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The crisis that monasticism is passing through almost everywhere could suggest the idea that an historic cycle has just come to a close. However, here as elsewhere, we must guard against simplification and distinguish between changeable forms and the permanent principle, between the transmission of the essential message of the Gospel and the appearance of new witnesses.
We can discover a similar transmission in the very origins of monasticism. Since the time of the deacon Stephen, the testimony of blood has been the sign of the highest and most expressive fidelity. The ideal of the martyr, of that glorious company of “the wounded friends of the bridegroom”, of those “violent ones who carry away heaven” and in whom “Christ fights in person”, makes the first centuries absolutely unique. On his way to his glorious death, St. Ignatius of Antioch confessed: “It is now that I begin to be a true disciple... do not hinder me from being born to life.”14.1Likewise for St. Polycarp the martyrs are “the images of true charity... the captives laden with venerable chains, which are the jewels of the veritable elect of God.”14.2 This is why Origen made his somewhat cruel remark that a time of peace is propitious to Satan, who steals from Christ his martyrs, and from the Church her glory.
As a living configuration to Christ crucified, the martyr preaches him in giving himself as “a spectacle” to the world, to angels and to men. “Your bodies are pierced by the sword, but never can your spirit be cut off from divine love. Suffering with Christ, you are consumed by the burning coals of the Holy Spirit. Wounded by divine desire, your martyrs, Lord, rejoice in their wounds,” sings the Church.14.3
“Can you drink the chalice that I must drink?” our Lord asked the apostles. This formidable question makes martyrdom conformable to the eucharistic chalice; the soul of the martyr bears the presence of Christ in a very special manner. According to an ancient tradition, every martyr at the moment of his death hears the words addressed to the good thief--“This day you shall be with me in paradise”--and enters immediately into the kingdom.
The peaceful existence of the Church, protected by law from the 4th century, will never suffer any diminution in regard to the violence of her message. The Holy Spirit immediately “invented” the “equivalent of martyrdom”. In fact, the testimony that the martyrs rendered to “the one thing necessary” passed to monasticism. “The baptism of blood” of the martyrs gave place to “the baptism of ascesis” of the monks. The celebrated Life of St. Anthony, written by St. Athanasius, describes this father of monasticism as the first who had attained holiness without tasting martyrdom.14.4 Man had fallen to a level below his nature; ascesis elevated him to one above it. The metanoia or conversion strengthened the second birth of baptism that brought about the “little resurrection”. Even if the body had to await the “great resurrection”, the soul was already immortal.
The liturgical texts call the monks “earthly angels and heavenly men”. Monastic holiness forms a type of man that is “very similar” to the living icon of God. One can say that at least here, confronted with the world's compromises, the metanoia, the complete reversal of all the economy of the human being, its perfect metamorphosis, had succeeded.
The “dreadful” Thebaid, cradle of so many giants of the spirit, the arid and burning desert, was illuminated with their light. These astonishing masters taught the refined art of living the Gospel. In the silence of their cells and caves, in the school of these “theodidacts” taught by God, the birth of the new creature was slowly effected.