No writing about the Desert Fathers is as compelling as the apophthegmata themselves.

 There were also divisions among Christians over the question of poverty. Christ’s message was undeniably focused on the poor, and many Christians of the apostolic age had sold their worldly goods and lived in communities awaiting the second coming. But, as the generations passed after his crucifixion, they found it increasingly hard to live in daily expectation of his arrival on clouds of glory and Christians came to accept that they had to settle down to a possibly long period of coexistence with the world. So there had to be accommodations to its ways. During the second and third centuries the early Churches came to acknowledge legitimate wealth, power, even luxury as not necessarily being contrary to their faith. Some individual Christians were not prepared to make such accommodations. They seperated themselves from society and became solitaries.

They were the outsiders. They provoked the hostility and resentment of their contemporaries and the satirical malice of historians. They inspired some of the finest invective of Edward Gibbon:

… the Ascetics, who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the Gospel, were inspired by the savage enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal and God as a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business and the pleasures of the age; abjured the use of wine, of flesh and of marriage; chastised their body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as the price of eternal happiness.4

When, almost sixty years ago, Helen Waddell introduced the writings of the Desert Fathers to the twentieth century, she referred to the ‘slow-dropping malice of Gibbon’ in his account of their effect on civilisation and went on to quote ‘the more humane distress of Lecky’:

There is perhaps no phase in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, distorted and emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural affection, spending his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious self-torture and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings of Plato and Cicero and the lives of Socrates and Cato.5William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838–1903) was an Irish historian and philosopher who wrote a History of Rationalism, published in 1865. A lover of civilised values and champion of eighteenth-century rationalism, Lecky was offended by the rejection of the social and philosophical priorities of the Age of Reason. He was, as we shall see, an inaccurate and unintentially comic observer of the Desert Fathers.6

As for Gibbon, whose distinction as a writer of ancient history is unassailable, it may be fairly observed that he was temperamentally antipathetic to asceticism: he detested enthusiasm in any context; he was fond of good food, wine and fine clothes. Towards those who rejected the tangible pleasures of the flesh in favour of the insubstantial searchings of the spirit, he was simply uncomprehending. But the case he makes, that the Desert Fathers tortured themselves in this life in order to win a comfortable billet in the next, has been widely accepted as a true analysis of Christian asceticism and deserves an answer.

There were, of course, the extremists. We shall come across stories of them trying to outdo each other in discomfort and deprivation. But there are as many stories cautioning against heroic austerities as there are celebrating them. And the historian Palladius, ‘a faithful Boswell to the more austere saints and a whole-hearted admirer of virtues not his own’,7 who records them was more a teller of tales than a careful scholar. It is significant that Simon Stylites, so often the exemplar of historians who dismiss the Desert Fathers as half-crazed fanatics, was expelled from his monastery for excessive austerities, found distasteful by his contemporaries among the monks, and only acquired a reputation in the modern age through the contempt of Gibbon.

There is no doubt that the hermits chose a life of solitude and hardship because they believed it would help their spiritual progress. The ultimate aim of that progress was the salvation of their souls, and a frequent question from the monk to the elder was ‘What must I do to be saved?’ It is in this question that we most frequently misunderstand them. We are all heirs to Gibbon in our tendency to think that this question means ‘What shall I do now to be saved after death?’ But the soteria, the ‘salvation’, the monks are seeking is not a secure place in an eternity of heavenly bliss which begins when they die. It is, first of all, a state which begins in the present life and continues uninterrupted by death. When a man meets God it is at the point where eternity intersects with time, and, for these Christians, the awakening of the divine in man places him on the plane of eternity.

Secondly, this activation, through the grace of God, of man’s divine spark steers him towards perfection – in the Greek sense of completion or the achievement of his natural end. This is the ‘salvation’ which the hermits seek. It signifies, here and now, integrity, health, freedom from fault and illness. So to be ‘saved’ is not just to escape hell – it is to escape, in this life, everything that leads to hell: sin, the devil and the ‘world’ in the biblical sense. Salvation is at the same time eternal happiness and a state of peace and well-being in the present world through the health of the soul.

This is why the hermits’ apophthegmata – the stories of the Desert Fathers’ deeds and sayings – can speak so movingly to us today down the centuries and across such a wide cultural gap. They deal with essentially human virtues and follies. Paradoxically, these men and women who fled from human society developed, in their solitude, a uniquely subtle awareness of human psychology. They lay bare the self-deceptions we all practise. They teach us why it is important to be self-aware and how we can come to know ourselves. The sins they struggle against are the thoughts and deeds that undermine human integrity, and the methods they use in the fight are ones which can lead us all to spiritual and psychological health.

Although their spiritual experiences were frequently intense, the Fathers were reticent about them. The stories we read are more to do with how they should treat each other. Helen Waddell writes: ‘Of the depth of their spiritual experience they had little to say: but their every action showed a standard of values that turns the world upside down. It was their humility, their gentleness, their heartbreaking courtesy that was the seal of their sanctity to their contemporaries, far beyond abstinence, or miracle, or sign.’8

Their lives, though for the most part conducted in isolation, were remarkably similar in domestic conditions. The hermitage would be a hut of stone with a roof made from branches. It had a door which could be closed and locked, for we often read of visitors knocking there. Inside was a reed stool on which to sit when working, a reed mat on which to sleep, and a sheepskin. This last item seems to have been the only one which a hermit would carry away if changing locations. In fact some of the stories mention that a hermit took up his sheepskin and left the cell to indicate that the move was a permanent one. There was a lamp or candlestick, a jar of oil for the lamp and one of wine for visitors. There would also be another jar of brackish water for the hermit to drink and in which to steep the palm leaves to soften them for working. The preserved food would be dried peas and lentils, and these, after soaking, could be cooked and seasoned with herbs from an outside garden.

In these conditions men and women lived in solitude for many years, sometimes in groups whose caves were separate but within easy walking distance of each other, meeting for a liturgy on Sundays but otherwise seeing only the occasional visitor or young monk in search of the Way. Some built up a reputation for their austerities; others inspired followers through their wisdom. The latter were called ‘abbas’, a world close to the Hebrew ‘rabbi’ or teacher. Antony was the most famous, largely because of the widely popular Life, written in Greek and acclaimed as the work of St Athanasius. There were others whose words we shall meet below. Arsenius, born in Rome of a noble family, who held high office at the imperial court in Constantinople before fleeing the world in AD 394 was said to have worn the most splendid clothes in the court and the vilest in the desert. Moses, in contrast, was a black slave who became a monk and retired to the desert near Petra in 475. Of John Colobus little is known except that he was a dwarf; and Poemen’s identity is obscured by the fact that, as almost three hundred stories survive with his name attached, that name must refer to at least two different Fathers. The conditions of the desert were so harsh and dangerous that women could hardly survive there, but Theodora lived in solitude as a monk for many years and was only discovered to be a woman after her death, when her body was being prepared for burial.

Most of the Desert Fathers are known only from the apophthegmata about them which have survived. These stories of how they dealt with each other and the problems they faced have come down to us with all the unvarnished directness of camp-fire tales. They are not carefully edited illustrations of some overarching theory about the human condition. They often seem inconsistent and contradictory, because, as the Fathers always insisted, the advice they gave was always to a particular individual facing a unique situation. It was never intended to have a universal application. And yet the human condition brings us all into situations that echo each other and we can draw profit from a wisdom that throws light on our own.

No writing about the Desert Fathers is as compelling as the apophthegmata themselves. These were written down towards the end of the fourth century and they form, for all their fragmentary and episodic qualities, the most ancient and valuable record of early Christian monasticism. By the fifth century, they had already begun to be collected in two different ways: by author and by topic. Since we know little of the authors, it seemed preferable to select and present them here in groups which deal with the subjects of greatest importance to the Fathers and to ourselves. I have translated them as directly and simply as I could,9 trying to preserve their effect, which has been described as ‘like the flash of a signalling lamp – brief, arresting and intense’.10It is an effect which can, it seems, have revolutionary and far-reaching effects on those exposed to the Desert Fathers. Palladius, whose account is the most important source document for their history,11 prefaces it with a prayer the present reader may like to bear in mind:

May this account, then, be a sacred reminder for the good of your soul and a constant medicine against forgetfulness. May it dispel the drowsiness that arises from senseless desire, indecision, and pettyness in necessary affairs. May it free your character of hesitation and meanness of spirit. May it rid you of excitability, disorders, worldly conceit, and irrational fear. May it improve your never-failing desire and your pious intention, and may it be a guide both to you and to those who are with you, not only your subordinates but your rulers as well.

Solitude

For the Desert Fathers, solitude was not merely an escape from distractions; it was a teaching presence. To remain silent and alone is to be open to influences that are crowded out of an occupied life. These influences, some felt, were enough to bring about spiritual health. We may well have a duty to our fellow human beings, and good works are praiseworthy; but self-knowledge can only come through solitude.

There is a story of three ascetics who became monks. One gave himself the task of reconciling enemies according to the words ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers’; another committed himself to visiting the sick; and the third went off to the desert. The first wore himself out trying to keep men from fighting each other and, disillusioned, went to visit the one who cared for the sick. He found that he too had become discouraged by the unending task and was ready to give it up. So they went to the desert to see how the third was getting on. They told him their problems and asked if he had made any progress. He was silent for a moment and then poured some water into a vase and said: ‘Just look at this water’. They did, and it was murky. A little later he said to them: ‘See now how the water is cleared’. And they could see their faces in it like a mirror. And he said to them: ‘This is like the man who lives among other men and because of their turbulence cannot see his own sins, yet when he lives alone, especially in the desert, he can see his failings.’

*

A brother came to Scete to ask for a word from Abbas Moses. He said: ‘Go and stay in your cell; your cell will teach you everything.’

*

A brother asked Abbas Hierax: ‘How shall I be saved?’ The Abbas said: ‘Stay seated in your cell. If you are hungry, eat. If you are thirsty, drink. Do not speak ill of anyone and you will be saved.’

*

An abbas said one day to Abbas Ammonas: ‘I am troubled because I can’t make up my mind between three ideas: to wander in the deserts, to set out for a foreign land where nobody knows me, or to shut myself up in a cell without seeing anybody and only eating on alternate days.’ The Abbas replied: ‘None of the three is right for you. Just sit in your cell and eat a little every day and keep continually in your heart the words of the publican12 and you will be saved.’

*

Abbas Moses said: ‘The man who flees man is like a ripe grape, the one who lives among men is like a green grape’.

But to flee from society in order to escape its problems is not the solution. Solitude is not for the simply unsociable:

Abbas Lucius once said to Abbas Longin: ‘If you haven’t first conducted yourself well among men, you won’t conduct yourself well in solitude’.

*

An abbas said: “It is better to live among the crowd and keep a solitary life in your spirit than to live alone with your heart in the crowd’.

Sometimes, in spite of all his efforts, the fame of a solitary would make him attractive to the rich and famous. Then extreme steps had to be taken:

A nobleman came one day to see Abbas Simon. Hearing of his approach, the hermit girded himself and went out to prune a palm tree. As the party arrived, they shouted: ‘Old man, where is the anchorite?’ He answered: ‘There’s no anchorite here’. So they went away.

*

Another time, another nobleman came to see him. The servants came before and said to the abbas: ‘Abbas, get ready, the nobleman, who has heard of you, comes for your blessing.’ And he said: ‘Yes, I’ll get ready’. He put on his patched garment and, taking bread and cheese in his hands, sat at the entrance enthusiastically eating. When the nobleman arrived with his train, he scorned him, saying: ‘Is this the anchorite we’ve heard of?’ And they turned and went back home.

*

The local Governor heard one day about Abbas Moses and came to Scete to see him. Somebody told the Abbas so he fled into the marsh. Now the Governor and his party came across him there and asked him: ‘Tell us, old man, where is the cell of Abbas Moses?’ And he said: ‘What do you want with him? He’s a madman’. So the Governor left. Later he went to the brothers and told them what had happened and they asked him what this man was like. When he replied that he was scruffy, large and black, they told him who it was: the Abbas Moses.

*

The blessed Archbishop Theophilus came to see Abbas Arsenius once with a nobleman and asked the Abbas for a word of profit. After remaining silent for a time, the Abbas asked him: ‘And if I give you one, will you keep it?’ They promised to keep it. Then the Abbas said to them: ‘Wherever you hear that Arsenius is – stay away’.

*

One of the Fathers came to visit Abbas Arsenius and as soon as he knocked at the door the Abbas opened, thinking it was one of the servants. When he saw it was somebody else, he threw himself on his face on the ground. The visitor said: ‘Get up, Abbas, so that I may greet you’, but the Abbas lay on the ground and replied: ‘I shan’t get up till you have gone away’. After having entreated him for a long time the visitor left and he got up.

Part of the authority of the hermit issues from his situation as a separate and uninvolved individual outside the boundaries of society. He is aware of, but not swayed by, the pressures that shape the lives of others. He is the outsider – the stranger. So he can arbitrate in situations where disputing parties are looking for impartiality. This was not, of course, an authority the hermits sought; it became an embarrasment to them and many had to uproot themselves to escape the demands for them to act as judge in the lives of others. But the need to live as a stranger was often stressed:

Abbas Poemen said: ‘If a monk masters his belly and his tongue and lives the life of a stranger, you can be confident – he will not die’.

*

Somebody said to Abbas Pistos: ‘Father, what does it mean, to live as a stranger?’ And he said: ‘Be silent and say that you have no right to speak about anything. That is to live as a stranger’.

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A brother asked Abbas Poemen: ‘How should I be in the place where I live?’ The Abbas said: ‘Have the mentality of a stranger in the place where you live so you don’t too readily express your opinions and you will be at peace’.

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One day Abbas Longin asked for the view of Abbas Lucius on his thoughts, saying: ‘I want to live as a stranger’. The old man said to him: ‘If you don’t master your tongue you’ll never be a stranger no matter where you go. Simply master your tongue and you are a stranger.’

The main characteristic of the stranger, it seems, was the refusal to comment. The Fathers felt that words had great power for good or evil and should be used with care:

Abbas Macarius used to say that a bad word will make even a good person bad but a good word will make even a bad person good.

*

A brother told Abbas Sisoes: ‘I want to control my heart but I can’t.’ The Abbas replied: ‘How can we control our hearts when we keep open the door of our mouths?’

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Abbas Diadochus said: ‘Just as if you leave open the door of the public baths the steam escapes and their virtue is lost, so the virtue of the person who talks a lot escapes the open doors of the voice. This is why silence is a good thing; it is nothing less than the mother of wise thoughts.’

Silence could communicate. One of the stories of Antony is that he was visited by three brothers over a period of years. Two of them constantly asked him for his advice and for the words that could save their souls. The third remained silent until, one day, Antony asked him if he had not anything to ask. He replied: ‘It is enough for me that I am with you, Father’. This communication simply through a presence rather than speech is at the heart of the Orthodox tradition.

Theophile the Archbishop went one day to Scete and the brothers asked Abbas Pambo: ‘Say a word to the Father so that he can be edified’. The old man said to them: ‘If he is not edified by my silence, he will not be edified by my words’.

*

Abbas Isaias said: ‘Love to be silent rather than to speak. For silence heaps up treasure, while speaking always scatters’.

Asceticism

This is the most misunderstood aspect of the lives of the Desert Fathers, contrasting as it does with the classical ideal of a sane mind in a healthy body. Self-inflicted pain seems to us the sure sign of a sick mind, and, carried to extremes, can lead to the twisted and emaciated forms in which it became the tradition for artists to portray the hermits. There were indeed many such, and they drove themselves to extremities in an unhealthy spirit of competition which led them to outdo each other in austerities.

But too often the perversions and exaggerations of asceticism are taken as the norm for which that much abused word more properly stands. The Russian mystic Vladimir Soloviev wrote: ‘If the suppression of the flesh is taken not as a means for good or evil but as an end in itself, we get a pecular kind of false asceticism which identifies flesh with the physical body and considers every bodily torment a virtue. Although this false asceticism of self-laceration has no evil purpose to begin with, in its further development it easily becomes an evil: it either proves to be a slow suicide or becomes a peculiar kind of sensuality.’13The Desert Fathers were not exempt from this behaviour but, as we shall see, they recognised and condemned it. The story below of Abbas Macarius shaming the austere monks of Tabennisi is a famous example. But there remains the puzzling fact that there are sayings from the Fathers which claim that good health is not so much a condition of spiritual development as a threat to it. This can only be understood in the light of their insistence that we all need to recognise our state of dependence. The human being who exults in good health and possesses a hearty appetite and a good digestion is liable to slide into the error of feeling himself or herself to be self-sufficient. This shuts the door to spiritual progress. A sharp reminder of our vulnerability to the pangs of hunger, the ache of sleeplessness, the nagging urge for sex, brings us back to a condition from which we can start to advance.

Abbas Daniel said: ‘To the same degree that the body flourishes, the soul vegetates; as the body vegetates, so the soul flourishes’.

*

One day the brothers came together at Abbas Joseph’s hermitage. He was particularly ebullient and full of fervour and he said: ‘Today I am King because I rule over my passions’.

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A brother came to Abbas Macarius one day and asked how he could be saved and the Abbas told him to go to the burial ground and insult the dead. So he did so, hurling insults and stones at the graves. When he got back, Macarius asked him if they had responded and the brother said they had said nothing so Macarius told him to go and praise the dead. He went to the burial ground and sang the praises of the men buried there. When he reported back, Macarius asked how the dead had taken his congratulations and the brother replied that they had said nothing. So the Abbas said: ‘You know all those insults you hurled at them and they said nothing and all the praises you heaped on them and they said nothing; you also, if you want to be saved – be a dead man, taking no notice either of the injustice of men or of their praises. Behave like the dead and you will be saved.’

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The great Abbas Macarius was unsurpassed in his austerities. Palladius tells the story of his setting out one day to visit the monastery of Tabennisi because he had heard of the strict life led by the monks there. He put on the old clothes of a labourer and asked to see the Abbot, Pachomius. ‘I beg you to receive me into your hermitage’, he said, ‘that I may become a monk.’ But Pachomius replied that he was obviously an old man unused to the ascetic life and that the severe austerities of the brethren would be beyond him. For seven days Macarius pleaded to be allowed to try and was finally admitted on condition that he would be expelled should he not be able to put up with the hard life.

There were then fourteen hundred brethren in the monastery and Macarius studied their different kinds of asceticism. One ate only every evening, another every other day and yet another every five days. One would remain standing all night and sit down only by day. Just before Lent began, Macarius collected a heap of moistened palm leaves and stood in a corner plaiting them day and night for the forty days until Easter. He ate no bread and drank no water and remained standing for this time, neither speaking nor sleeping, only munching a few cabbage leaves on Sundays to give the appearance of eating.

The brethren were very put out that this strange old man could do without more things for longer than they were able and they sent a deputation to the Abbot to demand that this ‘bodiless man’ whose practices put them to shame should be expelled from the monastery – either he must go or they would.

But God revealed to Abbot Pachomius the identity of his guest and he took Macarius into his oratory and greeted him: ‘I am grateful to you for having given this lesson to my children so they might not become haughty about their own ascetic practices.’ Then he asked Macarius to return to his own hermitage.

*

Abbas Poemen said: ‘Just as smoke chases away bees and then all the sweetness of their labours is spoiled, so corporal well-being chases the fear of God from the soul and so all its good activities are lost’.

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He said again: ‘If the monk detests two things, he can become freed from worldly ties’. And the brother asked: ‘What are they?’ He replied: ‘Corporal well-being and vain glory’.

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Another abbas called on one of the Fathers who had just cooked a few lentils. He said: ‘Let’s just say a little office’. And he went through the whole psalter. Then the other recited all of the two great prophets. And, as morning came, they forgot to eat and the abbas went away.

Sex

It is surprising, given the priority, power and urgency with which we have invested the sexual appetite, that its problems were not a major preoccupation with the Desert Fathers. They had to go without it and we are constantly being told that repression is a bad thing and that sex, like steam, builds up a head if it can’t find an outlet. Perhaps one explanation is that their sexual appetites were suppressed rather than repressed. That is, the Fathers confessed their carnal thoughts to each other rather than pretending they didn’t have any.

There are relatively few apophthegmata which deal with sexual problems. This cannot have been due to embarrassment or censorship, because the few stories that treat of sexual desire do so without a hint of reticence:

A monk struggled at Scete because the enemy put into his mind the thoughts of a very beautiful woman he lusted after. Another brother arrived in Scete from Egypt and told him that she had died. He took his tunic and, at night, went and opened her tomb, dried the pus from her corpse with his tunic and returned to his cell. He kept the smell close to him and said to himself: ‘This is what you lust after – take your fill’. And he remained with the stench until the struggle ceased.

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A monk was travelling with his old mother when they came to a river which the old woman could not get across. So he wrapped up his hands and carried her across. She asked why he wrapped his hands, and he told her: ‘The female body is a fire which reminds us of other female bodies – that’s why’.

*

In lower Egypt there was an anchorite who was very famous for his austere way of life. He lived alone in a cell in the desert. Incited by Satan, a certain shameless woman said to the young men of the district, who were jealous of him: ‘What will you give me if I cause your anchorite to fall?’ They promised her a magnificent recompense. She set out in the evening and came to his cell as if she was lost. She knocked and he came out. He saw her and was troubled. ‘Why did you come here?’ She said: ‘Because I am lost’. And he was full of compassion and brought her into the courtyard and then went into his cell and closed the door. She cried out and said: ‘Abbas, the wild beasts will eat me’. He was moved and, fearing the judgment of God, said: ‘Why am I so angry and so hard?’ And he asked her in.

Then the Devil tempted him and he, knowing what was happening, said: ‘The footpaths of the Enemy are in darkness and the Son of God is Light.’ So he got up and lit the lamp. Then, as the desire mounted in him, he said: ‘Those who do such things go to torment: so try if you can stand eternal fire’. And he put a finger into the flame and burned it. But his passion was so great that he could not feel the fire as it burned his flesh. He carried on doing this until daybreak and burned all his fingers completely away. Then the unhappy woman, seeing what he had done, was terrified and died of fright.

When the young men came to ask for her they found her dead. But the anchorite revived her and she lived chaste ever after.

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A monk met some nuns on a road and dashed off to one side. As they passed, the mother superior said: ‘If you were a perfect monk, you would not have noticed that we were female.’

There is, perhaps, a clue in the following story as to why sexual frustration was less of a problem to the hermits than we might have expected:

A brother asked an abbas how he coped with the sensual thoughts that torment the monk and the abbas said: ‘Since I’ve been a monk, I’ve never had my fill of bread nor of water nor of sleep and these privations caused me so much suffering that they didn’t leave space for the thoughts that trouble you’.

Similar experiences have been reported by the male victims of the concentration camps during the last war, who said they were always too hungry to think about sex.

Fasting

The Fathers had a clear idea of the virtues of fasting and a genuine distrust both of excess and of regarding the practice as an end in itself. They did not deprive themselves of food and drink because they thought either to be impure. Both are gifts from God and to be enjoyed as such. But the appetites of the body are disordered and their constant demands are a distraction. So they have to be held in check and ordered by self-denial. To hold back from eating our fill reminds us that we are dependent; to sit down to three square meals a day can produce the illusion of self-sufficiency: ‘… give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full and deny thee, and say “Who is the Lord?”’14Abbas John Colobus said: ‘If a king wants to get possession of an enemy town, he first gets his hands on the water supply and the food and so the enemies, dying of hunger, surrender to him. It is the same with the passions of the flesh: if a man lives in fasting and hunger, the passions surrender and have no strength against his soul.’

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The abbot of a monastery asked Poemen: ‘How can I acquire the fear of God?’ Abbas Poemen answered: ‘How can we acquire the fear of God when we have inside here skins full of cheeses and pots full of salted meats?’

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Abbas Poemen said: ‘You can’t humble the soul if you don’t ration the bread’.

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An abbas said: ‘He who can master his belly can also master impurity and his tongue’.

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A brother asked Abbas Tithoes: ‘How can I control my heart?’ And he replied: ‘How can we control our hearts when our tongues and our stomachs are open?’

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Hyperechios said: ‘Fasting is the rein for the monk against sin: when he rejects it he becomes again a stallion in rut’. He also said: ‘The monk’s fast dries up the streams of voluptuousness’.

Poverty

In one of the most striking images in the Bible Jesus told his disciples that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the rich young man, whom he loved, to enter the kingdom of God.15 This was not because the man was comfortably off with his worldly goods but because he refused the invitation to part with them. If possession without attachment were possible, then possession would not be a bar to spiritual growth. But the early Christians recognised that the human condition is such that, for most people, to possess goods is to be in some measure possessed by them. Those who fled to the desert recognised that the desire to possess, which they called the sin of avarice, was a strong tie to the world they were trying to escape. The remedy was poverty. And that poverty had to be absolute.

Abbas Evagrius said: ‘A brother who had nothing else but a copy of the Gospels sold it to feed the poor, saying: “I have sold the word that tells me to sell what I have and give to the poor”.’

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A great personage came from abroad to Scete carrying with him a lot of gold and he asked the abbas if he could give it to the brothers. The abbas said: ‘The brothers don’t need it’. As the other insisted, he placed a basket full of gold at the door of the church and said: ‘Anybody who needs it – take some’. Nobody did. So the abbas told the stranger to take it away to give to the poor.

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Some brigands came one day to the hermitage of an abbas and they said to him: ‘We have come to take everything in your cell’. He said to them: ‘My children, take everything you like’. So they took everything in the cell and left. But they forgot a little tool-bag that was hanging on the wall so he ran after them, calling: ‘My children take what you have forgotten from the cell’. And they were full of admiration for his resignation so they put everything back and did penitence and said to each other: ‘Truly this is a man of God’.

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One day the Abbas Euprepios gave a helping hand to some robbers who stripped his cell. After they had taken everything he had, he saw a stick which they had left behind. He was upset at this and ran after them to give it to them. But they refused to take it, fearing that something might happen to them. So Euprepios asked some people he met on the road to take it to them as they were going the same way.

Obedience

Although these hermits were often beyond the exercise of the Church’s formal structures of authority, they did not think of themselves as individuals each pursuing his own spiritual path as he thought fit. They accepted the guidance of a spiritual father. And the acceptance was total. This was partly because of the clear benefits to be gained from an experienced guide but it was also because obedience was seen as, in itself, a virtue. Its power for good consisted in the fact that obedience negates the will. Fasting and other ascetic practices are pursued in accordance with the will and can so lead to pride; obedience always engenders humility.

St Antony said: ‘Submission and temperance break in the wild horse’.

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John Colobus stayed with an abbas at Scete who planted a dry stick and told him: ‘Water it every day with a bottle of water until it produces fruit’. Now the water was so far away that if you left in the evening to fetch it you didn’t return until dawn. After three years the stick came alive and produced fruit. Then the abbas took the fruit to the church and said to the brothers: ‘Come and eat the fruit of obedience’.

*

They said of John, a disciple of Abbas Paul, that he had a great obedience. In a certain place of tombs a hyena had its lair. The abbas, having seen its dung, told John to bring it to him. He said ‘But what shall I do, Father, with the hyena?’ The abbas said jokingly: ‘If it attacks you, tie it up and bring it here’. That evening the brother went to the place and the hyena attacked him. He tried to catch it but it ran away and following the word of the abbas he gave chase. Having caught her, he bound her up. Meanwhile the abbas was worried about him but he arrived with the trussed-up hyena. The abbas was filled with admiration but, wishing to humiliate him, said: ‘Idiot! That’s not a hyena you have there – it’s just a stupid dog.’ And he untied it and let it go.

Vanity

In our own time, the terms ‘vanity’ and ‘pride’ have become synonymous and we have few problems in recognising them both – so long as they are palpable in somebody else. But the Fathers made an important distinction between pride, the first of the deadly sins and cause of the fall of the angels, and vanity, which is simply the desire for the praise of others. Vanity promotes ostentation; pride, which is more insidious, can make a person indifferent to the impression he makes on others. So vanity is easily spotted; pride often lurks beneath a show of humility and piety.

Abbas Silouan said: ‘Woe to the man whose fame is bigger than his works!’

*

Abbas Nestorius was walking with a brother one day in the desert when they came across a serpent. They fled from it. The brother was surprised at this and said to him: ‘Father, were you, too, afraid?’ The old man replied:’ I am not afraid but yet it was useful to me to flee because if I had not I should not have escaped the spirit of vanity.’

There is a story in the collection of anonymous apophthegmata illustrating the dangers of vanity and reflecting, perhaps, the risks to which those appointed to lead the most famous and successful monasteries have always been exposed:

An abbot, head of two hundred monks, had a great reputation in the world and Christ decided to visit him. He approached the porter in the guise of an old and poor man and asked for an audience. The abbot was in conversation when the porter approached him and said he was too busy to see the old man. So Christ waited patiently at the door. At about five o’clock in the afternoon, a rich man arrived and the porter hastened to announce him. The abbot came to the door to greet him and Christ humbly approached saying: ‘I wish to speak with you, Father Abbot.’ But the abbot did not even reply, but pushed the old man aside and ushered in the rich man to a welcoming feast.

After the meal, the abbot escorted his visitor to the gate and said his farewell then turned and went back inside, forgetting the patient old man who stood there waiting to speak with him.

As night fell, Christ showed himself to the porter and said: ‘Say to the abbot: “If you want worldly glory, then because of your past good deeds and the way you have lived I will send to you visitors from the four corners of the earth to flatter and be flattered by you. But as for the riches of my kingdom, you shall not taste them.”’

Pride

Pride, which is far more subtle than vanity, can easily be engendered by the practice of virtue. It creeps into the soul of the righteous person who feels the first twinge of satisfaction in having behaved well. And the Desert Fathers were well aware of its subtleties:

Isidorus the Preacher said: ‘If you practise your asceticism according to the rules, be careful, when you are fasting, not to get above yourself. If you find yourself feeling proud of your self-denial – eat meat immediately. It is far better to eat meat than to have inflated ideas about yourself.’

*

A brother had lived for many years outside his village and never visited it. He said one day to the brothers: ‘I haven’t been to the village for many years but you – you’re always going there’. The brothers told Abbas Poemen this and he said: ‘Me, I’d have dashed over there at night and walked all around the place rather than letting myself feel proud of not going there’.

Humility

The defence against both vanity and pride is humility. Indeed the Desert Fathers thought of humility as the defence against all the sins and root of all the virtues. This may seem unremarkable. Most of the great religions seem to point to the need for checks on our natural urge to self-aggrandisement for the sake of our souls. Even the secular humanism of Western civilisation today teaches us to restrain our natural aggression for the common good. The British, for example, have made an elaborate code of self-restraint which they call ‘manners’, a feature, perhaps even a fetish, of their educational system. ‘Manners’ involve a ritual humility; the true gentleman is one who never makes his subordinates aware of their inferiority; and the British Empire, it has been said, was the historical enactment of the biblical teaching that the meek shall inherit the earth.

But the social humility which we have come to accept as a sign of good breeding is not that of the Desert Fathers. Our virtue consists in not making evident a superiority of birth, education or income. Its essence is that those who know themselves to be superior should be at some pains to disguise the fact.

The humility of the Desert Fathers was more deep-seated. For them the first internal consent to the idea that they were making a progress pleasing to God was a backward step. Because that idea came from the Enemy. If a monk had been following a fast of half a loaf a day, Satan would appear to him in the guise of an angel and say that God was well pleased with his efforts and would be even more pleased if he could reduce his intake to half a loaf every two days. The monk who did this and felt some satisfaction in so doing was on the slippery slope. Humility was the only sure way to combat the temptations of the Devil.

Abbas Theodora said: ‘Its not through fasting or vigils or hard work that we can be saved, but only through real humility’. There was once an anchorite who managed to exorcise some demons and, as they came out, he said to them: ‘What made you flee, was it the fasting?’ ‘No,’ they said. ‘We neither eat nor drink.’ ‘Was it the long vigils?’ ‘But we never sleep.’ ‘The retreat to the desert?’ ‘But we live in the desert.’ ‘So what was it, then, that finally made you come out?’ ‘Nothing can ever conquer us’, they said, ‘except humility’.

That spontaneous and genuine humility is a proof against the wiles of the Devil is illustrated in the story of the brother who had lived for many years in great holiness alone in the desert. One day Satan decided to undermine his virtue and, realising that extreme measures were called for, disguised himself as an angel of light. He burst into the cell in a blaze of glory and announced to the monk: ‘I am Gabriel, sent from God with a message for you.’ And the monk, glancing up from his plaiting, said humbly: ‘Oh no. Can’t be me. You must have the wrong man.’ Satan vanished.

Abbas Matoes said: ‘When anybody speaks about anything, don’t argue with him. If he speaks well, agree with him. If he speaks ill, say: ‘I suppose you know what you’re saying’ and don’t argue with him about what he has said. That is humility.’

In seeking to escape the good opinion of others, the monks were following the Biblical injunction ‘Woe to you, when all men speak well of you’ (Luke 6:26) and they went to some lengths to avoid a decline into social respectability. Abbas Pambo once said: ‘A monk should wear such clothes that, if he leaves them outside his cell for three days, nobody will take them away’. As the Desert Fathers were aware of the dangers of respectability, they were careful to follow the biblical injunctions against being offensively well-behaved:

One of the old men said: ‘The man who makes public his good deeds is like the one who sprinkles seed on the surface of the earth. The birds of the air come and eat it. The man who hides his deeds is like the one who plants in a furrow and the earth multiplies his seeds.’

*

A woman who had a sickness in her breast called cancer heard of Abbas Longin and looked for him. He lived nine miles from Alexandria. Whilst she was searching, it happened that the holy man was picking up wood along the sea shore. Having met him, she said: ‘Abbas, where does Abbas Longin, servant of God, live?’ She did not know who he was. He said: ‘What do you want with that imposter? Don’t go near him. What’s wrong with you?’ The woman showed him her illness. Having made the sign of the cross over the place, he said farewell to her, saying: ‘Go and God will heal you. Longin can’t do anything for you.’ The woman, believing him, went away and was healed on the instant. Later, having told others of the story and described the Abbas, she realised that it was Abbas Longin.

*

One day at Kellia there was a feast and the brothers all ate in the church. Now one of them said quietly to a servant: ‘I eat nothing cooked, only a little salt’. And the servant shouted across to another, in front of everybody: ‘This brother doesn’t eat cooked foods. Just bring him salt’. One of the old men got up and said: ‘It would have been better for you to eat meat today in your cell than to hear such a thing in front of everybody’.

*

They say that Abbas Macarius had a rule when he was with the brothers: ‘If there is wine, drink it because of the brothers. But for every glass of wine, spend a day without water.’ The brothers, to raise his spirits, gave him wine and he took it with pleasure to mortify himself but his disciple, knowing what was going on, said to the brothers: ‘In the name of the Lord, don’t give him any more, otherwise he’ll die of thirst in his cell’. And they stopped.

Humility only became a problem when the monks tried, with hilarious ineptitude, the experiment of behaving as other men:

Two brothers had lived together for many years and never had a quarrel. One day, the first said: ‘Lets have a quarrel like men in the world outside do’. The second replied: ‘But I don’t know how to have a quarrel’. So the first said: ‘Look, I’ll put down a brick between us and I’ll say: “It’s mine”. Then you must reply: “No, it’s mine”. And so the quarrel will begin. So they found a brick and put it between them and the first said: ‘It’s mine’, and the second said: ‘No, it’s mine’. So the first replied: ‘Oh well then, if it’s yours, take it’. And so they did not succeed in having a quarrel.

Discernment

This is the most valuable of the virtues. Many are given humility, many have love, but without discernment they can harm themselves and others. It is a sort of sanctified common sense but goes by the name of spiritual discernment. It sees the humorous side of exaggeration and affectation.

Its overriding importance is recorded by Cassian, celebrated recluse and one of the earliest chroniclers of Egyptian monasticism. He tells the story of a congress of leading monks on St Antony’s mountain called to discuss perfection and how to achieve it. Some thought it came from fasting and vigils, some from solitude, some from humility. St Antony said that many monks practised all these things and still didn’t make spiritual progress because of the want of discretion. ‘Nor can any other reason for their falling off be discovered except’, he records, ‘that, as they were not sufficiently instructed by their elders, they could not obtain judgement and discretion, which, passing by excess on either side, teaches a monk always to walk along the Royal Road, and does not suffer him to be puffed up, on the one hand by virtue, i.e from excess of zeal to transgress the bounds of moderation in foolish presumption, nor allows him to be enamoured of slackness on the other hand’.

The delights of discernment are in the pricking of pomposity; its serious significance is that it counterbalances the fanaticism of which the Desert Fathers often stand accused.

Abbas Antony said: ‘Some destroy their bodies in asceticism but, lacking discernment, are far from God’.

Those who feel themselves to be on the right spiritual path are always in danger of stumbling into self-righteousness. Discernment showed the Fathers how to cope – to extinguish self-righteousness in themselves and others, often with sly humour:

The brothers of a community went off to visit an anchorite in the desert. He received them with joy and, as is the custom with the hermits, seeing that they were tired, set the table before the right time and brought what he had for them to eat. As evening fell, they recited the twelve psalms and similarly at night. As the abbas was awake at his vigil, he heard them say to each other: ‘The anchorites in the desert have a softer life than we do in the communities’. In the morning, hearing that they were going to visit another hermit in the neighbourhood, he said to them: ‘Give him my greetings and tell him not to water the vegetables’. So they did.

Understanding the cryptic message, the hermit kept them working until the evening without food. When evening came, he sang the Grand Office and said: ‘We will stop there because of you, because you are tired’. And he said: ‘We don’t usually eat every day but, because of you, let’s eat a little’. He brought them dry bread and salt. Then he said: ‘Because of you, we must have a feast’. And he poured a little vinegar onto the salt.

As they were about to eat, he got up from the table, and began to sing the Little Office. This went on until the small hours. Then he said to them: ‘Because of you we can’t perform the whole of our rule. You must eat a little, as you come from afar.’ They ate a little.

The next morning they wanted to leave but he begged them to stay, saying: ‘Stay with us a little. At least three days to follow the customs of the desert’. But they, seeing that he would not give them leave, slipped away secretly.

*

John Colobus said one day to his brother: ‘I would like to be carefree like the angels who do no work but serve God unceasingly.’ And he threw off his cloak and went off into the desert. A week later he came back to his brother and knocked at the door. ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am John, your brother.’ ‘John has become an angel’, he replied, ‘and no longer works with men’. And though he cried out, his brother did not let him in until he had fretted outside all night. Then he opened the door saying: ‘You are a man and you must work to eat’. John, having been taught discernment, made a bow saying: ‘Forgive me’.

*

A brother came to Abbas Silvain on Mount Sinai and, seeing that the brothers were working, turned to the Abbas and loftily quoted the scriptures to him: ‘Do not work for the food which perishes’ (John 6:27) and followed it with: ‘Mary has chosen the best part’ (Luke 10:42). The Abbas said to his disciple: ‘Zacharie, give the brother a book and put him in an empty cell’.

When the ninth hour arrived, the brother sat in his cell, his eyes fixed on the door, waiting to be called to eat. But, as nobody called him, he went to find the Abbas and said: ‘Have the brothers not eaten today, Abbas?’ The Abbas said: ‘Yes’. So he asked: ‘Why did you not call me?’ The Abbas said: ‘Because you are a spiritual man and do not need this sort of food; but we are fleshly and so we need to eat and that is why we work. You have chosen the best part: you read all day and do not want to eat fleshly food.’ Having heard this, the brother apologised and said: ‘Forgive me’. The Abbas said to him: ‘Surely Mary had need of Martha, and it is thanks to Martha that Mary is praised’.

*

A brother went to see Abbas Macarius and said: ‘Father, for thirty years I have not eaten meat and I am still tempted to do so’. The old man said: ‘Don’t tell me, my child, that you’ve spent thirty years without eating meat. But tell me the truth: How many days have you spent without speaking ill of your brother? Without judging your neighbour? Without letting useless words pass your lips?’ The brother bowed and said: ‘Pray for me, Father so I can begin again’.

*

Bishop Epiphanius sent one day to Abbas Hilarion: ‘Come, so that we can see each other before we die’. They met and, while they were eating, someone brought in a chicken. Epiphanius gave it to Abbas Hilarion, who refused it, saying: ‘Excuse me, but ever since I put on the habit I have never eaten meat’. Then the Bishop answered: ‘And ever since I put on the habit I have never allowed anybody to go to bed if he had anything against me, and I have never myself gone to bed with a resentment against anybody’. The Abbas replied: ‘Forgive me, your practice is better than mine’.

(...)

It is told of Abbas Netras, disciple of Silouan, that when he stayed in his cell on Mount Sinai he treated himself with moderation in his asceticism, but when he became Bishop of Pharan he practised a far more severe regimen. When asked why, he explained: ‘Down there was the desert, solitude and poverty and I wanted to treat my body in such a way that I should not become ill; but here is the world with its enticements, and if I fall ill there is somebody to take care of me. So I must here act in such a way that I do not lose the monk in me.’

(...)

It is told of Abbas Netras, disciple of Silouan, that when he stayed in his cell on Mount Sinai he treated himself with moderation in his asceticism, but when he became Bishop of Pharan he practised a far more severe regimen. When asked why, he explained: ‘Down there was the desert, solitude and poverty and I wanted to treat my body in such a way that I should not become ill; but here is the world with its enticements, and if I fall ill there is somebody to take care of me. So I must here act in such a way that I do not lose the monk in me.’

(...)

One of the desert hunters visited Father Antony when he was relaxing with the brothers and was scandalised by the levity. The Abbas, wishing to make him understand that it was necessary from time to time to indulge the brothers, said to him: ‘Put an arrow in your bow and draw it’. He did so and the Abbas said: ‘Draw it a little further’. And he did so. The Abbas said again: ‘Draw it further’, and the hunter replied: ‘If I draw my bow too far it will break’. Then the Abbas said: ‘So it is with the work of God. If we stretch the brothers too much, they will quickly break. So we must, from time to time, relax and indulge them.’

Hermits

Peter France