The Accomplished Beginner

            The accomplished beginner—a paradox that would make the Prince of Paradox himself, G.K. Chesterton, proud. Yet, this concept is as old as Christianity. Do we ever really achieve union with God in this life? What happens as we grow in our spiritual life? In prayer? In holiness? Can we ever say: “alas! I have made it. Now I am in union with God!”? One of the most forgotten and overlooked spiritual theologians, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 395), has much to say on the topic. He makes extensive use of the concept of the accomplished beginner in his Commentary on the Song of Songs. At the same time, the accomplished beginner became encoded into the very DNA of monastic spirituality and therefore Christian spirituality itself even until our day (watch for my forthcoming article on monastic spirituality as the foundation of all Christian spirituality).
            Gregory begins by demonstrating the common, Christian, ascetical belief in two distinct realms: the material and the spiritual. In the beginning, the sensible world pointed to God quite clearly. As a result of original sin, however, our reason and capacity to apprehend the immaterial is wounded, and we must strive to look beyond the sensible. Given the state in which we have found ourselves, Gregory advocates for a spirituality of ascent—a spirituality that moves from the realm of the material and finite towards God who is completely immaterial and infinite. This ascent is continuous. Such an ascent is necessary is because we all seek union with God, and this is only achieved through grace and virtue. Gregory writes that “in the case of virtue we have learned from the Apostle (St. Paul) that its one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit.”[1] As a result, if there is no limit, no boundary, then completion is impossible. There is no finish line to cross. Gregory adds: “I said that it is also impossible for those who pursue the life of virtue to attain perfection.”[2] As a necessary conclusion, therefore, he writes: “Since, then, it has not been demonstrated that there is any limit to virtue except evil, and since the Divine does not admit of an opposite, we hold the divine nature to be unlimited and infinite. Certainly, whoever pursues true virtue participates in nothing other than God, because he is himself absolute virtue.”[3]
            Thus, our spiritual life is about progress in virtue and, ultimately, progressive participation in the Divine. This idea is known as “the doctrine of epektasis, of continual progress in perfection, with which Gregory is particularly associated.”[4] John Rist sums up these two complementary doctrines of Gregory by writing that “the finite can never wholly, but always, as it were, progressively, meet, let alone grasp the infinite. Thus, it would seem that Gregory’s theories of the infinity of God the creator and of ‘participation’ in him as epektasis are two sides of the same coin. Epektasis is eros[passionate love] without frustration as the lover is more and more fully blended with the infinite.”[5] Gregory explicates his two, unique doctrines both in The Life of Moses and within In Cantica Canticorum.
            Gregory composed The Life of Moses as an aid for growth in the spiritual life because of Moses’ eminent example of ascent to God.[6] The entire work recounts the historical, literal events of Moses’ life and then provides a spiritual interpretation of those events. In these narrative interpretations, Gregory sees a perfect example of the spirituality of ascent. For example, Gregory interprets Moses’ time on Mount Sinai as teaching “by the things he did that the one who is going to associate intimately with God must go beyond all that is visible and (lifting up his own mind, as to a mountaintop, to the invisible and incomprehensible) believe that the divine is there where the understanding does not reach.”[7] Similarly, when describing how Moses removed his sandals before the burning bush, Gregory writes that “in the same way that Moses on that occasion attained to this knowledge, so now does everyone who, like him, divests himself of the earthly covering and looks to the light shining from the bramble bush.”[8] Again: “in the contemplation of the intelligible we surpass the knowledge which originates with the senses…He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion.”[9]
            It is clear that Gregory’s idea of ascent is not physical but metaphorical. We ascend from the material realm to the immaterial (as described in the stories of Moses) and the ascent is unending. The “Canticle of Canticles” also demonstrates this spirituality of ascent. Gregory warns that reading the “Canticle of Canticles” as an unmortified man would be harmful because of its erotic content. The intense imagery is necessary, however, because through it “we learn that it is necessary for the soul, fixing itself steadily on the inaccessible beauty (emphasis added) of the divine nature, to love that beauty as much as the body has a bent for what is akin to it and to turn passion into impassibility.”[10] Just like the bride who is drawn uncontrollably and passionately towards her bride, the soul will search unceasingly for God but never completely find and rest in Him. She will search high and low, catch glimpses of him, remain with him temporarily, but never rest in him. The search is always continuous and never fully satiated because the soul is “made to desire and not to abandon the transcendent height by the things already attained, it makes its way upward without ceasing, ever through its prior accomplishments renewing its intensity for the flight.”[11]
            Moses himself “continually climbed to the step above and never ceased to rise higher, because he always found a step higher than the one he had attained.”[12] God, for his part, “assented to the fulfillment of [Moses’] desire, but did not promise any cessation or satiety of the desire…since the true sight of God consists in this, that the one who looks up to God never ceases in that desire…Thus, what Moses yearned for is satisfied by the very things which leave his desire unsatisfied (emphasis added).”[13] Rather than be discouraged, however, a soul sincerely seeking virtue is stirred forward with ever increasing zeal. The more we ascend, the further away God feels, and the more motivated we become to continue the pursuit.
            Every element of Gregory’s spirituality of ascent is fundamental for monastic spirituality. In his book The Meaning of Monastic Life, Louis Bouyer’s opening line is the titular question: “What is the meaning of monastic life?” He suggests several common replies and explains why they are inadequate. Finally, he presents the true answer to the question. Monastic life is a search: “The search, the true search, in which the whole of one’s being is engaged, not for some thing but for some One: the search for God—that is the beginning and end of monasticism.”[14] He goes on to explain that the monastic life is a response to a call, a word, the Word. The Word draws the soul and “calls for a response, which takes the form of a request to hear the call repeated, to hear it more clearly, never more to fail to hear it, in order to listen and respond to it continually.”[15] Then, much like Gregory, Bouyer immediately turns to the “Canticle of Canticles” to demonstrate this fundamental principle:

"The Canticle of Canticles is the poem and drama of this call and response. The voice of the beloved has pierced the night. And this voice can now never be forgotten. The spouse can no longer think of anything else. The memory of it is delightful and yet unbearable…Unbearable because, with this memory in the heart, there is now no way of finding rest again…For a moment the beloved was quite close. Nothing could make his presence doubtful to her who has been awakened at his voice. In memory she can hear this voice unceasingly. But she wants to hear it again, no longer merely in memory: to hear it again now, and always. She wants to find again the presence which has been offered to her and then withdrawn, precisely because the word was a call."[16] 

Not surprisingly, Bouyer directly quotes Gregory of Nyssa: “Here, we are touching on the fundamental theme in the oldest systematic form of monastic spirituality, such as can be found in St. Gregory of Nyssa... ‘to find God is to seek him unceasingly. Here, indeed, to seek is not one thing and to find another. The reward of the search is to go on searching. The soul’s desire is fulfilled by the very fact of its remaining unsatisfied, for really to see God is never to have had one’s fill of desiring him.’”[17]
            For this reason, St. Benedict codified the theology of ascent into the very structure of monastic life. Monks and nuns do not explicitly profess a vow of poverty or chastity. Rather, these two vows are contained within the more expansive vow of conversio morum—conversion of manners.[18] Monks and nuns vow a continuous, never-ending conversion of life—a continuous search for God and growth in virtue—just like Gregory teaches. Because the most characteristic dimension of monastic life is this continuous search for God in the conversion of manners, “the formal and determinant element [of a vocation] is the firm resolve to seek God and perfection…When all is said, this is the essential element and often the only one that matters.”[19]
            The monastic life, according to Bouyer, is not a unique calling extended to just a few chosen souls. Rather, “the vocation of the monk is, but is no more than, the vocation of the baptized man. But it is the vocation of the baptized man carried, I would say, to the farthest limits of its irresistible demands.”[20] There is not room here to expand much further but suffice it to say that Bouyer’s assertion of the universality and non-extraordinary nature of the monastic calling is found in Aquinas,[21] Delatte,[22] and many others (see my forthcoming article on monastic spirituality as the foundation of all Christian spirituality). St. Benedict calls his monasteries a Dominici schola servitii—a school of the Lord’s service.[23] This school is open to anyone who seeks God, and Paul Delatte, OSB teaches that this school is “where one learns to serve Him, where one is trained without cessation, in a novitiate which will last the whole of life.”[24] Once again, this is an idea found in Gregory’s teaching, and Martin Laird summarizes it well in light of Gregory’s In Cantica Canticorum: “As mature and seasoned in the spiritual life as the bride undoubtedly is, she always feels as though she is just a beginner.”[25] Again, when discussing the very advanced soul, he writes: “even though the bride enjoys the fullness of spiritual perfection, she always feels as though she is just at the beginning of her journey into God. This paradox of the accomplished beginner serves Gregory’s conviction that the spiritual life is always new. The beginner’s mind characterizes one who is mature in the spiritual life (emphasis added).”[26]
            In conclusion, humanity’s search for perfection is ultimately about growth in our participation in God. We participate in the Divine through virtue which has no limits, and therefore, can never be fully achieved. According to Gregory of Nyssa, our search for perfection is a constant, unending process of ascent from the sensible to the immaterial Divinity. We constantly seek God just like the bride in the “Canticle of Canticles” and, like her, never rest in our beloved. Rather than becoming dismayed, however, the fulfillment of the soul’s search is, in a very real sense, the constant search itself. We grow as we search and increase in fulfillment through our lack of satiation.
The spirituality of ascent found in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa has been incorporated into the very fiber of monastic spirituality. Monastic life has always been concerned with seeking God and the continuous conversion of life. Further, a true monastic views oneself as always beginning anew just like Gregory’s description of the bride. But, monastic spirituality is not its own, as it were. The spirituality of monastic life is truly the spirituality of the universal Church. It is simply the spirituality of Christianity taken to the furthest possible extreme. For this reason, if so many Saints have been formed in the monastic spirituality of ascent derived from St. Gregory of Nyssa, then there is needed today more than ever a renewed study of the writings of St. Gregory among everyday Christians.

Let us seek God continuously! Let us never tire in our ascent! Let us, even as we develop and mature in our spiritual life and union with God, always feel ourselves to be just starting over—forever in need of God’s grace and assistance. Let us cast off any trappings of pride or success and strive, rather, to be an accomplished beginner.

[1] Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 30.
[2] Gregory, Life of Moses, 31.
[3] Gregory, Life of Moses, 31.
[4] John Rist, “On the Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa,” Hermathena, 169, (Winter 2000): 143.
[5] Rist, 144.
[6] Gregory, Life of Moses, 2.
[7] Gregory, Life of Moses, 43.
[8] Gregory, Life of Moses, 60.
[9] Gregory, Life of Moses, 93.
[10] Gregory, In Cantica Canticorum, hom. 1, 19-21.
[11] Gregory, Life of Moses, 113.
[12] Gregory, The Life of Moses, 114. 
[13] Gregory, The Life of Moses, 115.
[14] Louis Bouyer, The Meaning of Monastic Life, (New York: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1950), 8.
[15] Bouyer, 8.
[16] Bouyer, 9.
[17] Bouyer, 12-13, quoting In Cantica Canticorum, Hom. V, P. G., t. 44, col. 876 BC.
[18] Rule of St. Benedict, ch. Xxxiii.
[19] Paul Delatte, Commentary on the The Rule of St. Benedict, (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne Limited, 1921), 369-370.
[20] Bouyer, ix.
[21] Summa Theologiae, II-II, 189.
[22] Delatte, 367
[23] The Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.
[24] Bouyer, 19.
[25] Martin Laird, “The Fountain of His Lips: Desire and Divine Union in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, Spiritus 7, (2007): 40.
[26] Laird, 48.