experience flows, instead of being Him Whom we adore,
worship, and are prepared to serve, whatever the cost to us.
Such an attitude was unknown to the Desert, moreover, the
Desert repudiated it as sacrilegious: the experiential knowl-
edge which God in His infinite Love and condescension gives
to those who seek Him with their whole heart is always a
gift; its essential, abiding quality is its gratuity: it is an act of
Divine Love and cannot therefore be deserved. The first
Beatitude stands at the threshold of the Kingdom of God:
'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
God' - blessed are those who have understood that they are
nothing in themselves, possess nothing which they dare call
'their own'. If they are 'something' it is because they are
loved of God and because they know for certain that their
worth in God's eyes can be measured by the humiliation of
the Son of God, His life, the Agony of the Garden, the dere-
liction of the Cross - the Blood of Christ. To be, to be pos-
sessed of the gift of life and to be granted all that makes its
richness means to be loved by God; and those who know
this, free from any delusion that they can exist or possess
apart from this mystery of love have entered into the
Kingdom of God which is the Kingdom of Love. What then
shall be their response to this generous, self-effacing, sacri-
ficial Love? An endeavour to respond to love for love, as
there is no other way of acknowledging love. And this
response is the ascetic endeavour, which can be summed up
in the words of the Lord Jesus Christ: 'Renounce yourself,
take up your Cross and follow Me'. To recognize one's own
nonentity and discover the secret of the Kingdom is not
enough: the King of Love must be enthroned in our mind
and heart, take undivided possession of our will and make of
our very bodies the Temples of the Holy Ghost. This small
particle of the Cosmos, which is our soul and body must be
conquered, freed by a lifelong struggle from enslavement to
the world and to the devil, freed as if it were an occupied
country and restored to its legitimate King. 'Render unto
Cesar that which is Cesar's and to God that which is God's':
the coins of the earthly kings bear their mark, Man bears the
imprint of God's Image. He belongs to Him solely and
totally; and nothing, no effort, no sacrifice is too great to
render to God what is His. This is the very basis of an ascetic
understanding of life.
https://archive.org/stream/ApophthegmataPatrumTheSayingsOfTheDesertFathers/Apophthegmata%20Patrum-The%20Sayings%20of%20the%20Desert%20Fathers_djvu.txt