Radicalia, chapter four of five: Contemplation

Ever since the Christian fathers took to retreating to the desert to pray around the IV century after Christ, contemplative solitude has represented a privileged path towards contact with God. One of its most radical forms is cloistering, still practiced today: nuns are not allowed to leave their convent except for a few limited circumstances, such as getting their passport picture taken. ʻThe nuns posed in front of the lens as if their faces no longer belonged to them; and so they came out perfectly,ʼ wrote Calvino in The Watcher. ʻNot all of them of course […], you had to cross a kind of threshold, forgetting yourself, and then the photograph recorded this immediacy, this inner peace and blessedness.ʼ Over the course of the centuries, the image of the veiled nun confined to her cell has become iconic of life lived above mundane passions. ʻThe truth is we pursue the most common aspect of the most common humanity,ʼ writes Mother Ignazia Angelini, abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Viboldone, Milan. ʻThe challenge is to show we are no different to other women, deeply subject to passions, deeply fallible, and deeply wounded.ʼ