Ascetic Enjoyment

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 If I have, in my former posts, given the impression that asceticism is of a lesser value, I sincerely apologize. Much of the world's beauty would indeed be eclipsed without ascetic spirituality. The basic rule is the word of the Lord: "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (Jn 20:25)

As Thomas Merton put it, hope is the secret of an ascetic life. Hope withholds our own judgment and our own will from us, and eventually abandons the world we live in. The reason for that is not, Merton stresses, that we or the world were bad, but rather that in our present state of mind we can not get an advantage of the best in the world. Furthermore, Merton claims that we enjoy all the creatures in hope. To employ the Augustinean uti-frui - pattern, Merton says that we do not enjoy creatures for themselves, but them as they are in Christ, full of promise. God has promised us a new heaven and a new earth. 

I can not help that this uti-frui -pattern evokes an idea of "taking advantage" in the sinister sense of the word, as if creatures were merely of an instrumental value. Similarly, I am allergic to the kind of evangelization where people are treated solely as objects of proselytizing. That approach is hardly in accordance with the intrinsic value of all human persons.  However, Merton's point of view is nothing of the kind. He states that the goodness of all beings testifies the goodness of God, and the goodness of God is a guarantee that He faithfully keeps his promises. Therefore we do not look beyond the creatures or treat them as vehicles to something higher. Rather, we see them genuinely as they are. This view issues from the ascetic withdrawal of the selfish enjoyment.  Sin is a result from the fact that humans do not know God, or, to be precise, a result from ingratitude. 

"Gratitude is that a human recognizes God's love in everything that He has given us - and He has given us all. Therefore gratitude takes nothing for granted."

Master Eckhart introduces the ascetic enjoyment as follows :

"So, if you would seek and find perfect joy and comfort in God, see to it that you are free of all creatures and of all comfort from creatures; for assuredly, as long as you are or can be comforted by creatures, you will never find true comfort. But when nothing can comfort you but God, then God will comfort you, and with Him and in Him all that is bliss (allez, daz wunne ist). While what is not God comforts you, you will have no comfort here or hereafter, but when creatures give you no comfort and you have no taste for them, then you will find comfort both here and hereafter." 

Affirmation occurs through negation. Without God, nothing comforts you, be it as great or beautiful as it may. In God, everything brings joy to you. God is not an opposite or alternative object of enjoyment compared to creatures. In Eckhart's view, to be comforted by God is the very entrance to the perfect aesthetic enjoyment. God wants us to find pleasure (wunne) in the Creation, as He himself does. Nonetheless, we should know that all creatures, including us, are finite and incomplete. The eternal comfort is nowhere else than in God. But when we find everything in their supreme source of being - God - we find the comfort inherent in them. Then there is nothing that would not satisfy us.


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