The knowledge of Christ is another expression for contemplation. Without gentleness there is no true contemplation. To Rufinus Evagrius writes: “For I am convinced that your gentleness has become a cause of great knowledge. No single virtue produces wisdom as gentleness does, for whose sake even Moses was praised as gentler than all other men. And I too beg to become and be called a disciple of the Gentle one.”
Thus gentleness is a sign that we have understood Christ and followed him.
Here we catch sight of a kind of spirituality different from the one we met in the moral theology textbooks of the 1950s. The spirituality of the early monks is distinguished not by strictness, not by moralizing, nor by fear tactics, but by the encouragement of gentleness. Gentle persons are attractive to many people. They don’t have to convince persons of different faiths of their orthodoxy; they have no need of proselytizing. Their gentleness is sufficient testimony for Christ. Anyone who encounters that gentleness meets Christ and will recognize him in it.
Gentleness and compassion are the criteria of genuine spirituality. If we view and judge contemporary forms of piety with these criteria, we will quickly realize which kinds derive from fear of the repressed shadow and which come from the spirit of Christ. Only when men and women have become gentle and merciful and deal compassionately with their fellow human beings do they bear witness to a spirituality that is in keeping with Christ. All other kinds may behave ever so piously, but they still derive from the spirit of fear and repressed passion. To that extent we can learn from the early monks to develop a spirituality that matches the spirit of Christ.
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
