SPIRITUALITY OF THE DESERT FATHERS AND MOTHERS WITH SPECIAL FOCUSS ON ST. ANTHONY OF EGYPT

May 3, 2018 Author: Fr. Antony Thomas Ittikunnath OCD 0 Comments

Introduction

Spirituality is a lived experience. And the essence of the spirituality of the desert is that it was not taught but caught; it was a whole way of life. It was not an esoteric doctrine or a predetermined plan of ascetic practices that would be learned or applied. It is important to understand this, because there really is no way of talking about the way of prayer, or the spiritual teaching of the Desert fathers of mothers. They did not have a systematic way; they had the hard work and experience of a lifetime of striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind and soul to God, and that is what they talked about.[1] And my attempt in this paper is nothing but to explore the key elements of these lived experiences of both the desert fathers and mothers and to ponder on them with a desire to receive the rays of enlightenment that can penetrate even to the heart of the modern man, who seeks God with a sincere heart.

1. The World behind the Text

It is only when, placed against the very background of the world in which, St. Anthony of Egypt and other desert monks lived their spirituality, we can clearly understand the relevance and uniqueness of these great hermits in the history of spirituality. So this section will deal with the changes that happened in the Church and society during their time and what prompted the hermits, especially, St. Anthony of Egypt to retreat to the desert experiences, which later would be called as ‘desert Spirituality’.

1.1.The Imperial Acceptance of the Church

St. Anthony of Egypt lived in a time of transition of Christianity. The Diocletianic Persecution in 303 AD was the last great formal persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Ten years later, Christianity was made legal in Egypt by Diocletian’s successor Constantine I.[2] Those who left for the desert formed an alternate Christian society, at a time when it was no longer a risk to be a Christian. The solitude, austerity, and sacrifice of the desert was seen by Anthony as an alternative to martyrdom, which was formerly seen by many Christians as the highest form of sacrifice. Thus the Older realizations of the rise of monasticism have included the suggestion that it was a response to the imperial adoption of Christianity in the fourth century, a call to return to the values of Christian martyrdom or a result of a widespread and deep- seated anxiety.[3] When members of the Church began finding ways to work with the Roman state, the Desert Fathers saw that as a compromise between “the things of God and the things of Caesar.” The monastic communities were essentially an alternate Christian society. The hermits doubted that religion and politics could ever produce a truly Christian society. For them, the only Christian society was spiritual and not mundane.[[4]Thus the ancient world experienced a profound religious transformation, which we can call as ‘ascetic movement.’[5]

1.2. The Spiritual Decline in the life of the Clergy

The clergy’s status changed considerably in the favorable conditions after Constantine’s conversion. Imperial legalization gave the Christian clergy special legal rights, financial advantages, and social dignity. To be a clergyman became a career that was worth seeking for practical as well as religious reasons. To be a Bishop of one of the great cities was a prize for which even violence seemed justified. A pagan Roman Senator once joked with Damasus, “Make me bishop of Rome, and I will at once be a Christian.”[6] Since the bishop now functioned as a political figure, many of his religious decisions favored the Empire rather than the church. This comfortable relationship with the emperor also meant that the church received financial support from the Empire, and the Christian church suddenly expanded into an institution whose too easy association with Rome corrupted it in the eyes of many of its congregants.[7]

1.3. The Lukewarm Spirituality

The growing accommodation of many clergy and laity with ordinary life, led to a state of lukewarm spirituality. In reaction to this growing lukewarm spirituality, some ascetics sought to one degree or another even more demanding asceticism. In late third and fourth century Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, the Christian form of the ascetic movement found new and long- lasting forms in what is called “monasticism.” The words “monasticism” and “monk” are derived from the Greek word monos, meaning “alone.” But after about 280, a few ascetics took their quest for spiritual perfection a major step further when they withdrew from the surroundings of ordinary life into isolated places, especially into the deserts of Egypt and the Near East. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the trickle of ascetics moving to deserted places grew into a significant stream. [8]

1.4.The Desert Fathers and Mothers

Who were these desert fathers and desert mothers? The desert fathers and mothers were ordinary Christians living in solitude in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine and Syria who chose to renounce the world in order to deliberately and individually follow God’s call. They embraced lives of celibacy, labor, fasting, prayer, and poverty, believing that denouncing material goods and practicing stoic self-discipline would lead to unity with the Divine. Their spiritual practice formed the basis of Western monasticism and greatly influenced both Western and Eastern Christianity. Their writings; first recorded in the fourth century, consist of spiritual advice, parables and anecdotes emphasizing the primacy of love and the purity of heart as essential to spiritual life and authentic communion with God.[9]

Henri Nouwen, in his introduction to the book, “Desert Wisdom”, by Yushi Nomura, writes, they were men and women who withdrew themselves from the compulsions and manipulations of their power- hungry society in order to fight the demons and to encounter the God of love in the desert. They were people who had become keenly aware that after the period persecutions and acceptance of Christianity as a “normal” part of the society, the radical call of Christ to leave father, mother, brother, and sister, to take up the cross and follow him, had been watered down to an acceptable and comfortable religiosity and had lost its converting power. The Abbas and Ammas(Aramaic words for father and mother, respectively) of the Egyptian desert had left this world of compromise, adaptation, and a lukewarm spirituality and had chosen solitude, silence, and prayer as the new way to be living witnesses of the crucified and risen Lord. Thus, they became the new “martyrs,” witnessing not with their blood, but with their single- minded dedication to a humble life of manual work, fasting and prayer.[10]

1.5.The Ultimate Aim of Finding the True Identity

Nouwen explains that the life of these ancient hermits can be seen as a hard and often painful struggle to find their true identity. The world they tried to escape is the world in which money, power, fame, success, influence, and good connections are the ways to self- esteem. It is the world that says, “You are what you have.” This false identity never gives the security and safety which we are searching for, but throws us in the spiral of pa permanent desire for more- more money, more power, more friends- in the illusion that one day we will arrive at that dream place where nobody and nothing can harm us. [11]

1.6.Voluntary Displacement to the Desert and Its Importance

The first aspect of the desert spirituality is that it involves a leaving, a voluntary displacement. As Thomas Merton notes, the desert fathers regarded society as “a shipwreck from which each single individual person had to swim for his life.”[12] The founders dictum “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s” was more and more difficult to follow as taxes soared, ever-increasing military service was demanded, and a worldly Christianity began to flourish at the court and elsewhere in the Empire.[13] It is not surprising, then, that the desert began to receive devout Christians inspired by the example of John the Baptizer and of the Master himself, who spent forty days before he began his public ministry. [14]The hermits of the desert were deeply conscious of the fact that not only the society but also the church had been corrupted by the illusion. So they escaped into the desert to free themselves from this compulsive self, to shake off the many payers of self- deception and reclaim their true self. [15]

In the desert, away from human praise and criticism, they could slowly grow into the knowledge that they are not who people say they are, but who God made them to be: His own sons and daughters created and recreated in His Spirit. In the desert they came to the realization that as long as they kept trying to find their identity outside of God, they ended up in that vicious spiral of wanting more and more. But there they also discovered that their true identity is securely planted in the first love of God himself and that this first love frees them from their fearful compulsions and allows them to relate to their own society freely, joyfully, and peacefully.[16]

The proximate end of all their striving was “purity of heart,” a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs, an intuitive grasp of one’s own inner reality as anchored- or rather lost- in God, through Christ. The fruit of this was “rest,” the creation of inner space for God. A pure heart is a state of being single- minded, or perhaps “single- eyed.”[17]

1.6.1. Desert as an Experience of the Wilderness and Paradise

In Scripture the desert is primarily the wasteland, and it leads to the garden of the promised land, the desert come to life, as in Isaiah 35:1–2: “The desert shall rejoice and blossom. … The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.” Both the bleak image and the flowering one apply to the physical desert as we use the term today. Thus desert has a double quality: it is wilderness and paradise. It was a place where one experienced both the temptation of the devil and the consolation of the angel. It is wilderness, because in the desert the hermits struggle against the “wild beast” that attack them, the demons of boredom, sadness, anger, and pride. The desert itself was the place of the final warfare against the devil (Luke 11:24), and the monks were ‘sentries who keep watch on the walls of the city.’[18] The desert fathers are like paratroopers, people who go on the attack and unmask the enemy who hangs around the city. It is important to realize that when Jesus appears on the public scene, the demons also appear. They are the first to recognize him and call him by his true name. Where God appears, the evil one is also present. In the city with its compulsions and compromises, the lines between God and the demon have become blurred. Good is called evil and evil is called good. But in the desert the rue struggle becomes clear.

However, it is also paradise, because there the hermits can meet God and taste already His peace and joy. The desert life is the life, by which we return to paradise. The monk does not just withdraw from the world, but is en route to paradise. God’s grace will even make him find something of paradise here on earth as a consolation and comfort. Paradise means place of rapture, where things are heard that cannot be told (II Cor. 12:12). It is the celestial realm to which Good Thief departed. It is a place of intimacy with the risen Christ. It is the state of paradise before the Fall. All these are assimilations of the Kingdom of God.[19]

Amma Syncletica said: “in the beginning, there is struggle and lot of work for those who come near to God. But after that, there is indescribable joy. It is just like building, there is a fire: At first it’s smoky and your eyes water, but later you get the desired result. Thus we ought to light the divine fire in ourselves with tears and effort.”[20]

1.7.Key Elements of the Desert Spirituality

Here, I pick up on only the main elements of the spiritual practices, which are close to the hearts of the desert monks’ life styles.

1.7.1 Hesychasm

Hesychasm (from the Greek for “stillness, rest, quiet, silence”) is a mystical tradition and movement that originated with the Desert Fathers and was central to their practice of prayer. Hesychasm for the Desert Fathers was primarily the practice of “interior silence and continual prayer.” It didn’t become a formal movement of specific practices until the fourteenth century Byzantine meditative prayer techniques, when it was more closely identified with the Prayer of the Heart, or “Jesus Prayer.” That prayer’s origin is also traced back to the Desert Fathers—the Prayer of the Heart was found inscribed in the ruins of a cell from that period in the Egyptian desert. The earliest written reference to the practice of the Prayer of the Heart may be in a discourse collected in thePhilokalia on Abba Philimon, a Desert Father. Hesychast prayer was a meditative practice that was traditionally done in silence and with eyes closed—”empty of mental pictures” and visual concepts, but with the intense consciousness of God’s presence.[21]

The words hesychast and hesychia were frequently used in 4th and 5th century writings of Desert Fathers such as Macarius of Egypt, Evagrius Ponticus, and Gregory of Nyssa. The title hesychast was used in early times synonymously with “hermit,” as compared to a cenobite who lived in community. Hesychasm can refer to inner or outer stillness, though in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers it referred to inner tranquility.[22]

1.7.2. Recitation of the Scripture

The lives of the Desert Fathers that were organized into communities included frequent recitation of the scriptures—during the week they chanted psalms while performing manual labor and during the weekends they held liturgies and group services. The monk’s experience in the cell occurred in a variety of ways, including meditation on scripture. Group practices were more prominent in the organized communities formed by Pachomius. The purpose of these practices were explained by John Cassian, a Desert Father, who described the goal of psalmody (the outward recitation of scripture) and asceticism as the ascent to deep mystical prayer and mystical contemplation. [23]

It was said that Anthony based his whole life on the Bible. And in the monastic communities generally, emphasis was laid on following the teaching of the Scriptures in word and deed. To this end the Bible was read and meditated on both individually and corporately. In the answers given to monks by their teachers, words from the Bible were often quoted or referred to. This is not to say that many in the desert communities possessed their own copies of the Bible. Some were illiterate, and others refrained from owning a Bible because of their dedication to poverty. All the more important, therefore, was the public reading of Scripture in their times of corporate worship. [24]

1.7.3. Radical Simplicity and Common Sense

For the desert monks, daily life was their prayer. And it was a radically simple life: a stone hut with a roof of branches, a reed mat for a bed, a sheep-skin a lamp, a vessel of water or oil. It was enough. Food and sleep were reduced to the minimum. They too had a horror of extra possessions. The desert communities’ renunciation of personal property rights was absolute. A monk named Theodore possessed three books which helped others as well as himself. Macarius advised him that, although reading such books was of value, poverty was even better. Accordingly the books were sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Another monk, if asked to lend something, invited the borrower to take whatever he needed. Then if the borrower returned it, the lender did not take it in his hands but merely asked him to replace it wherever he had found it. If the article was not returned, the debt was not pursued.[25]

The ideal was not sub-human, but super- human, the angelic life; but this was to be interpreted in the most practical and common sense way. When Anthony was relaxing with his disciples outside the cell, a hunter came by and rebuked him. Anthony said: “Bend your bow and shoot an arrow’, and he did so. But the request continued many times and the hunter obeyed. But finally hunter said, “Father, if I keep my bow always stretched it will break.” Anthony said: “So it is with the monk/ if we push ourselves beyond measure we will break; it is right for us from time to time to relax our efforts.”[26] So, the desert monks always maintained this common sense attitude along with their ascetical practices.

1.7.4. Charity and Forgiveness

The aim of the monks’ lives was not asceticism, but God, and the way to God was charity. The gentle charity of the desert was the pivot of all their work and the test of their way of life. Charity was to be total and complete. The old men and women of the desert received guests as Christ would receive them. They might live austerely themselves, but when visitors came they hid their austerity and welcomed them.[27] The Desert Fathers gave a great deal of emphasis to living and practicing the teachings of Christ, much more than mere theoretical knowledge. Their efforts to live the commandments were not seen as being easy—many of the stories from that time recount the struggle to overcome negative emotions such as anger and judgment of others. Helping a brother monk who was ill or struggling was seen as taking priority over any other consideration. Hermits were frequently seen to break a long fast when hosting visitors, as hospitality and kindness were more important than keeping the ascetic practices that were so dominant in the Desert Fathers’ lives.[28]

Thus it is easy to understand that many people from the cities and towns, laypeople, priests, and bishops came to visit them and ask for their advice, for guidance, or just for a word of comfort. . An incident is recounted about a hermit who consulted John the Short several times, but then ceased his visits for fear of disturbing him. John told him that, just as one lamp is not harmed by being used to light others, he was not harmed or hindered by giving counsel to those who came to him.[29] It is also quite understandable that they themselves always considered it as their primary obligation to be hospitable to their visitors, and to help the poor and the needy. Even the most severe form of asceticism was considered less important that to service to the neighbor. That is why one of the wise men of the desert says: “Even if the brother who fasts six days were to hang himself by the nose, he could not equal the one who serves the sick.”[30]

One of the marks of charity was forgiveness which is also expressed in not judging the other. Moses, the black man who had been a robber, heard one day that a brother was to be brought before the council and judged; so he came also, carrying a basket full of sand, and he said, “How should I judge my brother when my sins run out behind me like the sand in this basket?”[31] The monks put up with appalling treatment from strangers: injustice, robbery, lack of consideration. Macarius discovered a man stealing goods from his cell. Instead of protecting his possessions he pretended to be a passer-by and helped him load the stolen articles on his donkey.[32] Thus, Escaping the world was, therefore for the desert fathers and mothers like escaping from a prison with the intention to liberate the other prisoners too.

1.7.5. Asceticism

The Greeks, who loved athletic competition, used the word askesis to refer to the demanding training that an athlete had to endure in order to gain the sign of victory. The image of the athlete in intense training, appealed to many who struggled to escape the world, to embrace the spiritual, to abandon life’s pleasures, and to reject ordinary values such as wealth and success. The person who embraced a life of self- denial was also an “ascetic,” an athlete in a spiritual struggle.[33]

But, we must understand that, the desert was not a gigantic gymnasium where athletes vied with one another in endurance tests. The monks went without sleep because they were watching for the Lord; they did not speak because they were listening to God; they fasted because they were fed by the Word of God. It was the end that mattered, the ascetic practices were only a means. The cell was central importance in their asceticism. ‘Sit in your cell and it will teach you everything,’ they said. The point was that unless a man could find God here, in this place, his cell, he would not find him by going somewhere else. [34]

The desert monks had a deep understanding of the connection between man’s spiritual and natural life; this gave them a concern for the body which was part of their life of prayer. They did not hold on to an anti- body attitude. But it takes body with great seriousness, understanding it to be a vital element of spiritual progress in need of proper ordering. Much of their advice was concerned with what to eat, where to sleep, where to live, what to do with gifts, and- very specially- what to do about demons.[35]

1.7.6. Obedience: a defense against Spiritual Pride

In the monastery, as Syncletica puts it, obedience was more important than asceticism. The holy Syncletia said, “I think that for those living in community obedience is a greater virtue than chastity, however perfect. Chastity carries within it the danger of pride, but obedience has within it the promise of humility.”[36] The desert monks considered obedience as the greatest defense against the spiritual pride, which is the classic temptation of the desert fathers and mothers. It includes humility and discernment.

2. The World of the Text

This paper aims to limit its exploration of the life of the fathers and mothers of the desert into that of St. Anthony of Egypt, one of the major figures among them. Athanasius’ Life of St.Anthony is our main guide to his long ascetic career. The document of primitive monastic life details the asceticism of evangelical perfection: withdrawal from the world, renunciation, solitude, work, and prayer, which are the foundation of the monk’s life even today.

2.1. St. Anthony of Egypt (About 251- 356)

Antony was a Coptic Christian, that is, one of the native Egyptians who had been dominated by Greek- speakers since Alexander the Great conquered Egypt more than five hundred years earlier. A heroic desert ascetic, Anthony is regarded as a paradigm of the early monastic movement and his Life, composed a year after his death by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, with its narratives of Anthony’s heroic struggles against the temptation and demons which beset him, has provided inspiration for centuries for writers, artists and musicians.[37] Though Athanasius mentions the existence of others leading a life of religion in the neighborhood of their villages, whose advice Anthony initially follows, he makes Anthony the real founder of Christian Monasticism as his frame as ascetic and thaumaturgy spreads and many hasten to imitate his example: and so from then there were monasteries and desert was made a city by monks, who left their own people and registered themselves for citizenship in the heavens. [38]

2.2.The Beginning of his Life

Anthony was the son of wellborn and devout parents. He was brought up so carefully by his family that he knew nothing apart from his parents and his home. While he was still a boy, he refused to learn to read and write or to join in the silly games of the other little children. Instead, he burned with a desire for God and lived a life of simplicity at home, as the Bible says of Jacob. He also often went with his parents to church but did not fool around as little children tend to, nor did he show a lack of respect as young boys often do. He concentrated on what was being read and put the useful precepts into practice in his way of life. He was never a nuisance to his family, as children usually are because of their desire for a variety of dainty foods. He did not long for the pleasures of more delicate food; he was content with just what he was given and asked for nothing more.[39]

2.2.1. His Inspirations

After their parents died (Antony was around eighteen years old), he took good care of his house and his sister. Before six months had passed, though, he was on his way to church one day when he thought about how the apostles had rejected everything to follow the Savior. He thought about how the early Christians had sold their possessions and laid the proceeds at the apostles’ feet to distribute to the needy. What great hope was stored up for those people in heaven! As he was thinking about these things, Antony entered the church. As he went into the church, he heard this Gospel being read: If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me (Matthew 19:21).[40]

When he heard this, Antony applied the Lord’s commandment to himself, believing that because of divine inspiration he had first remembered the incident and that this Scripture was being read aloud for his sake. He immediately went home and sold the possessions he owned. He possessed 300 fertile acres that he shared among his neighbors to prevent anyone from bearing a grudge against him or his sister. All the rest of his possessions, which were movable goods, he sold. The great profit he made from the sale of these goods he gave to the poor. He kept a little for his sister’s sake, because she seemed more vulnerable on account of her youth.[41]

On another occasion when Antony had gone to church and heard the Lord saying in the Gospel: Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own (Matthew 6:34), he shared all the rest of his wealth with the poor. He was not content to stay at home, but he left his sister to be brought up by some faithful and good women.[42] But again the evangelical word resounded in his soul, and went forth into the desert. [43]

2.2.2. His Retreat to the Desert

Having voluntarily given away his possessions to embark on a life of religious poverty, Antony’s career then follows a trajectory which leads him into a hermit, moving further and further away from human society. Initially, he apprentices himself to an old man and take advice from others who are living ascetic lives in the neighborhood of their villages. He then retreats to the tombs on the fringes of his village. At the age of thirty five, he abandons the inhabited zone of Egypt altogether and retires to the desert. There he remains another twenty years, growing stronger in his asceticism, finally retreating to an ‘inner mountain’ where he is able to live undisturbed in total solitude. [44]

2.2.3. Desert for Anthony: a Locus of Spiritual Transformation

Anthony became a hermit (eremite), from the Greek word eromos, which meant “desert”- he was literally a “desert dweller.”[45] The desert is crucial to his vision of monasticism: far removed from the activities of humans, it enables Anthony to pursue his life of solitary perfection largely undisturbed by worldly cares. Acknowledged by all to be the primary haunt of demons, the desert was also the backdrop to a continuation of Anthony’s titanic struggles against the demons who had regularly assailed him since he first embarked on a life of asceticism. Anthony’s constant prayer and intense asceticism- he ate and drank very little- led to be a spiritual transformation mirrored in the unaltered state of his body after nearly twenty years in a deserted fortress. Athanasius states that, Anthony’s body had maintained its former condition. Neither fat from lack of exercises nor emaciated from fasting and combat with demons.[46]

Thus the Life of Anthony created a picture of early monasticism in which the ideals of dispossession, solitude, and personal austerity were paramount and in which the desert became the locus of true religion. The desert was a graphic symbol of the emptiness of life and the otherness of God. The emptiness translated into purity of heart, a heart freed from sinful affections and centered on God. Thus the beatitude that best sums up desert spirituality is “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

2.2.4. His Ascetic Life in the Desert

Anthony earned his meager necessities by the work of his own hands, weaving reeds into baskets, rope, or mats. He prayed, fasted, and kept exhausting nightly vigils while he prepared from memory biblical passages in the Coptic language. When he ate his one meal a day, he consumes only bread, salt, and water. Bishop Athanasius described vividly Anthony’s harsh solitary life as a never-ending struggle against the urgings of his own flesh, the world’s enticements, and the devil himself who took visible shapes. Anthony was depicted as fighting lonely battles at night against demonic foes and erotic visions. Disciples followed him to learn the ascetic life at his feet. Ordinary people and other ascetics visited him for wise advice, for prophecies about their futures, and for healings. Athanasius wrote that Anthony left his solitude only twice for emergencies. During the Diocletian’s early fourth century persecution Anthony came to Alexandria, risking or maybe seeking martyrdom, to comfort imprisoned Christians. He came to Alexandria again during Athanasius’ struggles against Arianism to lend his great prestige to the pro- Nicene cause.[47]

2.3. His Constant Combat with the Devil: His Spiritual Struggles

Athanasius gives us the account of Anthony’s constant combat with the devil. The devil tried to stimulate in Antony a desire for material things, the short-lived honors of this world, the pleasures of different kinds of food, and many other attractions that belong to an indulgent life. He reminded Antony of the great difficulty in obtaining the life of virtue. He also reminded him of the body’s weakness. He created great confusion in Antony’s thoughts, hoping to call him back from his intentions. But when, as result of Antony’s prayers to God, the devil realized that he had been driven out by Antony’s faith in Christ’s sufferings, he seized the weapons with which he normally attacks all young people, using seductive dreams to disturb Antony.[48]

First he tried to unsettle him at night by means of hostile hordes and terrifying sounds, and then he attacked him by day with weapons that were so obviously his that no one could doubt that Antony was fighting against the devil. For the devil tried to implant dirty thoughts, but Antony pushed them away by means of constant prayer. The devil tried to titillate his senses by means of natural carnal desires, but Antony defended his whole body by faith, by praying at night, and by fasting. At night the devil would turn himself into the attractive form of a beautiful woman, omitting no detail that might provoke lascivious thoughts, but Antony called to mind the fiery punishment of hell. In this way he resisted the onslaught of lust. [49]

The devil without hesitation set before him the slippery path of youth that leads to disaster, but Antony concentrated on the everlasting torments of future judgment and kept his soul’s purity untainted throughout these temptations. All these things confounded the devil. A young man was now tricking this evil creature who thought he could become God’s equal, as if the devil himself were a wretched creature. A man made of flesh defeated the devil, who tries to defeat flesh and blood. The Lord, who became flesh for our sake and thus granted the body victory over the devil, was helping Antony. At last the devil found he was unable to destroy Antony and that Antony’s thoughts were always driving him back. So, crying and gnashing his teeth, he appeared to Antony in a form appropriate to his nature. An ugly dark boy threw himself down at Antony’s feet, weeping loudly and saying in a human voice, “I have led many astray, and I have deceived many, but you have defeated my efforts, just as other holy people have done.” When Antony asked him who was saying this, the devil replied, “I am the friend of sin. I have used many different kinds of shameful weapons to attack young people, and that is why I am called the spirit of sinfulness. How many of those who were determined to live chastely have I tricked! How many times have I persuaded those starting out hesitantly to return to their former foul ways. I am the one who caused the prophet to reproach the fallen, saying, The spirit of sinfulness has led you astray (cf. Hosea 4:12), and I am the one who made them fall. I am the one who has often tempted you, and always you have driven me away.” When the soldier of Christ heard this, he gave thanks to God and, strengthened by greater confidence in the face of the enemy, he said, “You are utterly despicable and contemptible; your blackness and your age are signs of weakness. You do not worry me any longer. The Lord is on my side to help me; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me” (Psalm 118:7). At the sound of Antony’s singing, the apparition immediately vanished.[50]

But Athanasius assures us that this was only Anthony’s first victory over the Devil. Throughout his life, Anthony had to set himself ready to fight the devil. The devil, like a roaring lion, was always watching for some way to pounce on Anthony.

2.4.The Seven Letters

An important source, until recently neglected, for the aims of early monasticism are the seven letters which Anthony composed or dictated for the benefit of others aiming to lead a religious life similar to his own. They reflect the context of his influence in what was clearly a growing Egyptian monastic movement; six contain very similar teachings, suggesting they were sent to six different groups of minks. [51]

2.4.1. Content of the Letters

The letters read as if it were intended as an introduction for the beginners in the ascetic life. Anthony’s letters make no reference to his retreat into the desert; instead, they provide a theoretical and theological basis for the ascetic life which he led there and which others wished to embrace. His ideas are broadly based on the teachings of the great third- century Alexandrian theologian Origen, who himself had been greatly influenced by Platonic thinking.[52]

2.4.1.1. ‘The Spirit of Repentance’

His teachings dwell on the need for repentance and purification and on the effects of the ‘spirit of repentance’ on spirit, mind and body. It enumerates repentance of the spirit, mind and of every member of the body: eyes, tongue, hand, belly, ‘what is below the belly’ and lastly the feet. Repentance, guided by the spirit, will ‘restore’ man to his original spiritual, rational essence. For Anthony, the life of an ascetic or monochos was a constant struggle for self- knowledge, self- purification and through these, the return of the soul to unity with God, in whose image it was created. According to Anthony, true knowledge- gnosis- is a return to one’s original state and once this is achieved the individual may aspire eventually to union with God.[53]

2.4.1.2.Soul’s Self Alienation from and return to God

Anthony’s ascetic thinning fits onto an Origenist framework of the soul’s alienation from and return to God. He expounds an Origenist history of the creation.[54] According the cosmology of Origen, before the creation of the world all rational beings had originally been equal and had chosen by their own actions whether they were to be saved or damned. Souls were originally spiritual beings or intelligences which had enjoyed a pre-existence in which they had exercised free will and grown cold in charity. As a result, they had fallen away from God and- depending on the extent of this self- willed alienation- become either angels, human souls or devils: the condition of a child at birth depended on the extent of this self- willed alienation of its soul from God as a spiritual being in the pre- existence. In his letter, Anthony claims that: the Holy Spirit sets them a rule for how to repent in their bodies and souls until he has taught them the way to return to God their creator.[55] In his letters, Anthony also refers to the important role of the mind, Plato’s and Origen’s nous, which will play an important part in the process of purifying the soul for ascent to God.

2.4.1.3. Soteriological Role of Christ

In his letters, he also stresses the soteriological role of Christ. Through the ‘written law’, the commandments given to Moses, but applicable to whole of human kind, humanity was given a second chance to achieve redemption and return to its original nature from which it had fallen through persistent sin. When this, too, failed, humanity was given a third chance to redeem itself, through the coming of Christ to earth. Jesus had taken on himself the form of man- in everything except sin- to ensure the salvation of humankind. Anthony understands the parousia, the presence of Christ, in both its historical sense and also in a spiritual sense. For him, the presence of Christ and his teaching will restore the unity shattered by man’s sinfulness and fall, creating communion with Christ through the receiving of the ‘Spirit of Adoption’. Yet, while it is possible for the individual to purify the body and receive knowledge of the ‘Spirit of Adoption’, lasting achievement of the vision of God is possible only after the death has freed the soul from the body.[56]

3. The World in front of the Text

The value of the literature of the desert wisdom is not to know it or to know about it but to know that it was lived and to incorporate its values into our own lives. [57] The spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers remains fresh and clear even today, and remarkably relevant regardless of one’s religious or spiritual disposition. The solitude these hermits envision, the safeguards they plan, the pitfalls they foresee, are universal. No one aspiring to solitude can ignore the insights of the desert hermits.[58]

In this last part of the paper, I would like to present two main concepts: Firstly to picture the desert of the modern man and secondly, to make my own personal reflection as a Carmelite Religious priest, on the desert spirituality.

3.1.The Desert of the Modern Man

In these days of fast-paced living, instant information and entertainment, what relevance do the words and stories of hermit desert dwellers, who lived almost two thousand years ago, have for us today? Anthony once said, “Who sits in solitude and is quite hath escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking and seeing: yet against one thing shall he continually battle: that is, his own heart.”[59] The predicament of the modern man is still worse in his battle against hearing, speaking and seeing and the continual battle in his heart as he is placed in a culture of excessive distraction, comfort, immediacy, the world of modern technology and social and visual Medias. At first, one might feel the heroic way of the desert giants is too far removed from the quest of the everyday seeker living in his world’s society. The fathers and mothers of the desert exemplify for us in so many, many ways a true hierarchy of values and balance in their practice of the virtuous life even in this modern age.

3.1.1. The Modern Man’s Locus in the Desert

The desert as symbol universalizes desert spirituality as a possibility for everyone. There is, however, still place for the physical desert in ordinary Christian life. The modern man is to find his own cell, a place of solitude, if one wants to return to his true sense of identity. We have to make a vow of quite, to ourselves. The abbot Anthony said, “Fish, if they tarry on fry land, die: even so monks that tarry outside their cell or abide with men of the world fall away from their own vow of quite. As a fish must return to the sea, so must we to our cell: lest it befall that by tarrying without, we forget the watch within.”[60] What is most evident and distinctive about these fathers and mothers is that they went apart, that they shunned a society that placed its values in the foods of this world and in prestige in their transient society. Most of us cannot go apart so radically, but we do need to separate ourselves from enslavement to this world’s values. We may have to be in the world, but we cannot be of the world. Yes, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but render unto God, as fully and completely as we can, the things that are God’s. This is the clearest witness of the men and women who fled from an increasingly worldly Church to the freedom of the desert. [61]

Each of us needs to crave out some time apart to escape from the bombardment of the world and come to our true self. Our place apart can be a corner of our room where bible or icon proclaims a presence. Our going apart could mean just turning our chair away from our desk with all its affairs, leaving the world behind for a few minutes while we rest in the Presence and know ourselves to be held in a great and tender love. Or we may find our going apart in a short walk to a church, a library, or a park- some spot where we can sit for a bit in the quietness and know something of the quies, quiet of the desert. [62]

More often retreats or “a day in the desert” are spent in more friendly spaces. An attractive pastoral setting calms the soul and provides the quiet that people need for facing the real issues of their life. God seems closer in pristine settings. One popular formula for such outings is the poustinia, a concept popularized by Catherine de Hueck Doherty. Poustinia means hermitage, and folks become poustinias for a day, bringing along only a Bible and a bit of bread and cheese. The poustinia can actually be a back room or the attic of one’s home, but there are advantages in going out to the woods or the seashore. Getting out in the country, breathing in the fresh air and fragrances of the meadows, walking around the lake or trudging along paths in hilly terrain, can be healthy physical exercise and spiritual refreshment. These are ways of slowing down, of refusing to be a couch potato and insuring the balance of mens sana in corpore sano (a sound mind in a sound body). Grace builds on nature, so a healthy body and soul are a good basis for the life of God in us. A good health regime works directly against anxious, workaholic tendencies or the equally bad habit of inertia and laziness.[63]

Quies, quiet – is the wonderful freedom to be able to rest quietly in the Lord, knowing that in him we have all. No longer tugged this way and that by our passions, emotions, uncontrolled desires- this is what was behind all the austerity of the desert, what motivated it and encouraged the monks and nuns to preserve it. They longed for the freedom to do what they really wanted to do, be who they wanted to be, without having constantly to struggle against thoughts- which for them included also all fantasies and feelings- that sought to master them and rule them.[64]

3.1.2. Finding out the True Identity

The way of the Abbas and Ammas of the desert makes it clear that finding our true identity is not the simple result of having a new insight. Reclaiming our true self rewires a total transformation. It requires a long and often slow process in which we enter more and more into the truth, that is, into a true relationship with God and, through him, with ourselves.[65]Everyone baptized into Christ, every true seeker, is called to the freedom of the children of God. This was essentially the quest of the desert: freedom- to be free to be oneself, to be who we truly are, to celebrate our oneness in our common humanity and in our call to share in the bliss of the divinity.[66] The modern man undergoes identity crises, as he is caught up in a culture which forces one to ‘participate’ in a compromising world. A horror of vacuums (as Spinoza uses the term), which pulls us under forces us to ‘participate’ and eventually satisfied with a ‘false identity’ of the self.

The wisdom of the desert monks compels the modern man to make this inward journey into one’s own desert within to find out the true identity of one’s self.

3.1.3. Quietness in the Holy Spirit

We cannot hope to free ourselves from the false self- that the values of this world encourage us to create, to escape the self- alienation that marks our lives from the womb and is constantly fostered by worldly society, if we do not at times and even regularly seek periods of quietness. This is the goal of all authentic meditation practices and especially of the centering prayer that comes to us from this desert tradition- the quietness that enables is to be Christ to the Father in Holy Spirit.[67] Further, the desert monks realized, as Amma Syncletica puts it: There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in the town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.[68]

3.1.3. Scripture Reading: Growing in the Mind of Christ

An eagerness for a ‘word of life’ should mark every Christian. Like the fathers and mothers of the desert, even in the modern world, we can find out time to turn to that ever- fruitful source, the Holy Scriptures. Anthony interprets the Bible not just as history but as spiritual, eternal message. The author of “History of the Monks of Egypt,” with perhaps a bit of enthusiastic exaggeration, tells of the monks and nuns’ eagerness in this regard: “And nowhere have I seen such meditation upon Holy Writ or understanding of it, so such discipline of sacred learning: well might you judge each one of them a doctor in the wisdom of God.”[69] A daily meeting with the Lord in the Gospels is perhaps the surest way for each one of us to grow into the mind of Christ.

3.1.4. Connectedness to the Society

One cannot experience God Anthony the Great said, “My life is with my brother.”[70] He also said, “That with our neighbor there is life and death: for if we do good to our neighbor, we shall do good to God. But if we scandalize our brother, we sin against Christ.”[71] When one desert father told another of his plans to “ shut himself into his cell and refuse the face of men, that he might perfect himself,” the second monk replied, “ Unless thou first amend thy life going to and fro amongst men, thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone.”[72]

It would, however, be a mistake to think that the desert fathers and desert mothers only went to the desert for their own salvation. This was certainly an important aspect of their monastic life, but it was never disconnected from a deep sense of service to the larger Christian community. Their struggle was not just for themselves but also for their fellow Christians. They considered the desert as the place to which the demons withdrew after their destructive work in the cities and towns. They went to the desert to enter into a direct and unambiguous combat in the name of the whole church. The hermits of the desert were hermits for others.[73]

The men and women of the desert wanted the liberating force of the Spirit to have the greatest possible freedom to work in their lives. So they went apart, separating themselves from the society in the world. Most of the fathers and mothers went so far as to shun even the society of fellow monks or nuns in the monastic communities that were coming into being in this period. They went apart to their solitary cells. But they were not haters of their fellow humans. It is noteworthy that, the core of desert spirituality is centered on compassion, care and mercy. As examples of these traits, the men and women of the desert were absolutely outstanding. The fathers and mothers showed an immensely loving and truly touching care not only for the newcomers who came into their midst and for the venerable ancients among them, but for any troubled one. One cannot help but be touched by the ready in which these desert dwellers set aside their own much- loved practices and their precious solitude to welcome these visitors and make them as comfortable as their limited means and inhospitable setting allowed. [74]

3.2. My Personal Application of the Desert Spirituality

At first, when I started to read the wisdom of the desert fathers, I felt that I am looking at a galaxy from far away. It found that it was beyond the capacity of my imagination to conceive of their time and culture. But then, slowly I understood that their sayings speak to deep human yearnings and to perennial human difficulties. I know that I still stumble in the practice of living faithfully as a Carmelite Religious Priest, lost in the same compulsive culture, in which I am forced to participate in this compromising world around me, and I need support. I understood that, I am not alone. The Abbas and Ammas know intimately these movements of the heart and soul, and they encourage me, they confront me and they guide me now.

3.2.1. The Need of Radical Displacement

As I went on reading about the changes in the society which made these saintly men to a voluntary displacement to the desert, I too understood that, there is a growing secularism within me which makes me difficult to walk with maturity amid the many temptations, distractions, and comforts offered to me by the world, losing myself in them, selling out my message to the world in compromise.

As a Carmelite Religious priest, for the last fourteen years of my life, I was totally involved in the ministry of preaching and pastoral counseling. My ministry reached up to the people of God in the parishes, to the priests and religious in the dioceses and different religious congregations. I kept myself involved in giving spiritual talks in Television Channels and Radio Channels. I authored book on the family spirituality. But I was feeling within myself, the ‘horror of vacuum’ which pulls me under and forces me to participate in the compromising culture, and made me confused with what I am truly called for. I understood that, I too need a voluntary displacement, a radical move.

3.2.2. My Desert, the Inner Geography

I feel that the desert may also be understood as an inner geography of desolation and abandonment; it is the place, perhaps even in the midst of others, where I am most alone. It is the valley of my deepest solitude. I think anyone who experiences some aspect of desertedness, loneliness, brokenness, breakdown or break- up- whether emotionally, physically or socially- will connect with the profound humanity of the desert fathers and mothers. The perennial message of these first Christian monks concerns the necessity of emptiness; the monks show me, by their examples, how to confront the chaotic impulses of the soul which drive me away from that still point where God is waiting. As I read Henry Nouwan, I realize that finding one’s own desert is “creating an inner space for God.”[75] I cannot avoid going to this desert if I want to make God my only concern.

The desert might mean very different things for different people but simply staying in the murkiness and ambiguity of one’s daily life, one come to know neither God nor the demon and one’s life remain absurd and blind. One never comes to see reality as it really is and one builds up an inner and outer world of illusions. And for me, I felt being lost in that world of illusion and there is a great need of creating that inner space for God, by finding out times of withdrawal from my ‘ministry oriented’ busy life. There is a need for Quies, quiet time, the wonderful freedom to be able to rest quietly in the Lord, knowing that in him we have all.

I read Henry Carrigen,[76] who presents the idea that being in the desert means to find rest in the divine silence. He says, “I also find that the insistence of the desert monks on practicing silence, solitude and stillness a kind of medicine for our over-heated, frenetic culture. Our lives are harried, and we have no sense of being able to rest in the divine silence, the Source from which we come and to which we will return. When I am teaching this material, I always begin and end the class with simply sitting in silence. Inevitably, participants remark that it is like getting a drink when you are really thirsty, so thirsty you had forgotten what water tasted like.”

Thus, the Desert fathers and mothers have taught me to set aside time for quiet. There are so many pressures that lead me to be fragmented. The tradition does not deny the pressures. The desert spirituality tells me that God is present even in those daily struggles. I can remember that more readily if I have taken time for quiet.

3.3.3. “Be in the World and not of the World”: Human Dimension of the Desert Life

Should I literally go to the desert and become solitary? I asked this realistic question to myself. We live in a time in which so much polarization has happened in both the national political arena, and within the church. The desert monks invite us to look beyond all the divisive fussing — not to deny it, but to see it as surface reality. They invite us to gaze more deeply, especially in the most stretched or strained circumstances.

I was reminded of the gospel saying: “Be in the world and not of the world.” Knowing that in the abstract is one thing. Living it out in the knotty gritty of daily rounds is another. The human dimension of the desert life is common to all of us. We are made for relationship with God and one another. The desert fathers and mothers help us to find ways to gently pay attention to God’s presence with us in all places and through all things. And they teach us to grow in the awareness that we are each unique, remarkable parts of a vast, vital, interconnected cosmos. We are reminded that we ARE one — that is reality from God’s perspective.[77] Therefore, my task is to align my life and life in such a way that I participate in that reality.

3.3.4. Seeing the World as Theophany of God

As I pondered the life and sayings of the desert fathers, especially, those of St. Anthony of Egypt, I understand that, they have initiated a new way of understanding the world and cosmos as ‘wholeness’ of God’s love. The conversed with the nature unceasingly. They found their ‘true self’ in the Creator, as connected to the creation. We see their utter confidence that no matter what, this world belongs to God, is loved by God, and that each person, each creature, each aspect of the created order, is an expression of God’s love. I am, because I belong to the creation of a loving Creator.

Conclusion

The stories of the desert men and women are life- giving stories. The struggles in the journey of the desert fathers touch our own spiritual concerns. They respond to our disturbing feelings, anger and our undesirable desires for pleasure and revenge. The practices that the desert offers us are down to earth, simple ways of allowing ourselves to be reminded that we are always living in the Love which creates, redeems and sustains us. The Abbas and Ammas draw us away from the assumption that technique is what matters. They remind us that this is a way of life.

They point to humility and a nonjudgmental way of life. They compare words with works, speaking with silence, and prayer with thoughts. They offer concrete suggestions about the best way to be a teacher and about how to relate to human rules. They stress the importance of service to the neighbor and they show the fruits of obedience, prayer, and simple trust in God. Undergirding all these concrete hints, suggestions, and counsels is the constant reminder of God’s loving and merciful presence in our lives. [78] The desert fathers and mothers act as guides to the interior life. In their sayings and in their lives, they counsel humility, prayer, patience, and introspection. The desert fathers teach us that deep contemplative practice provides eternal wisdom for our daily lives.[79] Thus the stories from the desert become stories for all of us who seek God with sincere heart.

End Note

[1] Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxi.
[2] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[3] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: Blackwell publishing, 1977), 3.
[4]Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[5] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191.
[6] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 196.
[7] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), xv.
[8] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 196.
[9] “Abbey of the Arts, Trans-Formative Living through Contemplative and Expressive Arts,” Abbey of the Arts, accessed April 19, 2016, http://abbeyofthearts.com/books/desert-mothers-and-fathers-early-christian-wisdom-sayings-annotated-explained/.
[10]Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xiv.
[11]Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xiv- xv.
[12] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), 112.
[13] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xiv
[14] Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin, Vintage Spiritual Classics (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), xiv
[15] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979),xv.
[16] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xv.
[17] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), 115.
[18] Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxvi.
[19] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), 114.

[20] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xvi.
[21]Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[22] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[23] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[24] D Keith Innes, “Wisdom from the Desert – the Desert Fathers and Mothers,”, accessed April 19, 2016,http://www.ringmerchurch.org.uk/keith2/wisdes.html.
[25] D Keith Innes, “Wisdom from the Desert – the Desert Fathers and Mothers,”, accessed April 19, 2016,http://www.ringmerchurch.org.uk/keith2/wisdes.html.
[26]Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxiii- xxiv.
[27] Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxiv.
[28] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[29] D Keith Innes, “Wisdom from the Desert – the Desert Fathers and Mothers,”, accessed April 19, 2016,http://www.ringmerchurch.org.uk/keith2/wisdes.html
[30] Yushi Nomura, Desert wisdom, Orbis Books, New York, year, p. xvii
[31]Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975),xxv
[32] D Keith Innes, “Wisdom from the Desert – the Desert Fathers and Mothers,”, accessed April 19, 2016,http://www.ringmerchurch.org.uk/keith2/wisdes.html
[33] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191.
[34] Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxv.

[35]Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxv.
[36] “The Paradise of the Desert Fathers,”, accessed April 19, 2016,http://www.coptic.net/articles/paradiseofdesertfathers.txt.
[37] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 2.
[38] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 3.
[39] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 3.
[40] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 3-4.
[41] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 4.
[42] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 4.
[43] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xiv
[44] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 3.
[45] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 197.
[46] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 3.
[47] Joseph H. Lynch, Early Christianity: A Brief History (Yew York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191.
[48] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 7-8.
[49] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 7-8.
[50] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 7-8.
[51] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 4.
[52] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 4.
[53] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 5.
[54] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 5.
[55] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 5.
[56] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 5.
[57] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xiii
[58] “Hermitary,” http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/desert.html© 2004, the hermitary and Meng-hu.(accessed April 14, 2016).
[59]Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin, Vintage Spiritual Classics (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 69
[60] Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin, Vintage Spiritual Classics (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 69
[61] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xvi
[62] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xvii
[63] Ernest E. Larkin, O.Carm, “Desert Spirituality,” Review for Religious 61, no. 4 (July/August, 2002): 364-74, accessed April 20, 2016, http://carmelnet.org/larkin/larkin024.pdf.
[64] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xxi
[65] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xvi.
[66] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xvi
[67] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xxi

[68] “Hermitary,” http://www.hermitary.com/solitude/desert.html© 2004, the hermitary and Meng-hu.(accessed April 14, 2016).
[69] Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Age (New York: blackwell publishing, 1977), 5.
[70]Benedicta Ward, trans., Cistercian Studies Series, rev. ed., vol. 59, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: the Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984, ©1975), xxiv.
[71] Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin, Vintage Spiritual Classics (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 69
[72] Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, s.v. “Desert Fathers,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers (accessed 1 April 2016, at 04:05).
[73] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xvi.
[74] Basil Pennington, “Preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics Edition” in The Desert Fathers, Vintage Books, New York, 1998, p. xvii- xviii
[75] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), 115.

[76] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), xx-xxi.

[77] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), xx-xxi.
[78] Yushi Nomura, trans., Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books, 1979), xvi- xvii.

[79] Henry l. Carrigan, jr., The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), xx-xxi.

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Author: Fr. Antony Thomas Ittikunnath OCD