The life of the Christian ascetic often conjures up images of the damp, impenetrable walls of the cloistered cell; with long nights spent sleeping on rough-hewn stones or days spent chanting with shaven heads, wearing chafing robes of the meanest handmade wool or as an isolated hermit, living in his dirty cave with unkempt hair and crazed eyes, speaking only to himself because there is no one else to speak to.
It is the goal of this blog to transform these unfortunate views of the ancient ascetic and to become infected by their wonderfully contagious holiness and austere piety. This blog will open the ancient pantry of history and bring out the freshest and ripest views of the sacred. It will wash away the profane and mundane concepts that have crusted over modern Christianity and instruct the reader how to once again tread upon “Holy ground”. This blog targets the vast number of Christians who feel life must be more than what the existentialistic and materialistic evangelist would have us to embrace.
Many are desperate to find a place of spiritual serenity and yet still be effective as followers of Jesus Christ. The twenty-first century believer must accept the challenge of their ancient ascetic counterparts and in doing this discover what the Master meant when he prayed that his disciples might “be in the world, but not of the world”. They must purposely seek to be transformed from the culture that has mired them down both individually and corporately and become the spiritual warriors, athletes and healers that they have been ordained to be. If they fail, yet another generation may experience the overthrowing of their faith.
Wounded by the condition of the both their culture and their sickly churches, Christian men and women grasp desperately for the opportunity to better themselves, but often find that they quickly fail without the guidance and the godly examples of those who have lived out a spiritual regimen. They soon discover that they are adopting and adapting to a culture that romances them with a hedonistic worldview. The loud calling of materialism, and an internal fading voice calling them to a higher and holier place flusters them.
Cruciformology is a study to help the reader to begin to be spiritually focused on conducting their lives in the ascetic disciplines of mercy, prayer and fasting, as well as beginning to use the necessary tools of spiritual and doctrinal discernment. In doing so, they create fear in the realm of “principalities and powers” and bring hope and light to those wandering in darkness. They show the secular society, in which they live, why they must be a unique and perhaps even a “peculiar people”. The reader will learn how they can communicate their genuine concern for all people and their determination to bring them a view of absolute and eternal Truth. The reader will be shown why they must redouble their evangelical efforts by learning the value of applying the ancient ascetic ways into a postmodern paradigm.
