St. Peter Damian's Teachings On Spirituality

The Camaldolese hermits of Monte Corona in Bloomingdale, Ohio, are to be commended for making available to readers a number of fine works explaining the spirituality of the hermit monks who are the heirs of St. Romuald (952-1027), the founder of Congregation of Monk-Hermits of Camaldoli known as the Camaldolese, the oldest of the eremitical orders in the Western Church.

St. Romuald followed the asceticism of the ancient Desert Fathers and his life would be written by another ascetic and spiritual reformer, St. Peter Damian (1007- 1072), who described St. Romuald as seeking to make the whole world a hermitage.

St. Peter Damian's own attraction to the spiritual life of Christian perfection was influenced by St. Romuald's teaching on silence, contemplation, and mortification of the senses. St. Peter Damian would become one of the leaders of the 11th-century Gregorian religious reform, counseling Popes and bishops and countering the worldliness and moral laxity disfiguring the life of the Church in that turbulent period.

He himself became the founder of a reformed congregation of Benedictines, the Congregation of Fonte Avellina in Umbria, Italy, which would include both hermits and cenobites.

Fr. Owen Blum's excellent volume on St. Peter Damian's spiritual teaching was written for his doctoral dissertation and was originally published in 1947 by the Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval History. In later years, Fr. Blum would also translate and edit the six volumes of St. Peter Damian’s letters, involving correspondence with leading figures of the 11th century that give the reader remarkable insights into the philosophical, theological, and spiritual thought of a doctor of the Church. (They appear in the series "The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation" published by The Catholic University of America Press.)

In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI noted in a letter to the Camaldolese superior of the Monastery of San Gregorio al Celio:

"In his life, St. Peter Damian was proof of a successful synthesis of hermitic and pastoral activity. As a hermit, he embodied that Gospel radicalism and unswerving love for Christ, so well expressed in the Rule of St. Benedict: 'Prefer nothing, absolutely nothing, to the love of Christ'...

"Above all, he was a hermit, indeed the last theoretician of the hermitic life in the Latin Church exactly at the time of the East- West schism. In his interesting work entitled "The Life of Blessed Romuald", he left us one of the most significant fruits of the monastic experience of the undivided Church. For him, the hermitic life was a strong call to rally all Christians to the primacy of Christ and His lordship."

Interestingly, among St. Peter Damian's works was an important tract on the "Procession of the Holy Spirit", which was featured in my book "Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism" (1992), receiving there its first English translation. In this letter (91) directed to the patriarch of Constantinople, Constantine Lichoudes — who had succeeded the Patriarch Michael Cerularius, noted for the notorious events of 1054 — St. Peter Damian (then cardinal-bishop of Ostia) strongly defended the Roman Pontiff's primacy of universal authority in the Church. He further upheld Catholic teaching on the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.

After a fine biographical sketch of the saint, Fr. Blum gives an account of the number, content, and style of the saint's works, which included the remarkable "Liber Gomorrhianus", which denounced the appalling sexual immorality of clerics and religious of the period and which went largely uncorrected.

As Fr. Blum relates, "Impurity was the vice most fiercely attacked in Damian's writings... He meant his religious to be an example in an age when celibacy was so widely neglected." No class of men, excepting those of his own religious, exercised more his concern and care than priests. In four chapters, Fr. Blum details the teaching of the saint on what conversion to Christ means, namely, the pursuit of perfection involving a spiritual warfare against sin and the forces of evil directed at destroying the Church.

Among the steps necessary for spiritual progress for both religious and laity was a measure of asceticism.

"Contrition, compunction, and atonement for past offenses were the dominant ideas about which Damian built the first phases of the religious life. They were necessary functions in effecting that purity of spirit which intimate union with God demands."

The saint did not ignore the role of grace as an essential part of the spiritual life. As Fr. Blum sums up St. Peter Damian's teaching,

"Without it, the soul can in no way arrive at the knowledge of God, nor understand in the least the things of God. It presupposes, moreover, a heart emptied of all carnal desires, for where the spirit of the world has entered, there the Spirit of God can have no part."

To the question if one can truly "know God," the saint replied that he certainly "knows God" who observes His Commandments.

He reminded his most fervent disciples: "It is truly great to die for Christ, but not less noble to live for Him."

The saint's counsels regarding prayer, the practice of the virtues, penance, and seeking perfection in this world do not apply merely to hermits and monks. It would be a mistake to think that the perennial principles of the spiritual life as lived in the Camaldolese tradition do not have application to the lay state.

As Fr. Blum observed:

"Damian’s reforming spirit ranged over the whole field of Christian society. It took notice of the morals of Popes, cardinals, and bishops; busied itself particularly with refining the quality of sacerdotal life in his day; and reached out even into the lay state, to men and women in every station of feudal life in the 11th century...

"The fact nevertheless remains that, while the majority of Peter Damian’s spiritual tenets were set down exclusively to guide men in the monastic life, the core of his doctrine is generally applicable to all who seek Christian perfection in a life proper to their chosen vocation."

The reader will not fail to be edified by the rich spiritual content found in Fr. Blum's volume setting forth a doctor of the Church's teaching on compunction, on the "gift of tears," on contemplation which he himself was granted to a high degree, on devotion to the Blessed Virgin and prayer for the departed souls, and on his love for the Passion of Christ expressed in the form of veneration of the Holy Cross.

On September 9, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI gave a special catechesis on St. Peter Damian, noting that:

"it is a great grace that the Lord should have raised up in the life of the Church a figure as exuberant, rich, and complex as St. Peter Damian... He made monastic life an eloquent testimony of God's primacy and an appeal to all to walk toward holiness, free from any compromise with evil... He gave all his spiritual and physical energies to Christ and to the Church, but always remained, as he liked to describe himself, Peter, the lowliest servant of the monks."

 

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