(According to P. Keese Waaijman, O.Carm.)
2. Element:1 Basic Exercises2 (chapters 10–17)
John Cassian uses the term 'bodily exercises' and mentions, for example, fasting, remaining in one's cell, long readings from Scripture, or long prayers. By practicing these means of spiritual life, we acquire, and this process aims at achieving the working goal (Gr. skopos, see above), which is the purity of heart. This acquisition of means then, along with the purity of heart, forms the foundation for the cultivation of virtues. (These basic exercises can be omitted without harm to spiritual life for a time; they have relative value, but one cannot give up on the exercise of virtues, especially the 'Divine equipment' of faith, hope, and love).3 In the chapters of our rule that follow, several such exercises are mentioned: remaining in the cell, prayer, vigilance, and contemplation of Scripture (chap. 10), recitation of the psalms (chap. 11), fasting (chap. 16), and abstinence from meat (chap. 17). But from this perspective, we can also look at chapters 12 to 15: they represent basic exercises in terms of community life (sharing property, morning Eucharist, community gatherings on Sundays or holidays).
It can also be said that these chapters continue the enumeration of the community's basic equipment: guidelines for organizing the day (14), week (15), and year (16–17). And that the structure of the community (as mentioned earlier) is further defined by sharing property (12) and establishing the oratory (14).
Remaining in the Cell (chap. 10–11)
The important word here is to remain. The art of remaining is the fundamental exercise of the hermit. Thus, we appropriate our cell, internalize it (not just possess it). This has two aspects: passive and active. The passive aspect closely relates to the cell as a dwelling and means allowing the cell to act on us, and therefore remaining in it or staying nearby. We have already spoken about this: the cell is hospitable to me even before I am hospitable. In it, God receives me. It is necessary to accept this benevolence – by remaining in the cell.
As for the active aspect, it is interesting that remaining in the cell is mentioned in the rule parallel to other activities: "If the brother is not otherwise legitimately occupied". The Latin verb occupare means "to be occupied", to be engaged, employed – with something. It actually implies focusing. At another place in the Rule, it states: "so that the devil may find you always engaged". Remaining in the cell and doing some other legitimate activity seem to stand in opposition, but essentially they are the same: our rule encourages us to experience every activity as "our cell". I am to enter it as a guest, dwell in it, and experience receiving from God within it. And "to remain in the cell" means to occupy one’s inner self, to practice concentration. In chapter 20, such occupation is explicitly work: "Do some work, so that the devil may find you always engaged." The opposite of "remaining in the cell" is therefore not another activity outside but idleness, inactivity, inner disengagement from something. Whereas remaining in the cell transforms our inner self.
Remaining in the cell is a process whose essence is: to become "naked" before God (I lose social control; what others imagine about me, what they expect from me; I lose the type, identity that I receive from others). It is a dark and painful process, the emptying of my house. The tightness of the cell, which is meant to transform and collect me, easily frightens me. The only remedy for this is – a constant effort to remain simple, learning to calm the inner person, mastering the storms of thoughts. The transformation of my inner self through persistent effort to "be engaged" leads to the purity of heart. The transformed inner self must be purified by discernment, which recognizes and identifies what truly leads us to life.
“Thus a person should procure a living in the manner of the apostles and like a skillful fisherman, attentively and without movement, catch in the quiet depths of his peaceful heart the schools of passing thoughts. Like from a overhanging rock, searching into the depths, and with keen discernment determine which of them to draw to himself with the hook and conversely which to despise and reject as bad and harmful fish.”4
Therefore, remaining in the cell enables one to recognize the motions in our heart and to decide for that which is for our salvation. Thus, the dwelling in the cell becomes remaining in the Messiah, and thus the meaning of every form of consecrated life is fulfilled (cf. exordium).
Contemplation of the Lord's Law, Prayer, and Vigilance (chap. 10)
The content of remaining in the cell is: "to meditate day and night on the law (of the Lord) (Ps 1,2) and to be vigilant in prayers". This quotation is connected with lectio divina, the classic reading of Scripture combined with prayer. It is usually divided into four steps: reading (lectio), meditation (meditatio), prayer (oratio; desire is central here), contemplation (contemplatio; it practically intertwines with the previous one). In this context, the first two steps are "exercises", the other two are God's gift, equipment, which we can only receive.
Scripture is also something like a cell; we can enter it and remain in it. At the same time, it is a path, a discovery, and a space in which the process of our transformation takes place. When we nourish our spirit with the word of Scripture, all the effort of our will focuses on God (the will as the "seat" of love draws us towards the object of our desire). And thus, there wells up in us a spring of living water.
Reading Scripture, prayer, vigilance, and recitation of the psalms not only constitute the content of what we do in the cell but they also shape and form our cell.
Scripture was read aloud, even privately in the cell. In such reading, our breath, voice, hearing participates, and thus words, sentences, and ways of speaking can penetrate into our body, our affectivity, memories, reason, and will. Already the Jews learned to recite the Torah by heart so that they could be more penetrated by it. The Fathers of the desert strived: "to zealously dedicate themselves to holy reading, until continual meditation penetrates the spirit and transforms it in its own likeness.”5 The purpose of reading Scripture is the transformation of our inner self. Our spirit must be filled with Scripture, then it is capable of receiving God.
“Therefore, we must engrave the texts of Holy Scripture precisely into our memory and constantly go through them in our spirit; for this uninterrupted meditation will bring us dual fruit. The first is that the spirit focused on reading and absorbing the texts cannot be captured by bad thoughts. The second is that what we have often repeated to imprint it in our memory, but what we could not understand at that moment due to the occupations of the spirit (being engaged with something else), then when we recall it again at the moment when no activity or visible things disturb us, in the night’s silence or contemplation, we see more clearly, so that the insight into the most hidden meanings that we were unable to catch even with a fleeting perception when we were awake opens up to us in peace or almost in a stupor of sleep.”6
Another form of exercise is the repetition of learned prayers – psalms, the Lord's Prayer, individual verses from Scripture. Such short prayers: "God, please rescue me, Lord, hasten to my aid!” (Ps 70,2) were particularly popular among the fathers of the desert. Their brevity suits every situation; through repetition, such a prayer deepens, and its simplicity dispels distraction. Thus, this prayer purifies our inner self. And no one needs to teach us this complicatedly; we just need to start practicing it. The effort for prayer complements the exercise in virtues. Prayer gives virtues a direction towards God; the effort for virtue purifies prayer.
The directive that brothers "be vigilant in prayers" is taken from 1 Peter 4:7.7 The Christian life, according to the apostle, unfolds in the expectation of Christ's coming. Sobriety and vigilance are part of a broader acquisition of virtues: to love one another (v. 8), to be hospitable without complaint (v. 9), to help one another (v. 10), to lead a life different from paganism (vv. 1–6). This is one framework within which vigilance must be understood.
John Cassian then writes: "Three things stabilize a wandering mind: vigilance, meditation, and prayer. Persistent zeal in them grants the soul firmness and stability.”8 In this view, vigilance serves as a tool for the stability of the mind. It entails sober use of sleep, by which time for prayer is allotted. The goal here is also the purification of the heart.
Recitation of the Psalms (chap. 11)
The chapter on the recitation of the psalms specifies how to exercise in prayer. It is good to notice here the differences between the Albertian and Innocentian formulations of the Rule.
Albert's Rule prescribes the reading of psalms, i.e., the private recitation of the psalms (as they appear in the psalter) in the cell, done aloud. The word to read suggests lectio divina. The psalms are suitable for transitioning between meditation and prayer, alternating between er-form (narration in the third person) and ich-form (statements in the first person). Thus, the psalms lead into personal silent prayer. To recite the psalms meant to enter into the "space," which is prayer. That it was indeed a private recitation is evident from the fact that the Rule links the recitation of the psalms to remaining in the cell, not to communal prayer (chap. 14).
In Innocent's Rule, the criterion is not whether the brother can read but refers to those who "know how to pray with the clergy". A greater number of brothers could "pray with clergy" than could read, because to participate in the canonical hours, it sufficed that the brothers knew the psalms by heart. From individual prayer of the psalms in the cells, it becomes a communal exercise. This change in the text of the Rule obligated all brothers to participate in the prayer equally. All brothers were to participate in the public liturgy of the local church (officia, as will be discussed shortly) together with the local clergy. The clergy mentioned in the Rule originally referred to those from outside their own community, that is, in a parish or capitular church, as the Carmelites themselves were not clergy. And Innocent also explicitly states that the brothers pray canonical hours, that is, officium, or – in the youngest expression used today – the daily prayer of the church. Hermits on Carmel as laypersons had no obligation to pray the canonical hours. However, in mendicant orders, officium was firmly established and had the same function as administering sacraments and preaching, namely: to stand before God in service to God's people. It was assigned the same importance as serving Mass, preaching, and hearing confessions.
Recitation of the Lord's Prayer
The prescription to pray the Lord's Prayer at set hours so many times is literally identical in both Albertian and Innocentian formulations of the Rule. Nevertheless, it applies each time to a different group of brothers: to those under Albert who cannot read the psalms, and under Innocent to those who cannot participate in communal prayer of the canonical hours.
The Lord's Prayer served the same function as the psalms; it represents the psalter of all psalms, containing everything. The prayer of various counts of the Lord's Prayer was a common substitute for reciting the hours in many religious communities. This provision in the Rule should not be understood as an exception; exceptions are indicated in its text by a different phrase (Latin nisi). Much rather, it is a supplementary provision to the preceding instruction: the recitation of the Lord's Prayer stands on the same level as the psalter or canonical hours, because both were firmly established. In both cases, it is a "external" prayer – in which the body is engaged (Latin dicere means to say, thus aloud). The recitation of the Lord's Prayer, like the previously mentioned prayer of the psalm verses, is a physical exercise through which we acquire the basic posture of prayer. This is then applied during the recitation of psalms or hours. In fact, praying the Lord's Prayer had the advantage over praying the psalms: the thoughts did not wander from one psalm to another, one place in Scripture did not immediately evoke another in the mind, as sometimes happens. The Lord's Prayer is the most basic exercise when it comes to prayer. It is not about form but about the function of prayer: we learn to "dwell" in prayer like in a cell, to breathe in it like in Scripture. To acquire the prayer so that the spirit of prayer takes hold of us.
