Nourishing Agapeic Affection with Mathematics
No matter what the monks taught us they did it with that
universalized affection for which their celibate lives prepared
them so that they truly were fathers to us their adopted sons.
My father as a professional gambler was a kind of mathematician.
As he would count the cards and remember with laws of addition
and subtraction what had been played and what had not he
greatly appreciated a good memory well trained by mathematics.
He made sure that we each learned rapid-fire addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division but I just never
seemed to have the talent for building on that with higher math.
However, when you think that all things can be understood in
terms of mathematics then you come to a new appreciation
for the complexity and the simplicity of each thing, that is, one
being with two parts of this and five parts of that, and so on.
If you are a monk with a sublimated eros and thus a new
agapeic affection for all persons, places, and things then you
can see how training in the various kinds of math
could bring about a greater affection for all the orderly detail.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God and it does
flame out like shining from shook foil, and a mathematician
can better love all the wondrous complexity of that simplicity.
Our math teachers Father Method and Father Hilary had a vision
that they imparted to whomever could share in their delight.
And even though I seemed to be limited in my capacity to
follow all the nuances with them, their affection for me, which
I tested, still taught me. And the math I could learn definitely
helped me to better love the world of Euclid and the geometricians.
That those earth measures and those who knew trigonometry
were privileged to see certain laws of the universe impressed
me and though I could not easily get it I at least learned
enough to trust in the order of all, even with a kind of faith.
I,3.7 Nourishing Agapeic Eros with Music
As we practiced singing our scales and learned about the history
of the growth from plainchant in its various kinds to polyphony
we came to see that music is all based on mathematical measuring
just as is science and we learned about whole, half, and quarter notes.
Could you say that music is math transformed into lovely sound?
Some of the eighteen masses that we sang on different feast days
were especially sweet and sorrowful songs, like Stabat Mater, and
still had a beautiful sweetness about them so that as mathematics
could build up affection so music could build up a lovely eros.
We not only studied music in class every year but it was
a big part of our prayer life since each day we sang high mass.
The Benedictines not only sang high mass each day but they sang
the eight parts of the divine office, for music was a major part
of their life of “Ora et Labora” and its beauty let them grow in love.
For Christmas in my second year my mother gave me the three-volume
set of The Works of St. John of the Cross and during my third
year at meditation at the end of each morning I studied intently
The Dark Night of the Soul and I took many pages of detailed notes.
I condensed them down and talked about that beautiful poetry
with Father Ambrose and I came to see a metrical music in poetry.
That poetry together with the Gregorian chant formed me further
in the agape of a sublimated eros for it sang:
On a Dark Night enkindled in love with yearning
oh happy chance, I went forth
my house being now at rest.
Once the internal and external senses of our interior castle
are at rest Jesus can recline his face upon our flowery
breasts, kept wholly for himself alone. I came to see
how celibacy can develop a loving femininity even in the male.
From then on deep in the anima of my animus I would never
think of having sex but always of making love even in celibacy.
I,3.8 Nourishing Agapeic Friendship with Science
In our science classes we learned how physics and biology were
still parts of philosophy before modern times and how Aristotle not only
wrote the first book on physics but was also the father of biology.
In defining genus, species, difference, property, and accident he worked
out a classification for the various species of plants and animals.
In his psychology he distinguished scientifically plant, animal, and
human souls and went on to give proof for the immortal human soul.
We learned how Gregor Mendel, a monk himself, worked out the laws
of genetics and how Copernicus, a Catholic priest, came up with
the Copernican revolution that encouraged Galileo and his experiments.
Father Mark had us make
