Culture and the Contemplative Life

Extract

If we wished to try and show how culture leads up to, and finds perhaps its finest expression in the ideal of the contemplative, or monastic, life, it would be essential at the outset to dispel from our minds the unfortunate overtones of affected superiority which have become associated with this word ‘culture’. Let us, then, bring the whole thing right down to earth, literally, and explain what we understand by ‘culture’. The English word comes from the Latin verb colo (I cultivate, tend, look after), which was originally used in connection with farming. Agriculture means ‘looking after fields’. But, of course, ‘the unconquerable mind of man’ is not limited to the consideration of material objects only: it strives ever upwards towards the immaterial and, ultimately, the divine. So it came about that the simple, essentially earthy, word of the farmer was used to express the care man had for the spiritual in himself, and his reverence for the gods.

Culture, then, is the quintessence of all those qualities which, while belonging to man, lie beyond the immediate sphere of his material needs. They are not necessarily practical, but they belong to a truly human life: man could not do without them. Pope John XXIII recently emphasized this when he was stressing the importance of the humanism of classical studies. In his address to the International Conference of Students of Cicero on April 8, quoting the Pro Archia, he said that ‘such studies nourish youth and delight old age, ornament prosperity, provide refuge and solace in adversity, are a pastime at home, are no burden abroad, never abandon us, and even at night follow us, on our travels and into the country.