History of the Tradition

1. History of the Tradition From Scripture to John Main

2. “If you study the history of spirituality or the spiritual life of the Church, you will find that each time that there is a spiritual renewal in the Church, the desert fathers are present.” (Irenee Hausherr)

3. “Meditation is the missing dimension of much Christian life today. It does not exclude other types of prayer and indeed deepens reverence for the sacraments and scripture.” (Laurence Freeman)

4. “If Christianity cannot recover its mystical tradition and teach it, it should just fold up and go out of business, it has nothing to say.” (Fr Bede Griffiths)

5. Background “Plagues teeming with untold mischief have come upon the churches. The primary offices have become marketable. Excessive wealth, enormous power, and luxury are destroying the integrity of the Church.” (St John Chrysostom ‘Homilies in Ephesus’) “their softly nurtured flesh draped only in heavy jewelry.”

6. Desert Fathers and Mothers “Do not model yourself on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind.” (Romans 12:2) “as a shipwreck from which each individual man had to swim for his life.” (Thomas Merton)

7. St Antony

8. St Paul of Thebes

9. Qualities of the Desert

10. Silence “Be still and know that I am God” “But the Lord was not in the wind…not in the earthquake….not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.” (1 Kings 19:13)

11. Solitude “During this time he went out one day into the hills to pray and spent the night in prayer to God.” (Luke 6:12) “But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your father, who is there in the secret place; and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you.” (Mat 6,6)

12. The Desert Fathers and MothersSilence “ Once Abba Macarius, after he had given the benediction to the brethren in the church at Scete, said to them: ’Brethren fly!’ One of the elders answered him ‘How can we fly further than this, seeing we are here in the desert?’ Then Macarius placed his finger on his mouth and said ‘Fly from this’. So saying he entered his cell and shut the door.”

13. Solitude “A brother in Scetis went to ask for a word from Abba Moses and the old man said to him, "Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.“ Amma Syncletica said:, ‘Many live on the mountain and behave as if they were living amongst the uproar of a city, and they are lost. It is possible while living amongst a crowd to be inwardly solitary, and while living alone to be inwardly beset by the crowd.

14. Attention “Be alert, be wakeful” (Mark 13:33) “I tell you this: unless you turn around and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt 18:1-4)

15. Evagrius “When attention seeks prayer it finds it. For if there is anything that marches in the train of attention it is prayer; and so it must be cultivated.” “There was another spiritual man about whom we have read. While he was praying one day a viper crawled up to him and seized his foot. He did not so much as lower his arms until he finished his customary prayer, and he suffered no harm whatever from thus loving God above his own self.”

16. Attention

17. ScriptureDetachment “Therefore I bid you put away anxious thoughts about food and drink to keep you alive, and clothes to cover your body. Surely life is more than food, the body more than clothes.” (Matt 6,25) “If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, he must leave self behind.” (Luke 9:23)

18. Scripture Few Words “In your prayers do not go babbling on like the heathen, who imagine that the more they say the more likely they are to be heard.” (Matt 6:7-8) Prayer of the tax-gatherer – “O God, have mercy on me, sinner that I am.” (Luke 18: 10-14)

19. The Desert Fathers and Mothers “They asked Abba Macarius, ‘How should one pray?’ The old man replied, ‘There is no need to lose oneself in words. It is enough to spread out the hands and to say, ‘Lord, as thou wilt and knowest best, have mercy.’ If the battle is fierce, say, ‘Help!’ He knows what is suitable for you and he will take pity on you.” “A single word in intimacy is worth more than a thousand at a distance.” (Evagrius - Pareneticus).

20. Cassian “If I am boiling over with a multitude of different distractions….I will cry out in my need: ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O lord, make haste to help me.” “You should, I say, meditate constantly on this verse in your heart…You should not stop repeating it when you are doing any kind of work or performing some service or are on a journey. Meditate on it while sleeping and eating and attending to the least needs of nature.”

21. Cloud of Unknowing “Take a short word…and fix this word fast to your heart, so that it is always there come what may. It will be your shield and spear in peace and war alike…With this word you will suppress all thought under the cloud of forgetting.” “So if you are to stand and not fall, never give up your firm intention: beat away at this cloud of unknowing between you and God with that sharp dart of longing love.”

22. Evagrius “If the flask is left standing for a little while, the scum sinks to the bottom and the water becomes clear and transparent. In a similar way our heart, once it is restful and steeped in profound silence, can reflect God.”

23. The Desert Fathers and Mothers “A brother came to Abba Pastor and said: ‘Many distracting thoughts come into my mind, and I am in danger because of them. Then the elder thrust him out in the open air and said: ’Open up the garments about your chest and catch the wind in them. But he replied: ‘This I cannot do.’ So the elder said to him:’ If you cannot catch the wind, neither can you prevent distracting thoughts from coming into your head.”

24. Prayer

25. Evagrius “If you wish to pray then it is God you need. He it is who gives prayer to the man who prays.” “At times just as soon as you rise to pray you pray well. At other times, work as you may, you achieve nothing. But this happens so that you will seek still more intently. “The Holy Spirit takes compassion on our weakness, and though we are impure he often comes to visit us. If he should find our spirit praying to him out of love for the truth he then descends upon it and dispels the whole army of thoughts and reasonings that besets it. ”

26. Scripture “Set your mind on God’s Kingdom and his justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well” (Matt 6,33) “How blest are those who know their need of God; the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs” (Matt 5:3)

27. Desert Fathers and Mothers “Abba Lot went to see abba Joseph and he said to him, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven; his fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame.“ “It can happen that when we are at prayer some brothers come to see us. Then we have to choose, either to interrupt our prayer or to sadden our brother by refusing to answer him. But love is greater than prayer. Prayer is one virtue amongst others, whereas love contains them all. “(John Climacus)

28. Evagrius “Happy is the monk who views the welfare and progress of all men with as much joy as if it were his own.” “A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.”

29. St Anthony had prayed to the Lord to be shown to whom he was equal. God had given him to understand that he had not yet reached the level of a certain cobbler in Alexandria. Anthony left the desert, went to the cobbler and asked him how he lived. His answer was that he gave a third of his income to the Church, another third to the poor, and kept the rest for himself. This did not seem a task out of the ordinary to Anthony who himself had given up all his possessions and lived in the desert in total poverty. So that was not where the other man’s superiority lay. Anthony said to him, ‘It is the Lord who has sent me to see how you live.’ The humble tradesman, who venerated Anthony, then told him his soul’s secret: ‘I do not do anything special. Only, as I work I look at all the passers-by and say, ‘So that they may be saved, I, only I, will perish.’

30. Cloud of Unknowing “He considers all men his friends, and none his foes.” “Moreover, the whole of mankind is wonderfully helped by what you are doing, in ways you do not understand….Yet it is the easiest work of all when the soul is helped by grace and has a conscious longing.”