MONASTIC WISDOM:
(Presented as part of the Newark Abbey Lectures on April 15,
1997)
The words "monk" and "monastery" evoke
different images for different people. Silent hooded figures
gliding along gloomy gothic cloister halls. Peaceful Gregorian
chant pouring from a CD player. The taste of Benedictine brandy
or Trappist cheese. So before we set off in search of monastic
wisdom it would probably help if we spent a few minutes on the
historical and theological background of monasticism.
Most of us have heard of St. Benedict of Nursia, who lived
from about 480 to 540. He wrote the Rule for Monks which we
Benedictines follow here at Newark Abbey. The great wisdom and
flexibility of his Holy Rule has earned him the title of
"Patriarch of Western Monasticism." We need to go back
much further than him, though, to get to the roots of
monasticism.
First let’s remember that monasticism is not something
peculiar to Christianity. There were Hindu monks in India a
thousand years before Christ.
Buddhism, a religion based on the monastic virtue of
renunciation, or "non-attachment," puts monks in a
central role by its very nature.
Among the Greeks there were communities of men, especially the
disciples of Pythagoras, totally dedicated to the search for and
the contemplation of Truth and leading an exemplary ascetic life.
These Greek philosophical circles gave Christian monasticism much
of its vocabulary, words such as koinonia, anachoresis,
theoria.
Among the Jews there were the Essenes at the time of Christ,
living a dedicated communal life of asceticism. In the past fifty
years we’ve learned a lot about them through the discovery
of their library at Qumran -- the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls.
Among Christians it was at the end of the Third Century and
the beginning of the Fourth that we see the beginnings of
monastic life. It seems to have made its appearance everywhere at
once, spontaneously growing out of the vitality of each local
church. We really don’t know exactly the origins of this
phenomenon, but we do know that even before this there were
different kinds of what we might call pre-monasticism, and a
widespread tradition of asceticism that was as old as the Church
itself. For example, there were Christian groups in Syria and
Mesopotamia whose ascetic traditions went back to the gospel and
were related to deeper spiritual currents in the history of
Judaism.
So, from India, across Palestine to Athens, there were
constant contacts and mutual influences among all those forms of
monastic life. These contacts and influences remain obscure, but
they certainly existed.
This brief survey suggests that there is in human nature a
monastic dimension, (homo monasticus) that finds its
expression, in one way or another, in every culture and every
land at every period of history. What do these various
expressions have in common that makes them "monastic?"
For our purposes we can use Thomas Merton’s description:
Monastic communities are special groups of men and women
who separate themselves from the ordinary life of society,
take upon themselves particular and difficult obligations,
and devote themselves to one task above all: to deepening
their understanding and practice of their own religion in its
most basic implications (Merton, The Monastic Journey, paperback,
pg 22).
One of the characteristics that usually is associated with
such groups is the pursuit of wisdom. (Do you remember the
television series, Kung Fu, about a Buddhist monk and his
training in wisdom?). Today’s books on monasticism for
modern Christians often have wisdom as their theme.
This evening I would like to concentrate on the wisdom that
has come down to us from one particular geographical area, the
northern part of Egypt, the desert just south of Alexandria. It
is certainly one of the most important areas in the history of
monasticism, and had a remarkable influence on the monastic ideal
in the West.
The importance of Egypt in the history of European monasticism
is due in great part to the larger-than-life hero of the early
monastic movement, St. Antony of Egypt. The story of his life,
recorded by St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, became an
immediate success. Translated from Greek into Latin, within a
very short time it had spread throughout the Christian world,
east and west, inspiring countless Christians to follow the
monastic ideal. This Life of St. Antony contains all the
elements of desert monasticism: superhuman self-denial, fasting,
miracles and all-night vigils accompanied by bouts with vicious
demons. The spiritual life is depicted as a combat between the
forces of good and the forces of evil, in which no quarter is
asked or given by either side. It is a battle to the death.
Athanasius reminds us that others before Antony had gone out
into the desert to do battle alone with the Enemy. By the mid
300’s, thousands of men and women had gone out into the
desert south of Alexandria, often gathering in small colonies
around a spiritual father. Since this movement was so new, no one
knew quite how it ought to be done. There were as yet no books of
written rules -- these would come later on. From their collective
experiences they made up sort of a "user’s manual"
as they went along. An informal body of knowledge on how to live
this strange and difficult form of Christianity was passed down
by word of mouth. Most of what we know about Egyptian monasticism
comes from collections of these "sayings" (called The
Apothegmata) and "Lives of the Desert Fathers." It is
these sayings and stories that are our subject this evening.
There's no doubt that some of their attitudes toward the body,
the emotions, and sexuality are distasteful and even
objectionable to Christians of the Twentieth Century, and that
some of the elements in the lives of these early saints would be
unhelpful and even harmful if applied to life today. On the other
hand, the insights they gained in their unrelenting struggles
with the forces of evil both in the world and inside themselves
are part of the treasure of Christian spirituality and deserve
much more attention than they’ve received in the past. These
pioneers of the spiritual life are the ancestors of every
Christian who tries to take Christ seriously, and their stories
are part of our own story. Their sayings, like the desert out of
which they were born, are strange and forbidding at first, and
don’t always yield their treasures easily. It takes some
time and determination for a modern Christian to tap into this
unusual and unsettling literature.
In the desert of Skete, a brother went to see Abba Moses
and begged him for a word. And the old man said: Go and sit
in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.
This evening, however, I’ve chosen to look at some of the
legends and sayings that are easier to understand. We will
recognize in them the basic elements of the monastic vision that
will appear 200 years later in St. Benedict’s Rule for
Monks. And, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we hope to find
some simple, practical wisdom for living our own everyday
commitment to the Gospel of Christ.
Let’s get to the business at hand.
Remember that these desert monastics and had left behind the
distractions of material goods, worldly concerns and bodily
pleasures to engage in a single-minded search for God alone. But
their insights about fraternal charity sound like documents from
Vatican II.
A monk once posed this question to an elder: There are two
brothers, one of whom remains praying in his cell, fasting
six days at a time and doing a great deal of penance. The
other one takes care of the sick. Which one's work is more
pleasing to God? The elder replied: If that brother who fasts
six days were to hang himself up by the nose, he could not
equal the one who takes care of the sick.
It was not just men who contributed to the lore of the desert
monasteries, there were some strong-minded women as well, the
"ammas."
One day a monk on a journey saw a group of holy women
approaching from the other direction. With the typical fear
of temptation from sexual thoughts he left the road and gave
them a wide berth. But the amma said to him as they passed,
"If you were a perfect monk, you would not have looked
close enough to see that we were women."
If you’re smiling at the image of that old ascetic
hanging by his nose or of the quick-witted abbess scolding a
hapless monk, then you’ve caught on to another
characteristic of the desert stories: Beneath their deadpan
seriousness there is often a mischievous but instructive sense of
humor. Imagine the delight that these desert-dwellers must have
taken as they retold stories like this one:
One of the brethren asked an elder, saying: Father, do the
holy ones always know when the power of God is in them? The
elder replied: No, they do not always know it. For once a
very great hermit had a disciple who did something wrong and
the hermit said to him: "Go and drop dead! Instantly the
disciple fell down dead.
The hermit, overcome with terror, began praying to the Lord,
saying: "Lord Jesus Christ, I beg you to bring my disciple
back to life and from now on I will be careful what I say."
And the disciple was restored to life on the spot.
The great thing about these stories is that there are so many
lessons in there at once. Are you aware of the power of
God you have in yourself? Has a word of yours, spoken in
anger, ever slain somebody who was under your care? If even a
great saint has to beware of his tongue, then how much more do
you and I?
POSSESSIONS, PRESTIGE AND POWER
The monastic life is a special way of seeking God. But God has
lots of competitors for our attention. We ten to seek after other
things instead, and they never deliver on their promises. There
are three great passional quests that can substitute for the
quest for God: I call them the three P’s: possessions, power
and prestige. Because they are not ultimate, they are not God,
they always appear in their imperfect form: the quest for
possessions always involves us in greed, the quest for power
tends toward domination of others, and the quest for esteem or
prestige shows up as vanity. The earliest desert monks knew all
of this very well. And much of their wisdom is simply ways of
keeping those passional quests from getting in the way of their
seeking of God. Here’s their strategy as one teacher put it:
Either fly as far as you can from the world, or else,
laughing at the world and those who are in it, make yourself
a fool in many things.
Modern Christians who live in the everyday world can learn a
lot from the stories of the desert monks who laughed at the three
P’s which people in the world seek so seriously. So I would
like to start our consideration of the wisdom of the monastic
desert with those three areas that we all deal with: possessions,
prestige and power.
Let’s start with the notion of possessions. Our
"stuff" is so important to us -- cars, clothes, houses
and refrigerators. Listen to this tale of one monk's attitude
toward what he owned:
When Abbot Macarius was in Egypt, he had left his cell,
and when he got back he found a robber in the process of
stealing everything he owned. After watching for awhile he
finally began helping load the robber's donkey with the
stolen goods. Leading the animal out to the road he said,
"We brought nothing into the world. The Lord gave and
the Lord has taken away: and as he willed, so it has come to
pass. Blessed be the Lord in all things."
The wise old man's kindness in helping load the burglar's mule
is a humorous but pointed way of calling our attention to our own
fanatical preoccupation with the material "stuff" we
have accumulated and on which we have become so dependent. Still,
this example may seem a little impractical to someone with the
responsibility of raising a family or administering an
apostolate. So perhaps another story will hit closer to home:
There were two elders living together in a cell, and they
had never had so much as a single quarrel. So one of them
said to the other, "Come on, let's have at least one
quarrel, like other people." The other said, "But I
don't know how to start a quarrel." The first answered:
"Look, I'll take this brick and place it here between
us. Then I'll say it's mine and you'll say it's yours. This
is what leads to arguments and fights." So they put the
brick between them, and one said, "It's mine!" Then
the other replied "Well, I think it's mine." The
first one said again, "It is not, it's mine!" So
the other answered, "Well, then, if it's yours, take
it!" It seems they never did manage to start that
quarrel.
Eventually these stories about detachment from possessions
will find their way into the tradition from which Benedict would
draw his teaching on common ownership and frugality.
The second of the great human quests is for esteem, prestige.
We often get in trouble because of our need to feel loved,
appreciated, or respected by others. We care passionately about
our reputation and our good name. The desert monks had a
different attitude toward their own public image.
A governor had heard tell of Abba Moses and went of to
Scete to see him. They told the old man of this and he
immediately got up and fled into the swamp. The governor met
him and said, "Tell me, old man, where is the cell of
Abba Moses?" He answered them, "What do you want to
see him for? He’s a simpleton and a heretic." So
the governor went to the church and said to the clerics:
"Having heard of Abba Moses, I came to see him; but just
now we met an old man on his way to Egypt and we said to him,
"Where is the cell of Abba Moses?" and he said to
us, What do you want of him? He’s a simpleton and a
heretic!" These words saddened the clerics. They said to
him, "Describe this old man who said such awful things
against the saint." They answered, "Well he was
tall old man, and black, wearing ragged clothes." The
clerics said, "Ah! that was Abba Moses himself; it was
because he doesn’t want to meet you that he said that
about himself." And the governor, greatly edified, went
away.
Ambition and striving to achieve career goals are not
inventions of modern corporate America. Even the monastics of
Egypt had to contend with this temptation. An elder said to some
monks,
If you see a young monk by his own will climbing up into
heaven, take him by the foot and pull him back down to earth,
because what he's doing is no good for him.
Here’s is one of my favorite stories:
It was told of Abbot John the Dwarf that once he had said
to his elder brother: I want to live in the same security as
the angels have, doing no work, but serving God without
intermission. And casting off everything he had on, he
started out into the desert. When a week had gone by he
returned to his brother. And when he knocked on the door, his
brother asked: Who are you? He replied: I am John. Then his
brother answered and said: John has become an angel and is no
longer among men. But John kept on knocking and said, It is
I. Still the brother did not open, but kept him waiting.
Finally, opening the door, he said: If you are a man, you are
going to have to start working again in order to live. But if
you are an angel, why do you come into a cell? So John did
penance and said: Forgive me, brother, for I have sinned.
Sometimes we have a very demanding ideal to which we hold
ourselves, and then get frustrated when we can't live up to it.
We get impatient with ourselves because we're not as virtuous as
we should be. We lose heart when our efforts at the spiritual
life don't give immediate results. To such folks one elder offers
this food for thought:
The reason why we don’t get anywhere is because we
don't know our limits, and we're not patient in carrying on
the work we've begun. We want to arrive at virtue without any
labor at all.
This honest facing of our true selves would later mature into
Benedict’s theology of humility, and form what some say is
the central chapter in the Rule.
Having looked at possessions and prestige, let’s look at
the third and last of the three P’s, the quest for power,
the insistence on making things happen just the way we want them
to. Our Egyptian forbears had lots of advice about this human
desire to always be in control and run our own show.
One of the brethren had been insulted by another and was
set on revenge. He came to Abbot Sisois and told him what had
happened. "I'm going to get even, Father," he
vowed. But the elder tried to persuade him to leave the
affair in the hands of God. "No!" said the brother,
"I'm not giving up until I've made that fellow pay for
what he said!" The elder stood up, lifted his hands and
began to pray aloud, "O God, Thou art no longer
necessary to us, and we no longer need Thee to take care of
us since, as this brother says, we both can and will avenge
ourselves." The point wasn't lost on the angry monk, who
then promised to give up his plans for revenge.
What about the demands we make on those around us? Isn't it
important to use our power to demand high standards of efficiency
and effectiveness and to hold people accountable for their
mistakes?
Well, it seems that one of the fathers fell ill, and for
many days couldn't eat anything. One of his disciples urged
him to eat: "If you'll let me, father, I'll make you a
little cake." The old man nodded, and so the other made
the cake. Now there were two pots there side by side, one
containing honey and the other rancid linseed oil used for
the lamp. The brother took this second pot and emptied some
of it into the cake, thinking he was adding honey. Although
the old man tasted it, he didn't say anything, but just kept
eating in silence. When he was offered a third helping,
though, he said, "Really, my son, I can't eat any
more." But the young man wouldn't hear of it.
"Look, father. They're good cakes - I'm eating some
myself...." When he tasted his concoction he realized
what he'd done and threw himself on his face saying,
"Woe is me, father! I've killed you! You've caused this
sin in me because you didn't say anything!" But the old
man replied in the calmest of voices, "Don't worry about
it, my son. If God had wanted me to eat a good cake, you
would've put in the honey and not the linseed oil."
Perhaps he should have scolded the young monk and warned him
to be more careful next time. But somehow the old man’s
approach seems to have more of the saint about it.
What could be more serious than a community's obligation to
exercise its power to condemn and correct wrongdoing when it is
discovered in someone? Monks were very earnest indeed about this
practice. But on one occasion our friend Abbot Moses, who had
been converted late in life from the career of a highway robber,
offered a wise lesson to an over-zealous community:
One of the monks had committed some fault, so the elders
assembled and sent for Abbot Moses to join them. But he
didn't want to come. Finally the priest sent him the message,
"Come, the community of brethren are waiting for
you." So reluctantly he got up and started off. He took
an old basket full of holes, filled it with sand, and carried
it along behind him. The elders came out to meet him and
said, "What is this, father?" The abba replied,
"My sins are running out behind me, and I don't see
them, yet today I have come to judge the sins of someone
else!" When they heard Moses' words they pardoned the
brother and forgot the whole thing.
In their no-holds-barred battle against possessions, power and
prestige the Egyptian monastics, men and women, were certainly
extremists, make no mistake about it. But listen to the balance
and sensitivity in this little saying:
Abbot Mark once said to Abbot Arsenius: It is good, is it
not, to have nothing in your cell that just gives you
pleasure? For example, once I knew a brother who had a little
wildflower that came up in his cell, and he pulled it out by
the roots. "Well," said Abbot Arsenius, "that
is all right. But each one should act according to his own
spiritual way. And if one were not able to get along without
the flower, he should plant it again."
Despite their fanatical seriousness they know about the need
to stay within our limits.
Once the famous Saint Antony was conversing with some
brethren when a hunter who was after game in the wilderness
happened by. He saw Abbot Antony and the brothers enjoying
themselves, and clucked his tongue in disapproval. Abbot
Antony told him, "Put an arrow in your bow and shoot
it." He did so. "Now shoot another," said the
abbot, "....And another....And another." The hunter
complained, "If I bend my bow all the time it'll
break!" Abbot Antony smiled gently as his point struck
home. "It's that way, too, with the work of God. If we
keep pushing ourselves too hard, the brothers will soon
collapse."
PRAYER
The wisdom of the desert with regard to the three P’s was
not an end in itself. The whole idea was to be free for communing
with God. They tried to take literally the scriptural injunction
to "pray constantly," and spent most of their time in
prayer. So their wisdom sayings about prayer should be of special
interest to other Christians who are serious about praying. (Cf. Listen
to the Desert)
Abbess Syncletica of holy memory said: There is labor and
great struggle for the impious who are converted to God, but
after that comes inexpressible joy. Someone who wants to
light a fire is first plagued by smoke, and the smoke drives
him to tears, yet finally he gets the fire he wants. So also
it is written: Our God is a consuming fire. Hence we ought to
light the divine fire in ourselves with labor and with tears.
Prayer is hard work. The brethren once asked the abbot Agatho
which virtue in the monastic life was the most difficult.
Here’s what he said to them:
Forgive me, but to my mind there is no labor so great as
praying to God: For when you wish to pray to God, the hostile
demons make haste to interrupt your prayer, knowing that
their sole hindrance lies in this, a prayer poured out to
God. With any other labor that you undertake in the life of
religion, however diligently and strictly you keep to it, you
get some rest: but prayer has the struggle of a mighty
conflict to your last breath.
Anyone who has ever tried praying knows that distractions can
be a vexing problem. Sometimes we become more concerned about
avoiding distractions than about praying. What if distractions
become a "serious" problem? Well, listen:
One brother came to Abbot Pastor and said, "All sorts
of distracting thoughts keep coming into my mind, and I'm in
danger because of them." Then the elder pushed him out
into the open air and said, "Open up your cloak and
capture the wind in it!" But he objected, "I can't
do it." So the elder said to him, "Exactly! And if
you can't catch the wind, neither can you prevent distracting
thoughts from coming into your head. Your job is just to say
no to them."
Even temptations themselves, which often caused the ascetics
to resort to the strangest extremes, can also be treated with a
balanced gracefulness:
One of the elders said, "It isn't because evil
thoughts come to us that we are condemned, but only because
we make use of evil thoughts. Of course, it can happen that
we suffer shipwreck because of these thoughts, but it can
also happen that because of them we are crowned."
THE WAR AGAINST THE DEMONS
The subject of distractions and temptations brings us to a
central aspect of the theology of the desert monks: the battle
against the demons. About a third of the Life of St. Antony
is a discourse on demons. Deserts, like cemeteries, were
considered to be the abode of the demons. So the life of the
desert monk was seen as a constant combat against the forces of
evil. The demons would take all sorts of shapes and use a variety
of tricks in their attempts to trip up the monastic desert
dwellers and scare them off..
It’s hard nowadays to take the idea of devils and demons
seriously. Devils have become cuddly sports mascots and
mischievous characters on the labels of paint cans. Demonic
possession has been reduced to a Hollywood cliché, a collection
of bizarre special effects that frighten but seldom enlighten.
The demonology of the desert fathers, however, has little in
common with the version of the Devil portrayed in "The
Exorcist." It is instead a subtle study of the forces both
inside and outside of us that influence our actions.
We often sense a "power of evil" at work in certain
people and events around us, but we’re more at home using
abstract psychological metaphors to explain human behavior and
motivation. No doubt modern psychology gives us tremendous help
in unlocking the secrets of our inner life. But for keen insight
into the workings of the human heart it’s hard to beat the
early masters of Christian spirituality, the desert fathers and
mothers. Much of their spirituality was cast in the imagery of
stories about demons. Not infrequently a modern psychologist
arrives at some insight that turns out to be a time-worn truism
that some early monastic mother or father had long ago couched in
terms of some demon or other: "The demon of greed came to a
brother one day..." or "The demon of pride approached a
brother in his cell..."
The first thing we need to know about demons is that although
they can cause us trouble, they need never win. Christ’s
victory at Easter completely overcame the forces of evil -- they
no longer have any control over us. The only power they have is
the power they talk us into giving to them.
A brother once asked abbot Pambo (another one of the most
famous desert fathers), "How come the devils keep me
from doing good to my neighbor?" Pambo scolded him,
"Don't talk like that! Is God a liar? Why not just admit
that you don't want to be merciful? Didn't God say long ago,
'I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions
and on all the forces of the enemy?' So why don't you just
stamp out the evil spirit?"
In the stories of the desert monks of Egypt we learn that
simply mentioning the name of Jesus or making the sign of the
cross was usually enough to drive a demon away. Saint Macarius
the Younger was said to have had the gift of "spitting on
demons." When a devil approached him he’d simply blow
him away. It wasn’t even a contest!
The following story about Macarius (the one who had the gift
of spitting on demons) reminds us how little fear the devil need
inspire in one who truly lives in Christ:
Once the famous Abbot Macarius was traveling across the
desert, and decided to spend the night in a pyramid, where,
of course, the bodies of many pagans had been laid to rest
over the years. Unconcerned by the presence of death all
around him, the old man dragged out one of the mummies and
put it under his head for a pillow! Of course the local
devils flew into a rage over such boldness and decided to
scare him off. From the other bodies they began to call to
the mummy under the abbot's head, "Lady, come with us to
the baths!" Another demon took the role of the
lady-mummy who was being used as a pillow and answered,
"I'd love to, but I can't. This stranger is holding me
down." The elder, not the least bit frightened, sat up
and started to pummel the corpse while shouting at it,
"So get up and go swimming if you can!" When they
heard this response, they cried, "You win!" and
they fled in confusion.
Imagine if we had the presence of mind to recognize the devil
at work in us! If only we could realize the power that our
baptism gives us over evil! The only power the demons have in our
lives is the power we choose to give them.
All this is not to say that dealing with the Devil is to be
taken lightly. Remember that the apostles had trouble driving out
demons because of their own lack of faith, and because some evils
"can only be driven out by prayer and fasting." Still,
this is a pretty optimistic starting point for us would-be
saints. Although there are evil powers in the world that try to
keep us from our goal, the victory is already assured if only we
have faith. When in doubt, spit!
Another insight from these early spiritual giants is this: The
Devil is always stirring things up. He’s the master of
dissension and discord. In fact, this is such a trademark of the
Devil that it’s one of the keys to telling a good spirit
from an evil one. Evil spirits always leave a person somehow
upset and disturbed, while the Spirit of God leaves a person
experiencing that peace that the world cannot give.
A favorite strategy of the Evil One is to wear us down, to
discourage us. Our disappointments can teach us patience, and our
failures can teach us wisdom. But the Devil whispers that
failures and sins are really defeats, that we’re really not
getting anywhere with this spiritual life thing, and that it
makes more sense to just give up. Each of us has heard that
little demon’s voice a few times, trying to get us to
abandon the struggle.
In the church of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris is a statue that
seems to be aimed at just this kind of discouragement. It is a
statue of Saint Genevieve, the patroness of Paris. She’s
holding a white candle. Because of the shadows you might not
notice right away that Genevieve is not alone. Sitting on her
left shoulder is a small dark brown demon whose cheeks are puffed
with evil breath as he blows out the flame of the white candle
the saint is holding. But on her other shoulder is the
calmest-looking little white-robed angel holding a lighted taper.
Every time the evil spirit blows out Genevieve’s candle, it
seems the good angel will just reach across and light it again.
No problem!
It reminds me that my life is likely to be a constant struggle
against hopelessness and despair. When I’ve just about had
it with my job, or with my community, when the flame of love or
hope has been blown out, I can remember the wise insight of the
statue of St. Genevieve: God’s angel is always going to be
there to re-light the candle. My shortcomings and vices may
extinguish the flame, but I always have the right to start over.
My ancestors in the faith, the desert mothers and fathers, assure
me that although I may get tired of the battle, God’s angel
never does. I may grow weary of the constant repetition of the
same old shortcomings and sins, and wonder how God ever puts up
with my boring inability to change. But the tireless angel with
the taper is there to light the candle of holiness one more time.
Finally, it’s important to be able to tell a good spirit
from a bad one. We’ve already noted, for example, how a
certain peacefulness is a valuable sign that the spirit that has
come to you is from heaven and not from the Evil one. This
discernment of spirits once took a humorous turn when
a devil changed himself into a bright angel and appeared
to a monk. "I am the angel Gabriel," he lied,
"and I have been sent to you." But the brother
wasn't about to be taken in, and replied, "Think again -
you must have been sent to somebody else. I haven't done
anything to deserve an angel!"
In the face of this realistic self-assessment the devil had to
retreat.
I hope that we will each take something away from our evening
with the desert fathers and mothers. Maybe it will be a renewed
sense of the joy that comes from single-minded commitment to God.
Or maybe it will encourage us to get our own priorities in order
and to simplify our lives a little, or worry a little less about
money and our material "stuff." Maybe it will give us a
greater sense of optimism during our own struggles against some
particular evil. Let us leave this monastery this evening
encouraged by our fathers and mothers in the desert. Through the
power of the risen Christ, we, like them, have the power to
overcome the demons that beset our lives, our city, and the world
around us. Who knows, one or another of us may even be moved to
push out the boundaries of our own safe, limited brand of
Christianity, in response to this final story:
Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: Father, according
as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my
prayer, my meditation and contemplative silence; and
according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of
thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in
reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers
became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be changed
totally into fire?
Well, why not?