The Cessation of Striving
Or, a brief meditation on Kenosis
All your favourite saints are hollow. So are all mine too, for that matter. That's kind of the point of sanctity. Or at least the point of the type of sanctity Catherine Doherty discusses in the eleventh chapter of her book Poustinia, titled Kenosis.
A Preface About Poustinia
Poustinia is a small, impactful book with many gems of wisdom packed into its binding. It somehow strikes a balance of a thoughtful tone while remaining to-the-point and not over romanticising the intense, spiritual journey that the topic matter centers around. The term poustinia, as we are introduced to it by the text, is a Russian term for the desert.
The desert holds a special yet daunting place in Christian imagery. It's the place of trial and temptation, a barren land where man must toil in body and mind.
Yet it is often the same place where God encounters man, whether in burning bush, pillars of cloud and fire, or a small whisper from within interior silence. Poustinia is a book about both sides of that divide. Kenosis is a chapter about the goal of making it from one side to the other and beyond.
But inevitably, as with many good books, it becomes difficult to discuss the finer details of the text without first looking at the person who wrote it. So before we expand on the hollow hallowed and desert dwelling, let's talk about Catherine Doherty.
Silence, Stern Truths, and Service.
If you're in the type of theology-nerd circles I tend to be part of in the Church, you might've heard Catherine Doherty's name mentioned before. You've maybe heard of one of her many other books, or of her prayer community in Canada, Madonna House. As an emigrant from revolutionary Russia to America, and later Canada, you can imagine she had quite an eventful life. Indeed, if Wikipedia is to believed, after escaping from the Russian revolution to Finland she was nearly killed by fellow refugee peasants in the aftermath of the upheaval.
Doherty was a story-starter, everyone that ever had encounter with her came away with a tale to tell. She also told a lot of her own stories in various writings over the course of her life and work.
Counterintuitively, both these aspects are emphasised by her default to quietude. By all accounts, when she spoke she spoke stern truths in stereotypical Russian forthrightness. But her deep ability to listen and discern meant she spoke into many situations with such truths rather than simply talking at or about them.
Equally, her focus on silent contemplation in prayer shine through in her prose.
Even when writing in the more relaxed, humorous style she occasionally fell into, it's apparent she thought deeply about whatever topic she was discussing. Catherine held a tension of respect for her Russian Orthodox upbringing and traditions, whilst maintaining accessibility for her Western, Latin-Rite Catholic audience. To use Pope St. John Paul II's parlance, she was a marvellous example of what Catholics might look like when we learn to, "Breathe with both lungs."1
Catherine Doherty's spiritual bent to the contemplative is not to take away from the active service she gave to her communities. She had, as stated in her writings, a great sense of a personal part to play in the outpouring and sharing of the blessings she recieved from prayer. She often in her earlier apostolatic endeavours was working with the poor and marginalised. Later, she could be found aiding in the building of the huts and cabins used by various people on their own poustinia experiences.
On top of all this she was a spiritual guide to many, clergy and lay alike.
This deep sense of spiritual awareness leading to action also shines through in her works, especially her musings on the possibility of a "Pousitinia in the Marketplace."2 This sentiment, contemplation in action, isn't uncommon among thinkers in the Catholic tradition. Indeed some of the great saints of history, namely Francis and Dominic, emphasised the exact same principles.
Catherine Doherty could even stand among them, she has an open cause for canonisation in the Catholic Church, being named a Servant of God to start the journey toward possibly declared sainthood.
Coming Back to Kenosis
As prolific and wide-ranging as the work Catherine Doherty achieved was, however, after reading Pousitinia I have my doubts she'd take much credit for it. Catherine lived what she called her "Little Mandate." One of the core principles of which was to, "Do little things exceedingly well for love [of God]." Here again you can see parallels to the mendicant saints, which is striking given how deeply rooted Doherty was in her Russian spiritual heritage.
It comes back to this idea reffered to as Kenosis.
Catherine does a much better job at diving into the concept than I could. And rightly so. Yet I did find a subly irony in that, as anti-Catholic as he was, Leonard Ravenhill describes the experience quite aptly in his book Why Revival Tarries:
John the Baptist’s training was in God’s University of Silence. God takes all His great men there. Though to Paul, the proud, law-keeping Pharisee of colossal intellect, and boasted pedigree, Christ made a challenge on the Damascus road, it needed his three years in Arabia for emptying and unlearning before he could say, ‘God revealed Himself in me.’3
"...Emptying and unlearning..." an interesting pairing of words. Espescially when framed of a moment revelation. This idea, of courses, isn't exclusive to the Catholic or wider Christian lexicon either. Indeed a similar phrase was used by the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna to describe the essence of emptiness, Śūnyatā. Sufi schools of Islam use the term Fana, or annihilation, in regard to a mystical experience of self-forgetting.
But there is, I think, a unique Christian understanding in what mystics and thinkers like Doherty referred to in the word kenosis.
In nearly all other religious mysticism, the goal of something like Śūnyatā or Fana is to forget the self, or escape a concept of individual identity in some sense. In Christianity, in kenosis, we reliquinish ourselves to receive the gift of our individual identity more truly. Catherine gives an apt analogy in the chapter itself:
Kenosis...is first of all a hidden reality. I had an artist friend who restored paintings. There is a compound which you spread over a painting. You let it dry for a while, then you cover it with another kind of chemical. When that dries it becomes like a film over the picture which, when removed, restores the painting in all its vivid colors. I sometimes think of kenosis in that way. It’s like peeling a dirty film from our lives, a camouflage self, to reveal beneath the skin a true child of God.4
We could also go back to Ravehill's example of St. Paul the Apostle.
Only after the three years of quietude in Arabia does Paul start his ministry. After obedience and humility before the other Apostles, and a process of letting go of self-will and ambition, this great enemy of the Church become one of it's most far-reaching and prolific missionaries throughout history. Only when Saul surrenders on a Damascene road does Paul begin preparing to preach.
That's what a hollowing out is, after all, an ocassion for fulfillment. The saint are people who reliquinish their self-will to recieve their full gift of self willingly.
In multiple places Paul talks about this kenosis experience. He describes it as “being poured” in places Philippians 2:17 or 2nd Timothy 4:6-8. But yet, in a sense, Paul had already been poured out en route to Damascus. What was left as a result was room for who God had made him to be. This is possibly a deeper mystery than words can convey. But the Apostle himself puts it such:
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
— Philippians 1:21
In Abrupt Conclusion
I could go on a while more, but perhaps I ought not to. So I will leave it off with this:
Perhaps when we finally cease our striving we will begin to make real progress. When we give up trying to be the heros, maybe we will have true opportuity to be heroic. Or, if we embrace becoming hollow we may finally feel whole.
Doherty was received into the Catholic Church around 1919, and in fact lived through the Second Vatican Council and part of John Paul's pontificate.
These can be found in chapter seven of Poustinia.
I read the book as a late teenager, and this quote always stuck with me despite my progressive disagreement with Revival-centric theology in general.
I have purposefully omitted to quote too much of Doherty's own text in this post, becauses I really feel you ought to go read that source for yourself.