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