Author Topic: The Fathers of the Desert (Read 53468 times)

poche · « **Reply #135 on:** October 07, 2016, 05:27:13 AM »

The angel when giving the rules of monasticism to St. Pachomius said to him:
"... He laid down that in the course of the day they should make twelve
prayers, and at the lamp-lighting time twelve, and in the nightly vigils
twelve, and at the ninth hour three. When the multitude goes to eat, he laid
down that a psalm should be sung before each prayer. As Pachomius objected to
the angel that the prayer were too few ..."

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #136 on:** October 20, 2016, 11:19:52 PM »

The same Abba Macarius while he was in Egypt discovered a man who owned a
beast of burden engaged in plundering Macarius' goods. So he came up to the
thief as if he was a stranger and he helped him to load the animal. He saw him
off in great peace of soul saying, 'We have brought nothing into this world,
and we cannot take anything out of the world.' (1Tim.6.7) 'The Lord gave and
the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' (Job 1.21)

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #137 on:** November 08, 2016, 11:14:12 PM »

Abba Macarius was asked, 'How should one pray?' The old man said 'There is no
need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one's hands
and say, "Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy." And if the conflict
grows fiercer say, "Lord, help!" He knows very well what we need and he shews
us his mercy.'

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #138 on:** November 11, 2016, 11:46:34 PM »

A brother went to Abba Matoes and said to him, 'How is it that the monks of
Scetis did more thatn the Scriptures required in loving their enemies more
than themselves?' Abba Matoes said to him, 'As for me I have not yet managed
to love those who love me as I love myself.'

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #139 on:** November 15, 2016, 11:10:14 PM »

It was said of Abba Silvanus that at Scetis he had a dijsciple called Mark
whose obedience was great. He was a scribe. The old man loved him because of
his obedience. He had eleven other disciples who were hurt because he loved
him more than them. When they knew this, the elders were sorry about it and
they came one day to him to reproach him about it. Taking them with him, he
went to knock at each cell, saying, 'Brother so and so, come here; I need
you,' but none of them came immediately. Coming to Mark's cell, he knocked and
said, 'Mark.' Hearing the old man's voice, he jumped up immediately and the
old man sent him off to serve and said to the elders, 'Fathers, where are the
other brothers?' Then he went into Mark's cell and picked up his book and
noticed that he had begun to write the letter 'omega' ["w"] but when he had
heard the old man, he had not finished writing it. Then the elders said,
'Truly, abba, he whom you love, we love too and God loves him.'

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #140 on:** November 17, 2016, 11:46:25 PM »

Abba Poemen said of Abba Nisterus that he was like the serpent of brass which
Moses made for the healing of the people: he possessed all virtue and without
speaking, he healed everyone.

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #141 on:** November 25, 2016, 11:22:26 PM »

Abba Xanthias said, 'The thief was on the cross and he was justified by a
single word; and Judas who was counted in the number jof the apostles lost all
his labour in one single night and descended from heaven to hell. Therefore,
let no-one boast of his good works, for all those who trust in themselves
fall.'

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

poche · « **Reply #142 on:** December 03, 2016, 01:46:25 AM »

The fourth-century ascetic flight to the desert indelibly marked Christianity. The
faithful who did not embrace the austerity of the desert admired those who did
and sought them out for counsel and consolation. The 'words' the monks gave
were collected and passed around among those too far away or too feeble to make
the trek themselves - or lived generations later. Previously available only in
fragments, these Sayings of the Desert Fathers are now accessible in its entirety in
English for the first time.

https://archive.org/stream/ApophthegmataPatrumTheSayingsOfTheDesertFathers/Apophthegmata%20Patrum-The%20Sayings%20of%20the%20Desert%20Fathers_djvu.txt

poche · « **Reply #143 on:** December 13, 2016, 10:59:40 PM »

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers has been for centuries an
inspiration to those Christians who strove for an uncom-
promising obedience to the word and to the spirit of the
Gospel; yet the modern reader, used to an intellectual, dis-
cursive way of exposition and also to greater emotional effu-
sions in mystical literature may find this direct challenge
difficult to face and even more difficult to assimilate and to
apply to everyday life. This prompts me to give here a few
explanations and to try to bring out some of the features
which seem to me essential in the attitude to life of these
giants of the spirit.

The first thing that strikes a reader is the insistence in
the stress laid on the ascetic endeavour. Modern man seeks
mainly for 'experience' - putting himself at the centre of
things he wishes to make them subservient to this aim; too
often, even God becomes the source from which the highest

https://archive.org/stream/ApophthegmataPatrumTheSayingsOfTheDesertFathers/Apophthegmata%20Patrum-The%20Sayings%20of%20the%20Desert%20Fathers_djvu.txt

poche · « **Reply #144 on:** December 18, 2016, 12:42:44 AM »

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

poche · « **Reply #145 on:** December 21, 2016, 12:06:27 AM »

Yet many will be surprised by the insistence of the Sayings
on what seem to be incredible feats of physical endurance.
Are these at the centre of a spiritual life? Why not tell us
more about the secret, inner life of these men and women?
Because the life of the Spirit cannot be conveyed, except in
images and analogies which are deceptive: those who know
do not need them, and those who do not know are only led
by them to partake imaginatively, but not really, in a world
which to many is still out of reach. Many can live either by
the Word of God or by deriving his precarious existence from
the earth, which ultimately will claim back what is its own;
the more one is rooted in God, the less one depends on the
transitory gifts of the earth. To describe to what degree the
dwellers of the Desert were free from our usual necessities is
the only way we possess to convey both how perfectly
rooted they were in the life-giving realm of God, and also
how different the world of the Spirit is from what we ima-
gine it to be when we confuse the highest achievements of
the psyche with the life which God the Holy Spirit pours
into the soul and body of the faithful; 'among those born of
women there has risen no one greater than John the Baptist,
yet he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater
than he'.

The men and women of whom the Sayings speak were
Christians who received the challenge of the Gospel with all
earnestness and wanted to respond to it uncomprisingly, as
generously as God, with their whole selves. Some built their
whole life on one Word of the Gospel, some on one glimpse
of Eternity seen in the eyes, the behaviour, the whole
personality of an Elder. Men of high rank in the world and of
high culture came to monks without any worldly knowledge
because 'they knew not the first letters of the book of Wis-
dom which the others possessed'.

https://archive.org/stream/ApophthegmataPatrumTheSayingsOfTheDesertFathers/Apophthegmata%20Patrum-The%20Sayings%20of%20the%20Desert%20Fathers_djvu.txt

poche · « **Reply #146 on:** January 04, 2017, 11:06:19 PM »

We have a great deal to learn from their integrity and their
unrelenting courage, from their vision of God - so Holy, so
great, possessed of such a love, that nothing less than one's whole being could respond to it. These were men and
women who had reached a humility of which we have no
idea, because it is not rooted in an hypocritical or contrived
depreciation of self, but in the vision of God, and a humbling
experience of being so loved. They were ascetics, ruthless to
themselves, yet so human, so immensely compassionate not
only to the needs of men but also to their frailty and their
sins; men and women wrapped in a depth of inner silence of
which we have no idea and who taught by 'Being', not by
speech: 'If a man cannot understand my silence, he will never
understand my words.' If we wish to understand the sayings
of the Fathers, let us approach them with veneration, silenc-
ing our judgments and our own thoughts in order to meet
them on their own ground and perhaps to partake ultimately
- if we prove able to emulate their earnestness in the search,
their ruthless determination, their infinite compassion - in
their own silent communion with God.

https://archive.org/stream/ApophthegmataPatrumTheSayingsOfTheDesertFathers/Apophthegmata%20Patrum-The%20Sayings%20of%20the%20Desert%20Fathers_djvu.txt