THIS course will trace the history of Christian spiritual practices from their precursors in Judaism and ancient Mediterranean spirituality up to the end of the sixteenth-century.  Particular emphasis will be laid on contemporary methods of experiencing and teaching (especially in the parish setting) traditional Christian methods of prayer, meditation, and contemplation. The history, theory, and practice of the following disciplines will be studied: (1) Solitude and Community; (2) lectio divina; (3) psalmody; (4) liturgical prayer; (5) contemplative exegesis; (6) monologistic prayer (e.g. the Jesus Prayer and the rosary); (5) icons and images in prayer.

   The rich ethnic and cultural diversity of Christian spirituality will be highlighted through study of primary sources from the Jewish, Roman, Greek, Celtic, Anglo-European, Slavic, Middle-Eastern (Syriac), and Egyptian (Coptic) traditions, as well as by readings from key figures in the early modern period.  In order to profit from the cultural and ethnic diversity of the student body, students are encouraged to bring to classroom discussion the spiritual insights and practices of their own cultural traditions. During each class the contemporary usefulness of specific traditions of Christian prayer, meditation, and contemplation will be studied and discussed in light of assigned readings from primary sources and classroom practice of different spiritual disciplines.

THE student will be able to identify important persons, events, and schools of thought that influenced the development of Christian spiritual practices. (2) The student will be able to describe the interrelationships and distinctions between different spiritual practices, and to teach them in the parish setting. (3) The student will learn to make use of primary and secondary sources available in both printed and electronic formats, and will become familiar with appropriate reference works in Christian spirituality.

THIS course will consist of downloadable lectures with associated texts on webpages.  Weekly discussion forums will be based on assigned readings from primary and secondary sources.  Active participation in Moodle discussion forums is essential as it will serve as the sole basis for the final evaluation:

16 weekly Moodle discussion forums, each worth 6.25% of the final grade.

1) Louth, Andrew The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition from Plato to Pseudo-Dionysius, (Oxford University Press)

2) Congregation for Divine Worship, Directory on Popular Piety (Available on Course Website)

3) Louf, Andre, Teach us to Pray (Franciscan Herald Press, 1975).

 THESE will be available on the course website. 

Gabriel Bunge, Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition tr. Michael Miller, (Ignatius Press, March 2002) ISBN: 0898708370

Bouyer, Louis, ed., A History of Christian Spirituality, 3 vol. (Seabury, 1977),

Cross, F. L., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, (Oxford University Press).

Downey, Michael (ed.), The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, (Liturgical Press, 1993).

Evennett, H. Outram,  The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1968).

Funk, O.S.B., Mary Margaret, Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life, (Continuum, 2003)

McGinn, Bernard, Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century (World Spirituality, No 16) (Crossroad, 1987); ISBN: 0824508475.

McGinn, Bernard, Christian Spirituality : High Middle Ages and Reformation (World Spirituality, No 17) (Crossroad, 1988) ISBN: 0824507657.

McGrath, Alister E.,  Christian Spirituality (Blackwell, 1999).

Quasten, Johannes, Patrology (3vol.).

Ancient Christian Writers (Paulist Press); Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers (Eerdmans: download from Christian Classics Ethereal Library at <http://www.ccel.org>)

 LECTURES and Readings are on the course website.  

Behind the Christian understanding of “the contemplative life” stands the towering figure of Plato, whose philosophical system provided both the underlying concepts and the language that would ultimately be used to describe the experience of beholding The Divine.  In the first three lectures and texts we will discover Plato, the mystical theologian who longs for union with “The One” [God] and who believes that this union is both facilitated and anticipated by contemplation: that is, by seeing through and beyond superficial appearances into the deeper realities and truths hidden within ordinary circumstances and objects. We will then see how Cicero retold Plato’s myth for the Latin-speaking world in his “Dream of Scipio”, creating a classic that would be read, until relatively recently, by nearly every educated person in the Christian West.

The terms kataphatic (the “way of affirmation”) and apophatic (the “way of denial”) were first introduced in the sixth century; but it is only in modern times that they have become widely-used by Christian spiritual theologians to distinguish two contrasting poles of theology and spirituality. We will first review their meaning and application, then review biblical texts, often cited by Christian spiritual authors, that illustrate both spiritual ascent into the “vision of God” and the kataphatic and apophatic “ways. The story of the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity will help us understand how spiritual vision was popularly associated with the holiness and intercessory power of the seer. Finally, Saints Antony, Evagrius, and Benedict will afford models of spiritual vision that expands or widens the heart of the seer.

The history of early Christian monasticism will be reviewed. Important sources from the early monastic tradition will be studied from perspective of the interrelationship between anchorites and cenobites: that is, the necessity for both solitary life and ongoing experience of community. The Life of Antony is rightly regarded as one of the most influential Christian spiritual texts ever written.  We will note carefully the spiritual “program” Antony is said to have followed as an early model of spiritual formation. We continue our study of the interrelationship between anchorites and cenobites with: (1) selections from the Apophthegmata (Sayings) of the Desert Mothers and Fathers; (2) selections from the rules of Basil and Benedict; (3) and articles on the eremitical (hermit) traditions in the Christian East and West.

Our study of the history and role of lectio divina as a Christian spiritual practice will begin with an introduction to the theory, key terminology, and biblical origins of practices related to biblical meditation and prayer. A practical introduction to lectio divina will describe the different aspects and traditional terminology of this practice. The practice of so-called “group lectio divina” has become popular and widely-practiced in recent years.  We will examine this approach, noting both the advantages and limitations it imposes. We will next employ our understanding of this practice as a key that will help unlock several ancient texts.  Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher and contemporary of Jesus, describes methods of meditating and praying the scriptures that were employed by Jewish monks and nuns in Egypt and Israel during the early years of the first century. Next, two medieval sources will highlight contrasting but related approaches to lectio divina: Guigo the Carthusian will depict the use of this practice in the monasteries; Hugh of St. Victor will suggest how it was applied in the more academic setting of the nascent universities of Western Europe. Finally a chapter on  “Sacred Learning” from Fr. Jean Leclercq’s magisterial study of monastic culture will help consolidate what we have learned and anticipate what we will study in section seven of this course, on the interrelationship between lectio divina and contemplative exegesis (the mystical interpretation of Sacred Scripture).

We begin with a discussion of psalmody and hymnody in the New Testament and the early church. Next we will study the developing enthusiasm for psalmody characteristic of the early monastic movement, and attested both in the Apophthegmata and in Athanasius’ writings. John Cassian offers one of the clearest descriptions of the practice and spirituality of monastic psalmody, followed by prayer, in late fourth-century Egypt. Evagrius Ponticus offers a spiritual understanding of the intertwining rhythm of psalmody of prayer, defining the goal and practice of each pole: Basil the Great, Evagrius’ teacher and spiritual master, provides practical recommendations for those who pray the psalms together in community. In Gregory of Nyssa we find a liturgical spirituality that fuses psalmody together with traditions of spiritual ascent we glimpsed in Plato and Cicero. Chapters Nineteen and Twenty of Benedict’s Rule provide a pattern for the developing western approach to psalmody, and summarize the tradition we have studied thus far. Our study of early monastic psalmody and prayer concludes with a summary of this tradition by Fr. Gabriel Bunge and a modern commentary on the Psalms by Pope John Paul II

Here we will apply what we have learned concerning the rhythms of psalmody and prayer to the broader context of Christian worship.  We will discover that in the early Church and in the monastic tradition, a principal place and source of contemplative prayer is the celebration of the liturgy. Early Christian mystagogy (the spiritual interpretation of ritual gestures, liturgical actions and prayers) is introduced in an ancient and famous series of homilies intended for Christian catechumens. One of the greatest and most influential Christian mystical theologians was Dionysius the Areopagite, who presents the liturgy not only as a source of contemplative wisdom and vision, but also as a means of theosis - divinization. He also wrote the most influential text on apophatic theology, The Mystical Theology.  The notion that liturgical prayer transforms the one who participates in the liturgy is developed further by the monk-bishop, Maximos Confessor.  We will then note: (1) the intermingling of music and visual arts extolled by the medieval promoter of gothic architecture, the Benedictine Abbot Suger of St. Denys in Paris; (2) visual aids to liturgical prayer reached a highpoint in medieval books of hours; (3) The concept of liturgical prayer as an act of inward and outward-directed consecration was stressed in the doctrine of the Royal Priesthood of the faithful at Vatican II.

We will turn again to the perennial Christian preoccupation with sacred scripture, but now with an increased sensitivity to the rhythms of silence and speech, spiritual activity and receptivity, that have traditionally undergirded the reverent study of Sacred Text in Christian communities.  We will note in particular how the study and interpretation of the Bible came to be regarded as a kind of laboratory in which the reader learned how to discern the presence and purposes of God in human history, and thus also in each human soul.  First with assistance from Fr. Jean Leclercq we will familiarize ourselves with the principal characteristics of “contemplative exegesis”. Next we will observe the origins and growth of this tradition in texts from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Evagrius Ponticus, Cassian , Eucherius, Peter Chrysologus, Bede, and an anonymous Homily for Holy Saturday. 

The origins of the Christian tradition of monologistic (short-phrase) prayer can be found in the Scriptures and early Christian reflection on the command to pray without ceasing. We will also note in passing several defining characteristics of the later Jesus Prayer tradition, that will help us identify the remote origins of this practice. Before studying the mysteries of eastern hesychastic prayer it will be helpful to remind ourselves of a developing parallel monologistic prayer-form in the Christian West: namely, the rosary: it arose, as we shall see, out of the practice of psalmody and the growing conviction that those unfamiliar with the psalms ought to be permitted to substitute more easily-memorized, simple prayers. The most knowledgeable and experienced living author on the subject of the Jesus Prayer and the Hesychastic tradition is Bishop Kallistos Ware.  The four articles we will study contain the substance of his lectures on this subject at Oxford, and are unparalleled in their clarity and depth.  .  Thomas Spidlik’s articles on the Jesus Prayer describe the physical technique of the hesychasts and the principles according to which recitation of the Jesus Prayer may in some circumstances (among Eastern Christians) be substituted for specific hours of the Divine Office. Against the background of the traditions we have studied it is possible to assess two modern variants of traditional Christian monologistic prayer: “Centering Prayer” and the “Christian Meditation” of John Main.

The last council to be fully acknowledged in both the Christian East and West is the Second Council of Nicæa, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which met just after the patristic era (as it is usually defined) in 787.  This council reflects a strange and destructive period of iconoclasm, during which an entire epoch of Christian art was almost completely destroyed – by zealous Christians. First we will survey Christian imagery and iconography in the centuries that preceded the iconoclastic controversy, tracing the legend of the Icon “not made by human hands” and reviewing a summary of the spirituality of icons.  Next we will note the painful period of the iconoclastic controversy and the text of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.  Finally, we will allow the patristic era to reach forward into the middle ages and beyond by noting features of Christian iconography both characteristic of the Christian East and common to East and West.