John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO writes that Bernard of Clairvaux describes the purpose of monastic life, indeed of all human living, as being essentially a process of profound change in the quality of one’s love until it attains to its perfection. Bernard views our human condition as engaged in a dynamic transformation of what is deepest in the person.. The work of the spiritual life is the radical remaking of the whole person. Spiritual progress is not simply a question of learning new habits, of adapting to a different lifestyle, of development new skills. It is a matter of a new creation, one that affects the self at its highest point, of refashioning its deepest being and of redirecting its energies as they arise from it most hidden center.
What a monastic strives for is what all Christians are called to. The monastic has the added help of time, place and space. Thomas Merton wrote What is called the contemplative life is really a life arranged in such a way that a person can more easily and more simply and more naturally live in an awareness of direct dependence on God—almost with the sense of realizing consciously, at every moment, how much we depend on Him; and receive from Him directly everything that comes to us as a pure gift; and experience, taste in our hears, the love of God in this gift.
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