In traditional monastic language the great means of ending our complacent slumbers was the sting of compunction. The Latin word compunctio means a piercing; it is like sticking a pin in somebody with the purpose of waking them up. Compunction, involves a moment of awakening, the first glimmer of enlightenment, the dawning of a new day lived against a different horizon. Saint John Cassian, one of Benedict’s principal sources, defines compunction as whatever can “by God’s grace waken our lukewarm and sleepy souls” (Conferences 9.26). This definition seems to envisage us living our spiritual lives in a slumberous state of half-wakefulness. The grace of compunction is the transition to a state of fuller awareness. The great difference between the saints and the rest of us is that they were spiritually awake more of the time than we are; they were alert to possibilities. It is because they went through life in a state of greater consciousness that they were more conscientious in doing good and avoiding evil. We who stumble through life with many mistakes and omissions admire their saintly deeds but without necessarily realizing that perhaps we could imitate them more closely if our spiritual senses were not so drowsy.
