On Liturgical Asceticism by David W. Fagerberg (review)

289 Book Reviews most serves his aim of restoring to the Church her essential book of hymns. Anthony Pagliarini University of Notre Dame South Bend, Indiana David W. Fagerberg On Liturgical Asceticism Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013 xix+246 pages. Paperback. $29.95. The present worthy contribution defends a clear thesis that needs to be put to work in practice, namely, that a conceptual perichoresis exists between liturgy, theology, and asceticism such that when, fully realized in the life of a believer, one finds a clear instantiation of the famous maxim of Evagrius Ponticus (ca. 346–399) from chapter 60 of his Chapters on Prayer: “If you are a theologian you truly pray. If you truly pray you are a theologian.” Implied in this understanding of prayer and theological striving is a necessary ascetical moment. Fully explicitating this connection is the task Fagerberg sets before himself in this work. Positing an analogy between the mutual indwelling, or “perichoresis ,” of the three divine persons of the Holy Trinity and the work of the Christian people in liturgy (8–10), he is in the position to boldly assert that “liturgy without asceticism and theology is a species of ritual studies; asceticism without liturgy and theology is athletic or philosophical training; theology without liturgy and asceticism is an academic discipline in higher education” (10). In the process of defining “liturgical asceticism” as an “embracing by grace what Christ is by nature” (27), Fagerberg goes on to isolate a basic malady, “pathe” (the passions), a cure for this malady, “ascesis” (asceticism), and a resultant joy after the cure, “apatheia” (dispassion). At the same time he avails himself of the classic ascetical teaching of numerous Eastern Church Fathers as well as of select Western sources. For example, he makes his own Maximus the Confessor’s definition of a passion as “a movement of the soul contrary to nature” (30), thus noting how material things in themselves are not problems, but rather their misuse. In this light he also extensively quotes from St. Peter of Damaskos: “For it is not food, but gluttony, that is bad; not money, but at- 290 Antiphon 17.3 (2013) tachment to it; not speech, but idle talk; not the world’s delights, but dissipation…not the world, but the passions; not nature, but what is contrary to nature” (32). Contrasting virtue to the passions, understanding it as “rightly ordered love,” Fagerberg takes pains to indicate how the true battleground of asceticism is the human heart and not created matter, going on the define liturgical asceticism as “the process of overcoming disordered love by restoring in our hearts the hierarchy designed by God, who is Love” (32). For this reason, the cure for overcoming the disordered love found in the passions readily presents itself, namely, the training in love that is the raison d’être of ascetical discipline. Noting more particularly how liturgical asceticism is nothing other than a longing for God, Fagerberg is able to propose other dense theses, themselves inviting reflection and a true unpacking of their meaning. Thus, in one place, referring to man, he writes “asceticism is the process of making the icon more accurate to the prototype” (77), only to affirm in short order that “asceticism is the weight of love undermining the passions so that they run off” (78). What results is apatheia, unfortunately so readily mistranslated as “apathy” rather than “dispassion,” which signals “an undistorted , proper, ordered relationship between God, spirit, body, and cosmos” (102). Understood in this fashion, dispassion “connotes not repression, but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom” (103), as Fagerberg rightly stresses. He also draws attention (113) to John Cassian’s translation into Latin of the Greek apatheia as precisely puritas cordis, i.e., the purity of heart of the beatitudes that leads to vision of God. On this note, Fagerberg can insightfully sum up his project: “Theologia is the flower on the bush of apatheia when it is rooted deeply in praktike. Viewed from the bottom up, from root to flower, we may say asceticism leads to apatheia, which begets agape, and this opens the door to theoria” (117). A few minor points of criticism should be...