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We confront the same obstacles to understanding and to practical acceptance when it comes to the core elements of Benedictine monasticism. In her remarkable account of the Chalice of Repose project, Therese Schroeder-Sheker notes the centrality, to Benedictine spirituality, of the contemplation of the beautiful:
The human being needed exposure to beauty in order to become
inwardly beautiful, and in becoming inwardly radiant and beautiful,
one integrated beauty back into the world....[The monastic] community
lived within a spiritual milieu wherein adoration was expressed,
in addition to prayer and liturgy, through the maintenance, cultivation,
and refinement of beauty. At the mystical level, one was encouraged
to experience the countenance of God in the experience of beauty.6
Within the Benedictine community, beauty mattered, in the sense both of its spiritual significance and of its physical maintenance and perception, as something to be seen contemplatively (in Pieper's sense). Does beauty still matter to us, in this way? My own sense is that it does not, and that this is a problem for us. The problem is not just one of secularization. It stems from the difficulty we have conceptualizing the centrality of contemplation to the practice of religious faith. It stems, more fundamentally, from the difficulty we have conceptualizing the centrality of practice to contemplation itself.
II.
What could it mean to say that one's purpose in living is "to behold (eis theorian)..."? Our "theory" comes from the Greek theoria, of which the Latin contemplatio was a translation. It is appropriate, then, that contemplation be understood as theoretical. But what does this originally mean? As Indra McEwen has pointed out, modern interpretations of theoria tend to emphasize its non-participatory, speculative aspect.7 Such interpretations take for granted the modern sense of theory as detached (scientific) observation or analysis. Theoria is originally derived from thea (outward appearance or show, as in theater) and horao (to look at something, closely and attentively). With a view to its primary meaning, theoria is perhaps best translated as "spectating" and theoros (theorist) as "spectator." But care must be taken in understanding the spectatorial attitude of the theoros. A theoros is someone who sees, but this seeing does not necessarily imply detachment in the way that a theoretical stance is supposed to be detached. Theoroi were, most commonly, ambassadors to sacred festivals. The goal of these emissaries was to learn from what they saw. They were looking for knowledge, or understanding. But while the assumption has been that these theorists observed without participating, the ancient sources suggest that theoroi did actually participate in these public spectacles by offering sacrifices and taking part in the dances and games that formed an integral part of the practice of divine worship.8
To recall the original meaning of theory is to recall the original meaning of the human activity of theorizing, grounded in the experience of theoria—not an object of detached observation or purely cognitive analysis, but a performative spectacle in which one takes part with one's body as well as one's mind, with one's senses and emotions as well as one's thoughts. The theoros' "seeing" was active and experientially engaged. He was literally and figuratively moved by (he "got into") what he saw.
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