`Give me a word, Father’, visitors to early desert monks asked. The responses of these pioneer ascetics were remembered and in the fourth century written down in Coptic, Syriac, Greek, and later Latin. Their Sayings were collected, in this case in the alphabetical order of the monks and nuns who uttered them, and read by generations of Christians as life-giving words that would help readers along the path to salvation.
A Wonderful Collection Of Early Christian Wisdom I first became interested in the writings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers after reading some of the writings of Kathleen Norris. As a Benedictine Oblate, she discovered this rich and varied writing and incorporated parts of their wisdom into her own writings. When I came across THE SAYINGS OF THE DESERT FATHERS, translated by an Anglican nun, Sr. Benedicta Ward, I read it and saw why the writings intrigued people such as Norris and others such as Thomas Merton. The writings included in this work were written by people who fled to the desert to become examples of holiness. Some of their writings were recorded and reveal much about the human condition. Their joys and struggles in such an austere life are the foundation of this book. Other writings can be somewhat difficult to understand in our day and age, but these writings still prove interesting.
few better places to start on desert monasticism For thirty years now Sister Benedicta Ward’s translation of the sayings of 131 of the earliest monastics has served as an indispensable text for English speakers. In addition to her brief foreword and short biographical introductions (when they are known), the book includes simple maps on the inside front and back covers, a short glossary of terms, a chronological table of key events in the development of desert monasticism, a bibliography that is all too short and badly dated, and then two indices of key concepts, people and places. The sayings themselves stand alone without commentary. For contemporary extrapolations one can turn to the fine books by Archbishop Rowan Williams (Where God Happens, 2005) and John Chryssavgis (In the Heart of the Desert, 2003). For more complete primary resources, see the two works by John Cassian (360-435), Institutes and Conferences (900-plus pages), in which Cassian relates what he learned from and about the earliest monastics. Beginning…