The Wisdom Of The Desert Fathers And Mothers
the wisdom of theD e s e rt Fat h e r sand MothersEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 17/22/10 1:20:27 PM
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Paraclete Essentialsthe wisdom of theDe er a herand o herForeword by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrovecontemporary english version byhenry l. carrigan, jr. Paraclete PressBrewster, MassachusettsEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 37/22/10 1:20:27 PM
The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers2010 First PrintingCopyright 2010 by Paraclete Press, Inc.ISBN 978-1-55725-780-2Unless otherwise designated, Scripture quotations are taken from the NewRevised Standard Version of the Bible, 1989 by the Division of ChristianEducation of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.All rights reserved. Used by permission.Scripture quotations designated (kjv) are taken from the King James Version.Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication DataThe wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers : contemporary English version /[translated] by Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. : foreword by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.p. cm.ISBN 978-1-55725-780-21. Spiritual life--Christianity. 2. Anthony, of Egypt, Saint, ca. 250-355 or 6. 3.Paul, the Hermit, Saint, d. ca. 341. 4. Desert Fathers--Biography. I. Carrigan,Henry L., 1954- II. Athanasius, Saint, Patriarch of Alexandria, d. 373. Life of St.Antony. English. III. Jerome, Saint, d. 419 or 20. Vita Pauli. English.BR63.W57 2010248.4’70922394--dc22201002251410 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations inprinted reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.Published by Paraclete PressBrewster, Massachusettswww.paracletepress.comPrinted in the United States of AmericaEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 47/22/10 1:20:27 PM
W Contents WForewordby Jonathan Wilson-HartgroveI n t r o d uc t i o nThe Life of Antony of Egyptviixi1The Life of Paul of Thebes77Sayings of the Fathers and mothers87Antony the GreatBasil the GreatGregory the TheologianGerontiusEphremAmoun of anius, Bishop of CyprusEvagriusTheodoraJohn the DwarfIsidore the PriestIsidore of PelusiaCassianMacarius the GreatArseniusEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 51161177/22/10 1:20:27 PM
vi The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and MothersAgathonMosesPoemenEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 61171231267/22/10 1:20:27 PM
W Foreword WIf books could be weighted according to the power of theirwords, you wouldn’t be able to hold the volume that isnow in your hands. Given the cost of printing books, wecan all be grateful that it’s available in paperback. But thewisdom printed on these pages is the kind of thing humanshave historically written on stone. This is a heavy book.I say this because I didn’t know what I was getting intothe first time I encountered Antony of the desert. When hisbiography was assigned to me in an undergraduate class onChristian classics, I remember feeling relief that it was so muchshorter than Augustine’s Confessions. I was looking forward toa light evening of reading. But I did not get very far into thisstory about a man who heard Jesus’ words to the rich youngruler and decided to obey them himself before I forgot whattime it was. I remember leaning expectantly over the pages as Itried to make sense of wrestling matches with demons and therigors of ascetic practice for the sake of drawing near to God.When Antony’s friends dragged him from his cell after twentyyears, I sat in wonder that he was a picture of health withpower to heal and raise the dead. Here was a human beingtransformed. I sat up half the night, reading that descriptionover and again.EtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 77/22/10 1:20:27 PM
viii The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and MothersA son of Southern Baptists, I grew up going to revival meetings where some of the best storytellers in the world told methe story of Jesus. By the time I was seven, I was so captivatedby the power of Jesus that I promised him my whole life. Mypastor told me it was the most important decision I would evermake—that this one choice changed everything. But a decadelater, when I was a student on a Christian college campus, Iwas disappointed by how little had changed. Could Jesus reallymake me into a whole new person?Antony gave me hope that a new life in Christ was possible. But he also showed me, in no uncertain terms, what newlife would cost—nothing less than everything. I was scared todeath, but I was also unexplainably attracted to this person.Like Nicodemus who came to Jesus in the night, I wanted toslip away and listen to this man.In time I learned that I was not the first to have this feeling.When word got out about Antony’s transformation, the “desertbecame a city.” Those who came proved that Antony was notan exception. Devoting themselves to a life of prayer and thehard work of stability, a whole host of men and women grew inthe deserts of Egypt and Palestine, Syria and Turkey to becomewise mothers and fathers in the faith. They gathered themselvesin communities called “lauras” and “sketes.” When hungry soulscame looking for a word, they listened prayerfully and spokesuccinctly. The “sayings” collected here under the names ofthose who said them are the sound advice that folks took homewith them. I doubt they wrote them down immediately. Theseare the sort of words that, if you really hear them, you don’thave to write them down. They stay with you forever.EtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 87/22/10 1:20:27 PM
Foreword ixThe heart of desert wisdom, just like the heart of Jesus’gospel, is in the memorable images and words of instructionthat came in short sayings from the ammas and abbas. But justas Peter, Paul, and John wrote reflections to help us make senseof the sayings of Jesus, more systematic thinkers came alongto make sense of the desert wisdom also. Evagrius and JohnCassian are the best known of these scholars. Their reflectionshelp us put the pieces together into a whole—the desert wisdomas a vision for what life with God and other people can be. Theyare secondary, of course. Without the radical commitment andtotal abandon of someone like Antony, their work would havenever been possible. And yet, without their careful thought, wemay well misunderstand the gift of the mothers and fathers.Part of the wisdom of the tradition, I suppose, is that we needexperience and reflection, theology and practice.I live my life with Jesus and other friends in a Christiancommunity that has been described as part of a “new monasticism.” I never cease to be amazed by how many people in ourhypermodern culture of virtual reality show up at our door anddinner table, eager to talk about one thing: how to live the wayof life that Jesus taught and practiced. As I pass the potatoes orsit across a cup of tea from these souls, I see a glimmer of hopein their eyes. I suspect it’s something like the hope I felt that firstnight I sat up reading about Antony of Egypt. Maybe, I keptthinking, a whole new life is possible. Maybe it’s already here.Maybe we really can become the church we dream of. Comingback to the words in this book helps me keep hope alive. Thechurch doesn’t just believe another world is possible—we’veseen it. If it could happen in the fourth and fifth centuries, itEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 97/22/10 1:20:27 PM
x The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Motherscan happen where we are today. May we, by the power of theHoly Spirit, become the new creation we long for.—Jonathan Wilson-HartgroveEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 107/22/10 1:20:27 PM
W Introduction WTwo of the most enduring images used to describe theChristian spiritual life are the wilderness and the desert. Onone level, Christians have used these images to describe spiritualexperiences involving feelings of God’s absence or abandonment.Christians often describe their feelings of spiritual lonelinessand times of separation from God as periods of wandering inthe wilderness. Often these same Christians, feeling that Godis somehow testing them as they experience devastating losses,physical pain, or spiritual forlornness, compare their time ofsuffering to Jesus’ experience of being tested in the desert.While these images often suggest an aridity of spirit, however,they also evoke powerful visions of renewal and redemption.In Exodus 16, as the Israelites murmur their threats at Mosesfor leading them into such a situation, God provides food andwater for them and guides them into a new land of promise.In Matthew 4:1–11 (Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13), Jesus findshimself alone in the wilderness with the great tempter, Satan.After forty days and forty nights of what appear to be exhaustingstruggles, Jesus emerges from his desert period prepared to facethe challenges of his forthcoming ministry. The wilderness storiesof the Israelites and of Jesus provide the foundational narrativesof desert spirituality in the Christian traditions.The history of the earliest Christian communities after Jesus’life and ministry is indeed the story of a wilderness experience.Very soon after Jesus’ death, according to the account in Acts,several of his followers were killed for preaching his messageEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 117/22/10 1:20:27 PM
xii The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothersof a coming new kingdom of God. One of the persecutors,Saul of Tarsus, suddenly experienced conversion to the nascentChristian tradition (while in the desert), changed his name toPaul, and soon became one of the tradition’s most ardent supporters. During a period of roughly twenty years or less, Pauland his followers established numerous churches throughoutthe Mediterranean region. In his letters, Paul offered his adviceto several churches about internal doctrinal matters—what doesit mean to be ekklesia, or church?—as well as about externalmatters—how should the church or Christians deal with theRoman government?During the first four centuries of the Common Era,Christianity experienced tremendous persecution at the handsof the Roman Empire. Paul and the writers of the Gospelshad already warned their communities that the coming of thenew kingdom would be fraught with perils for the faithful (1Thessalonians 3:1–5, 5:1–11; Mark 13). But as the early Jesusmovement migrated into urban areas and established churches,it came increasingly into conflict with the Roman Empire, whichrequired total obedience to its laws of emperor worship. Withtheir belief in the coming new kingdom in which their own Godwould reign supreme, many Christians refused to submit to theEmpire’s insistence that the true God was the Roman emperor.With such refusals began a series of persecutions of Christiansunder a string of emperors from Nero to Diocletian.When the persecution was at its height in the first two centuries of the Common Era, church theologians such as Justin,Irenaeus, and Origen encouraged faithfulness to the developingdoctrine of the church as well as to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.EtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 127/22/10 1:20:28 PM
Introduction xiiiFor Justin, persecution provided the opportunity to show truefaithfulness to Christ by dying for him in the manner in whichhe had died for his followers. Thus, during these centuries of thedeveloping Christian community, martyrdom became its centralexpression of faith. Early Christian martyrs enacted their owndesires to be united with God through their passionate defensesof their faith and through their deaths. The passion of the martyrsfor their faith attracted many new converts to Christianity, andsuddenly the community found itself engaged in internal arguments about baptism and the nature of a true Christian.Yet, these internal arguments did not halt the growthof Christianity. In fact, some have claimed recently thatChristianity continued to grow in spite of martyrdom becauseof the frequent tendency of Christians to intermarry with nonChristians in the Empire. Whatever the reasons, Christiancommunities experienced slow but steady growth betweenthe second and fourth centuries. By the time of Constantine,who issued an edict of toleration that ended the persecution ofChristians, the Christian church had grown so large that it confronted new problems. Suddenly, the church found itself nothaving to engage in a process of self-definition.When the emperor Constantine came to power in the earlypart of the fourth century, he ushered in a new attitude towardthe Christian religion. Constantine himself probably experiencedsome kind of conversion to Christianity in 312, when he attributed his victory over his rival to the deity he referred to as theUnconquered Sun. While many Christians believed that theirGod had given Constantine the victory, he did not differentiatebetween his monotheism and that of the Christians. Thus, heEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 137/22/10 1:20:28 PM
xiv The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothersadopted the Christian cross as his battle symbol, and he placedthe “Chi-Rho” symbol of Christ on his coins beginning in 315.Moreover, the emperor thought of himself as a ruler whoseduty was to establish and promote a united church. As the firstChristian Roman ruler, Constantine supported the growth of thechurch. In order to repay Christians for the years of persecutionsby the Empire, he built new churches and had new copies of theBible made. For the first time in its history, the church began toflourish as both a religious and a political institution.In this time of relative peace, several new developmentsoccurred in the church. First, the absence of persecution providedample time for local bishops to begin debating the essentials ofthe Christian faith. Most notably, a number of debates aboutthe person and nature of Christ took place. In earlier centuries,Christians did not have the leisure to argue about whetherJesus was fully divine or fully human or about how his twonatures commingled, if they indeed did, with one another. In325 a church council convened at Nicaea to attempt to settlethis question, and offered some tentative answers that could beaccepted by most churches in the East.Such ecumenical councils led to a second development inearly Christianity: the establishment of orthodoxy. In responseto both internal and external pressures, these councils soughtto develop belief-statements that would promote Christianself-definition. These creeds contained a number of doctrinalpropositions to which believing Christians were required toassent as a proof of their right belief (orthodoxy). Those whocould not assent to the creedal formulations were labeled “heretics,” and were ousted from the church and sometimes killedEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 147/22/10 1:20:28 PM
Introduction xvbecause of their disagreement. Thus, the Christian community,which had fought so long against the persecution of the Empire,now began to persecute its own members for their unwillingnessto agree with the doctrines the councils had established as theessentials that defined a Christian. For the outside world, thecreeds functioned as documents of self-identification; for thechurch, the creeds defined orthodoxy.Finally, as Christianity grew comfortable in its role as theofficial religion of the Roman Empire, many Christians becameless and less comfortable with the church’s too easy adopting ofthe culture. In the eyes of these believers, the church’s new focuson establishing doctrinal correctness, along with its emphasis oncreating a clerical hierarchy to monitor such orthodoxy, neglectedthe missionary impulse of the earliest Christian communities.Moreover, the passionate commitment of the martyrs to theirfaith was lost in the wrangling of the bishops and priests overfine philosophical points of theological doctrine. In addition,many Christians expressed deep dissatisfaction that the roleof bishop, originally a religious office as set out in the NewTestament, now involved obeisance to the Empire that hadonce persecuted Christians. Since the bishop now functionedas a political figure, many of his religious decisions favored theEmpire rather than the church. This comfortable relationshipwith the emperor also meant that the church received financialsupport from the Empire, and the Christian church suddenlyexpanded into an institution whose too easy association withRome corrupted it in the eyes of many of its congregants.Many of these dissatisfied Christians began to flee the churchin search of a purer form of Christianity untainted by collusionEtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 157/22/10 1:20:28 PM
xvi The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Motherswith empire. Thinking that they could return to an earlier expression of Christianity, these individuals fled the church in orderto live lives of solitude and prayer as they sought to recapturethe passion of second-century Christians for their faith. Thus,monasticism, perhaps the greatest movement to come out of thefourth-century church, developed and flourished.But the Eastern, eremitic monasticism of the later fourthcentury is not the cenobitic (community) monasticism familiarto so many Western Christians. To be sure, these early monkspracticed various forms of asceticism, and they saw themselvesas returning to Christianity the kind of pure expression of faiththat they thought was missing in the fourth-century church.Yet, these monks formed no communities with rules of faithand life that governed their practice. They did not congregatein monasteries and meet to observe fixed hours of prayer. Nordid they participate in the transmission of biblical texts throughcopying them, as later monks did. Rather, these monks wereindividuals who fled to the caves in the Egyptian desert to seekecstatic union with God. One scholar observes that this “asceticaltheology was a theology dominated by the ideal of the martyrwho hoped for nothing in this world but sought for unionwith God in his passion.”1 These individuals usually renouncedtheir material possessions and practiced a deep degree of selfsacrifice that recalled the spirit of Christians facing persecutionin the earliest Christian communities. As with later monasticcommunities, the foundational elements of these monks’ liveswere chastity, abstinence, and unceasing prayer.By the end of the fourth century, thousands of these hermitshad settled along the length of the Nile River, and nearly 5,000EtrnWisdom FORMAT.indd 167/22/10 1:20:28 PM
Introduction xviihad established themselves in the desert on the outskirts ofAlexandria. While they formed no distinct group or movement,these individuals later came to be known as the desert fathers,even though women also practiced this eremitic lifestyle. Sopowerful was the wisdom and purity of these desert monks thatChristians from urban congregations continually streamed tothe monks’ caves seeking sagacious words of advice. Visitors tothe monks’ cells, or prayer chambers, addressed them with thisformula: “Speak to me a word, Father, that I may live.” Themonks’ answers were gathered early on in the collection calledParadise or Apothegms of the Fathers or, in most modern editions,The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Later generations of monks usedthese wise sayings and stories, which were sometimes directed tospecific situations in a particular city, congregation, or monasticsetting, as the basis for their own monastic life. For example,Basil of Caesarea and later Benedict of Nursia and John Cassianincorporated many of the teachings of the desert fathers intotheir monastic rules.Several of the fathers became so famous for their wisdomand their acts that their contemporaries, or near-contemporaries,wrote biographies of these great hermits. Perhaps the most famousof the desert fathers was Antony of Egypt (251–356), who livedto be 105 years old. Not long after Antony’s death, Athanasius,bishop of Alexandria, wrote an account of Antony’s life thatsoon becam
sayings of the fathers and mothers 87 antony the great 87 Basil the great 96 . The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of a coming new kingdom of god. one of the persecutors, saul of tarsus, suddenly experienced conversion to the nascent Christian tradition (while in the desert), changed his name to Paul, and soon became one of the .
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