domingo, 8 de outubro de 2017

Don Divo Barsotti, a Florentine priest of deep monastic spirituality

La spiritualità come esegesi was the title of a short article in the little monastic periodical Camaldoli, edited by the community of Camaldoli in 1952. It opened up a new horizon for understanding and living the spiritual journey of a monk, seen as an expression of salvation history, witnessed to by the scripture, celebrated in the liturgy, journeying towards its completion at the eschaton.[1] Its author, Don Divo Barsotti, a Florentine priest of deep monastic spirituality and a learned scholar of the Fathers of the Church, as well as of ancient Eastern and Russian monasticism, was closely linked to the movement of patristic ressourcement in the French Church which for decades had been rediscovering and promoting the theological and spiritual vitality of patristic exegesis and commentaries on the liturgy. In Italy, however, especially in the Camaldolese sphere, this perspective was still a novelty apart from certain circles which had been in contact in the 1930s with the French, Belgian and German liturgical movement.
‘One of the principal sources of Christian spirituality,’ affirmed Don Barsotti, ‘is to be found in the typological and spiritual exegesis of holy scripture. Typological exegesis shows us how events of ancient times, the works of God, are still present and actualised to this day, since they have been brought by God to completion in the human heart. Christian spirituality, specifically through this exegesis, is less a doctrine than a story, not so much the story of ancient Israel as the story of the Christian soul. Books of spiritual exegesis, therefore, are not doctrinal works, but rather witnesses to interior experience. It suffices to think of St John of the Cross’.read....