Here a breathless headline from National Geographic:
In the ruins of a Byzantine monastery, archaeologists uncovered a tomb containing the remains of a skeleton wrapped in a metal chain. Long thought to be a male religious hermit, new analysis reveals the remains belonged to a woman, reshaping assumptions about who practiced extreme forms of early Christian asceticism—practices undertaken with the firm belief that emulating the suffering of Christ would bring one closer to God.
“Reveals”? Didn’t we always know that? This was an age where ascetical extremes were simply the Done Thing. Christians didn’t invent asceticism and, in many ways, they tamed it since their theology forbade and reined in the zeal to do stuff like castrate yourself (a practice that was par for the course for the cult of Cybele but rebuked by the Church when popular rumor said Origen did it). The gung ho zeal to undergo rigorous self-abuse has, historically, not been so much been imposed by the Church, but restrained by the Church.
As G.K. Chesterton whimsically noted in SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS: THE DUMB OX:
The ordinary modern critic, seeing this ascetic ideal in an authoritative Church, and not seeing it in most other inhabitants of Brixton or Brighton, is apt to say, “This is the result of Authority; it would be better to have Religion without Authority.” But in truth, a wider experience outside Brixton or Brighton would reveal the mistake. It is rare to find a fasting alderman or a Trappist politician, but it is still more rare to see nuns suspended in the air on hooks or spikes; it is unusual for a Catholic Evidence Guild orator in Hyde Park to begin his speech by gashing himself all over with knives; a stranger calling at an ordinary presbytery will seldom find the parish priest lying on the floor with a fire lighted on his chest and scorching him while he utters spiritual ejaculations. Yet all these things are done all over Asia, for instance, by voluntary enthusiasts acting solely on the great impulse of Religion; of Religion, in their case, not commonly imposed by any immediate Authority; and certainly not imposed by this particular Authority. In short, a real knowledge of mankind will tell anybody that Religion is a very terrible thing; that it is truly a raging fire, and that Authority is often quite as much needed to restrain it as to impose it.
It says everything that NatGeo calls the asceticism of ancient Christians “extreme” but articles like the one below do not call the ascetism of film stars “extreme”. For our culture appears, at first glance, to have no place for redemptive suffering. Such suffering is, we are sure, a relic from the Dark Ages when the Church was obsessed with pain as being meritorious. Today, we are assured, things are different. Here, for instance, is how the modern mind works:
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.—In Hollywood’s competitive climate, accolades often go to performers who either pack on the pounds (think Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones or Charlize Theron in Monster) or let their frames waste away (Christian Bale in The Machinist).
There’s been another category at the movie theaters recently: the phenomenally fit. Jessica Biel was a vampire slayer with deltoids to die for in “Blade: Trinity.” [Biel] kept a close eye on portion sizes and drank plenty of water. [Biel] recalled that at the height of her training, women pulled her aside to ask, “What’s your secret?” It was a question that Biel identified with—and resented just a bit.
“I was, like, ‘Secret? You want the secret?’ The secret is, there is no secret,” Biel said. “There’s no pill, there’s no diet, there’s no magic drink.”
The trainers agreed to describe their clients’ workouts for their big screen roles to show that there’s nothing easy—or particularly mysterious—about getting in shape, no matter who you are.
And you don’t have to spend as much time in the gym as the stars do, they said, adding that an hour’s time, five to six days a week, will make a difference.
Before her latest role as a take-no-prisoners vampire slayer in the new movie “Blade: Trinity,” Biel, 22, already had a body most women would covet. [Yet she not only had to get] into shape for a grueling, physical shoot in which the actress would perform her own stunts, [she had] to transform her lithe athletic body into that of a hyper-stylized vampire assassin with an hourglass figure.
First, there was weight training—something she’d never really done before—and she had to rev up her cardio activity with martial arts and kickboxing.
The toughest tasks . . .were . . . torturous jumping squats, which tightened up her legs and core muscles.
In all, she was working out and training about two hours a day, five to six days a week, including her fight training for the movie.
“I was just coming home and crashing. I had never really worked out that hard before. I don’t think I dreamt once, I was just so tired,” Biel said. “I was thinking, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’”
A few weeks into the new regimen, Biel felt her body changing from the inside, but fretted that she wasn’t seeing similar changes on the outside.
You see, in the Dark Ages, Jesus fasted and subjected himself to physical hardship in the Temptation in the Wildereness in order to prepare for his all-too-real confrontation with the Evil One. In our enlightened age, however, people fast and subject themselves to physical hardship in order to pretend they’re confronting the Evil One in a movie. In the Dark Ages, people like Paul could rejoice in their sufferings for the sake of Christ’s body (cf. Colossians 1:24). But today we rejoice in our sufferings for the sake of our bodies.
In short, the culture that has given us the StairMaster has little room for sneering at the asceticism of our ancestors. When we think it’s important, we can pursue asceticism with all the zeal of St. Francis rolling in the snow. The difference lies in what we think is an important goal. The goal of the saints is carrying their crosses is union with God who carried his cross. The goal of our culture is toned abs.
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One Response
It could be said that excessive exercise and diet is a modern form of mortification of the flesh. It sounds perverse, but if you think of it, it makes sense. My wife has a nephew who was a bodybuilder. Prior to completing, he subjected himself to a regimen of diet and exercise that resembled something the Spanish Inquisition did to heretics. Are we having fun yet? No thanks.