A few years ago I was challenged by a critique of Orthodox Christianity leveled by a close friend who was in the process of leaving the Church. “When you face facts,” he said, “you realize that if you really want to live the Orthodox life in its fullness, you have to become a monk.” As much as I wished to offer a counter- point, I found myself unable. In fact, I even grudgingly agreed with
It is this inner solidarity which prevents self-righteousness and makes compassion possible. Thomas Merton, the monk, expresses this well when he writes: Once God has called you to solitude, everything you touch leads you further into solitude. Everything that affects you builds you into a hermit, as long as you do not insist on doing the work yourself and building your own kind of hermitage. What is my new desert? The name of it is
The Path to the Desert “A brother came to Scetis to visit Abba Moses and asked him for a word. The old man said to him, ‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”‘ [1] The roots of desert monasticism lay in distractions the desert elders experienced in the inhabited world. They withdrew to the desert where more intense dedication to God was possible. It is tempting to see this as
But what then can we do with our essential aloneness which so often breaks into our consciousness as the experience of a desperate sense of loneliness? What does it mean to say that neither friendship nor love, neither marriage nor community can take that loneliness away? Sometimes illusions are more livable than realities, and why not follow our desire to cry out in loneliness and search for someone whom we can embrace and in whose
DAY EIGHTEEN 21. It happened one day that one of the brothers in the monastery of Father Elias was tempted. Cast out of the monastery, he went over the mountain to Father Anthony. The brother lived near him for a while and then Anthony sent him back to the monastery from which he had been expelled. When the brothers saw him they cast him out yet again, and he went back to Father Anthony saying,
DAY EIGHT 10. He said also, “Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to the cell, for fear that if we delay outside we will lose our interior watchfulness. 11. He said also, “He who wishes
Saint Anthony the Great is known as the Father of monasticism, and the long ascetical sermon in The Life of St Anthony by St Athanasius (Sections 16-34), could be called the first monastic Rule. He was born in Egypt in the village of Coma, near the desert of the Thebaid, in the year 251. His parents were pious Christians of illustrious lineage. Anthony was a serious child and was respectful and obedient to his parents.
Perhaps the most effective tactic adopted by the adversary of man’s salvation has been to blind man to the reality of the spiritual warfare being waged for possession of his soul. We have consequently become spiritually flabby and easy prey for the enemy. To escape such a perilous condition we would do well to contemplate more often the examples of the saints who engaged in direct combat with the Evil One, unmasking his deceptions and
Human life is marked by constant conflict. We can’t just float through life. We have to confront the temptations that life brings with it. And there will never be a time when we can rest on our laurels. Temptations will be with us till the point of death. In another passage Anthony says: “No one can make it to the kingdom of heaven untempted. Take away the temptations, and no one will find salvation.” Anthony
One of the great themes of monasticism is the desert. The monks deliberately went into the desert to be alone and to seek God. The ancients considered the desert the dwelling-place of demons. Anthony went into the desert to fight the demons on their own turf. It was a heroic decision to push his way into the realm of the demons — and a declaration of war on the demons that plagued him and sought
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