Saint Pachomius the Great

May 14 is the Commemmoration of Saint Pachomius the Great”

“Saint Pachomius (Greek: Παχώμιος, ca. 292–348), also known as Pachome and Pakhomius, is generally recognized as the founder of Christian cenobitic monasticism…. Saint Pachomius was born in 292 in Thebes (Luxor, Egypt) to pagan parents. According to his hagiography, at age 21, Pachomius was swept up against his will in a Roman army recruitment drive, a common occurrence during this period of turmoil and civil war. With several other youths, he was put onto a ship that floated down the Nile river and arrived at Thebes in the evening. Here he first encountered local Christians, who customarily brought food and comfort daily to the impressed troops. This made a lasting impression, and Pachomius vowed to investigate Christianity further when he got out. He was able to leave the army without ever having to fight, was converted and baptized (314).
Pachomius then came into contact with several well known ascetics and decided to pursue that path under the guidance of the hermit named Palaemon (317). One of his devotions, popular at the time, was praying with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross. After studying seven years with Palaemon, Pachomius set out to lead the life of a hermit near St. Anthony of Egypt, whose practices he imitated until Pachomius heard a voice in Tabennisi that told him to build a dwelling for the hermits to come to. An earlier ascetic named Macarius had created a number of proto-monasteries called lavra, or cells where holy men would live in a community setting who were physically or mentally unable to achieve the rigors of Anthony’s solitary life.

Pachomius established his first monastery between 318 and 323 at Tabennisi, Egypt. His elder brother John joined him, and soon more than 100 monks lived nearby. Pachomius set about organizing these cells into a formal organization. Until then, Christian asceticism had been solitary or eremitic– male or female monastics lived in individual huts or caves and met only for occasional worship services. Pachomius created the community or cenobitic organization, in which male or female monastics lived together and held their property in common under the leadership of an abbot or abbess. Pachomius realized that some men, acquainted only with the eremitical life, might speedily become disgusted, if the distracting cares of the cenobitical life were thrust too abruptly upon them. He therefore allowed them to devote their whole time to spiritual exercises, undertaking all the community’s administrative tasks himself. The community hailed Pachomius as “Abba” (father), from which “Abbot” derives.
The monastery at Tabennisi, though enlarged several times, soon became too small and a second was founded at Pabau (Faou). After 336, Pachomius spent most of his time at Pabau. Though Pachomius sometimes acted as lector for nearby shepherds, neither he nor any of his monks became priests. St Athanasius visited and wished to ordain him in 333, but Pachomius fled from him. Athanasius’ visit was probably a result of Pachomius’ zealous defence of orthodoxy against Arianism. Basil of Caesarea visited, then took many of Pachomius’ ideas, which he adapted and implemented in Caesarea. This ascetic rule, or Ascetica, is still used today by the Eastern Orthodox Church, comparable to that of the Rule of St. Benedict in the West.
Pachomius continued as abbot to the cenobites for some forty years. During an epidemic (probably plague), Pachomius called the monks, strengthened their faith, and appointed his successor. Pachomius then died on 14 Pashons, 64 A.M. (9 May 348 A.D.)
By the time Pachomius died (c. 345) eight monasteries and several hundred monks followed his guidance. Within a generation, cenobic practices spread from Egypt to Palestine and the Judean Desert, Syria, North Africa and eventually Western Europe The number of monks, rather than the number of monasteries, may have reached 7000.
His reputation as a holy man has endured. As mentioned above, several liturgical calendars commemorate Pachomius. Among many miracles attributed to Pachomius, that though he had never learned the Greek or Latin tongues, he sometimes miraculously spoke them. Pachomius is also credited with being the first Christian to use and recommend use of a prayer rope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachomius_the_Great

“Who was Pachomius? It is difficult to tell what sort of a man he was. We cannot do so from his writings, for very little has come down to us: a few instructions and the Rules, but there are four very different ones and it is very probable that Pachomius wrote none of them. Nor by his biography, because there is not one life of Pachomius, but eight or nine, written by his disciples. Very soon dissensions arose among them; they did not all have the same idea of monastic life and each group wrote a life of Pachomius to justify his own point of view. Each of the Lives presents Pachomius from a different aspect.
Among these eight or nine Lives, three are longer, for they have come down to us complete (or almost so). They are designated by the language in which they are written: the Bohaïric life, the Saïdic life, (these are both Coptic dialects); and the Greek life. The others are only fragmentary.
An Egyptian like Antony, Pachomius was not born a Christian like him, but a pagan. He was born in 292 of a family of well-to-do peasants at Sne on the borders of the Nile a little higher up than Thebes. He had at least one brother and one sister known to us through the Lives.

At that time Egypt was under Roman domination. In 312 the Emperor Maximin Daia needed soldiers to make war against Licinius. At that time, when one had no soldiers, one took them; people were conscripted by force. Some soldiers came to Pachomius’ village and took him away with other young men. He was about twenty years old and so ready for military service whether he liked it or not. So he was taken to Alexandria. As prisoners, he and his companions took ship on the Nile and went down to Thebes, the first large town, where they stopped for the night. The soldiers took the conscripts to the prison in the town, and there, the Christians brought them food and assistance. (Text 1).
Pachomius, the pagan, was moved by the charity of these Christians. It remained with him all his life; for him, a Christian does good to everyone. This conviction which came home to him then influenced his conception of the monastic life in which the idea of the service of God and the brethren had great importance.
The war being over, Pachomius was set free at Antinoe. He went back up the Nile but he did not go home. He wanted to serve God and, like Antony, he settled near a village (Seneset) where he was baptised about 313. In accordance with the promise he had made to serve mankind, he helped the people round about in any way he could. Then, like Antony, he too became a disciple of an ascetic who lived nearby (Text 2). Again like Antony, he underwent many temptations. The founder of the cenobitic life had no thought of starting something new; he began in the same way as Antony. But God had other ideas.
About 323 Pachomius left Palamon to live in an abandoned village called Tabennesi, always with the intention of being a hermit. His brother John came to join him. Then one night Pachomius had a vision; God intervened (Text 3). During the following days a disagreement arose between the two brothers. John wanted to remain faithful to the eremitical way and continue to live in their little cell, while Pachomius, after his vision, wanted to build a monastery.
In fact, people came. Pachomius had the gift of gathering them round him “because of his goodness”, say the Lives. Young people came to him, he instructed them and, faithful to his first inspiration, he served them (Text 4). One can see how his first experience of the charity of Christians had marked his life, he wanted to serve. As long as the novices were good, all went well; the young were spurred on by his example and wanted to share the work: “Let us live and die with this man” they said, “and he will lead us straight to God”. But other less well-disposed people came and things went wrong. Pachomius suffered a set-back and learnt a lesson (Text 5). The lesson was this: a monastery is not a cooperative and a community must have an economic system capable of holding it together. At his first attempt, faithful to the light received at his conversion, Pachomius had become the servant of all, receiving in return something to pay for the food of his followers. He gave them the following rule: Each one must be self-sufficient and administer his own affairs but must contribute towards the material needs ogf the monastery, whether it was food for the monks or food for the guests. They brought their contribution to Pachomius and he made do with what he received It was like a boarding-house, there was no sharing of possessions. After his set-back, Pachomius realised that to have a stable community, everything must be held in common. From then on he organised things differently and asked those who came to him to renounce their families and their possessions to follow the Saviour. He proposed as the way to God: that they lead the common life (in Greek Koino-bios), and establish a Koinônia, a community.

From this time, Pachomius’ Koinônia really started, and very quickly. The map shows the area in the Upper Nile where Pachomius lived: Sne, his birth-place; Thebes, the capital where he was imprisoned; Antinoe where he was set free. You can also see his foundations (small letters), a chain of monasteries in Upper Egypt on the borders of the Nile where the land could be cultivated. The first four, very near in time and space, are numbered: Tabennisi, the first and Phbew the second to which the central government of the Order was transferred. The crosses mark the communities of nuns.
Pachomius died in 346, during a plague. He was only 54.
The succession was very difficult and cliques sprang up. There was opposition between a group of elders and the new generation, all depended on who took power. Two great figures, disciples of Pachomius, Theodore, of the older generation, and Horsiesius of the new were for a time at the head of this immense Order. After the death of Theodore in 368 and of Horsiesius in 387 everything disintegrated. There was indeed an effort at reform by the white monks of Shenoudi (or Chenoute), but this was not a success. The brutal abba used the stick rather than the carrot and discouraged those of good will.
Fortunately, in 404 Jerome, then at Bethlehem, translated the 4 Rules into Latin, as well as the 11 letters of Pachomius, one of Theodore and the book of Horsiesius. Thanks to these translations the Pachomian experience left its mark on the West.”
http://www.scourmont.be/studium/bresard/05-pachomius.html

See also: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11381a.htm
http://oca.org/saints/lives/2014/05/15/101384-venerable-pachomius-the-great-founder-of-coenobitic-monasticism
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Pachomius_the_Great
http://www.voskrese.info/spl/Xpachomy-gt.html
http://www.scourmont.be/studium/bresard/05-pachomius.html

For a translation of the Greek life of St Pachomius from the “Vitae Patrum”, see http://www.vitae-patrum.org.uk/page11.html

See further Philip Rousseau “Pachomius. The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt” (1999)

For a translation of all existing documents from the cenobitic monasteries of Pachomius, the lives, rules, and other writings of Saint Pachomius and his disciples, see:

“Pachomian Koinonia. Volume 1, The Life of Saint Pachomius and His Disciples.” Translated, with an introduction By Armand Veilleux. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1980: A translation of all existing documents from the cenobitic monasteries of Pachomius (292-346).

“Pachomian Koinonia. Volume 2, Pachomian Chronicles And Rules”
Translated and annotated by Armand Veilleux OCSO, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1980: Descriptions of Pachomian monastic communities from a variety of ancient sources, including the Lausiac History and A History of the Monks in Egypt, and full translations of the Rule of Saint Pachomius and the Regulation of his successor, Horsiesios.

“Pachomian Koinonia. Volume 3, Other Writings Of Saint Pachomius And His Disciples”
Translated and annotated by Armand Veilleux OCSO, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1982: A translation of all existing documents from the cenobitic monasteries of Pachomius (292-346).
See http://www.cistercianpublications.org/Products/CategoryCenter.aspx?categoryId=CFS-PK

Serapion the Sindonite

May 14 is the Commemmoration of Serapion the Sindonite.

“HE was called the Sindonite, from a single garment of coarse linen which he always wore. He was a native of Egypt. Exceeding great was the austerity of his penitential life. Though he travelled into several countries, he always lived in the same poverty, mortification, and recollection. In a certain town, commiserating the spiritual blindness of an idolater, who was also a comedian, he sold himself to him for twenty pieces of money. His only sustenance in this servitude was bread and water. He acquitted himself at the same time of every duty belonging to his condition with the utmost diligence and fidelity, joining with his labour assiduous prayer and meditation. Having converted his master and the whole family to the faith, and induced him to quit the stage, he was made free by him, but could not be prevailed upon to keep for his own use, or even to distribute to the poor, the twenty pieces of coin he had received as the price of his liberty. Soon after this he sold himself a second time, to relieve a distressed widow. Having spent some time with his new master, in recompense of signal spiritual services, besides his liberty, he also received a cloak, a tunic, or under-garment, and a book of the gospels. He had scarcely gone out of doors, when, meeting a poor man, he bestowed on him his cloak; and shortly after to another starving with cold, he gave his tunic; and was thus reduced again to his single linen garment. Being asked by a stranger who it was that had stripped him and left him in that naked condition, showing his book of the gospels, he said: “This it is that hath stripped me.” Not long after, he sold the book itself for the relief of a person in extreme distress. Being met by an old acquaintance, and asked what was become of it, he said: “Could you believe it? this gospel seemed continually to cry to me: Go, sell all thou hast, and give to the poor. Wherefore I have also sold it, and given the price to the indigent members of Christ.” Having nothing now left but his own person, he disposed of that again on several other occasions, where the corporal or spiritual necessities of his neighbour called for relief: once to a certain Manichee at Lacedæmon, whom he served for two years, and before they were expired, brought both him and his whole family over to the true faith. St. John the Almoner having read the particulars of this history, called for his steward, and said to him, weeping: “Can we flatter ourselves that we do any great matters because we give our estates to the poor? Here is a man who could find means to give himself to them, and so many times over. St. Serapion went from Lacedæmon to Rome, there to study the most perfect models of virtue, and, returning afterwards into Egypt, died in the desert, being sixty years old, some time before Palladius visited Egypt in 388. Henschenius, in his Notes on the Life of St. Auxentius, and Bollandus take notice that in certain Menæa he is honoured on the 21st of March; yet they have not given his acts on that day. Baronius confounds him with St. Serapion, the Sidonian martyr. See Pallad. Lausiac. ch. 83. and Leontius in the Life of Saint John the Almoner.”
Rev. Alban Butler (1711–73). Volume III: March. “The Lives of the Saints” 1866.
http://www.bartleby.com/210/3/212.html

“’Sindon’ means ‘linen cloth’, and this saint was called’ the Sindonite’ because he covered his naked body only with a linen cloth. He carried the Gospels in his hand. Serapion lived like the birds, with no roof and no cares, moving from one place to another. He gave his linen cloth to a poor wretch who was shivering with cold, and himself remained completely naked. When someone asked him: ‘Serapion, who made you naked?’, he indicated the Gospels and said: ‘This!’ But, after that, he gave away the Gospels also for the money needed by a man who was being hounded to prison by a creditor for a debt. At one time in Athens, he did not eat for four days, having nothing, and began to cry out with hunger. When the Athenian philosophers asked him what he was shouting about, he replied: ‘There were three to whom I was in debt: two have quietened down, but the third is still tormenting me. The first creditor is carnal lust, which has tormented me from my youth; the second is love of money, and the third is the stomach. The first two have left me alone, but the third one still torments me.’ The philosophers gave him some gold to buy bread. He went to a baker, bought a single loaf, put down all the gold and went out. He went peacefully to the Lord in old age, in the 5th century.”
From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
http://www.orthodox.net/menaion-may/14-our-holy-father-serapion-the-sindonite.html

Saint Nikita, Recluse of the Kiev Caves

May 14 is the Commemoration of Saint Nikita (Nicetas), Recluse of the Kiev Caves

“St. Nikita was tonsured in the Kiev-Caves Lavra. Very early in his monastic life he secluded himself in a cave. His decision to become a recluse was based on inexperience and was contrary to the will of the saintly abbot Nikon who refused to bless such an undertaking:
“My son! at your age such a life will not benefit you. You would do much better to remain with the brethren. In laboring together with them you will surely gain your reward. You yourself saw how our brother Isaac was seduced by the demons in his seclusion and would have perished had he not been saved by the grace of God through the prayers of our holy fathers Anthony and Theodosius .”
“Never, my father,” replied Nikita, “,will I be deceived. I am resolved firmly to withstand the demonic temptations, and I shall pray to the man-loving God that He grant me the gift of working miracles as He did to the recluse Isaac who, to this day, continues to perform many miracles through his prayers .”
“Your desire exceeds your powers. Take heed, my son, that you do not fall on account of your high-mindedness. I would enjoin you rather to serve the brethren, and God will crown you for your obedience.”

The abbot’s wise counsel could not tame Nikita’s ambitious desire to be a recluse. The monastery’s eiders, however, did not forsake the headstrong novice in his foolishness; they continued to keep an eye on him and to pray for him.
It was not long before the recluse’s cave became filled with a sweet fragrance and he heard a voice joining his in prayer. He reasoned to himself: If this were not an angel, he would not be praying with me, nor would I sense the fragrance of the Holy Spirit. The undiscerning recluse began to pray still more fervently: “Lord,” he cried out, “appear to me that I might see Thee face to face!” The voice answered: “I shall send you an angel. Follow his will in everything you do.”
Presently a demon appeared in the guise of an angel. First he told the novice to stop praying, that he himself would pray and that the recluse was to occupy himself with reading the Old Testament, and the Old Testament alone. The unfortunate novice was obedient to the demon: he stopped praying, falsely reassured by the constant presence of the “angel” praying at his side. The Old Testament he learned by heart.
The demon began telling Nikita all that was going on in the world, and on this basis the recluse began to prophesy. Laymen would come to his cave to listen to him. The monastery elders, however, noticed that the recluse never cited the New Testament, only the Old, and they understood that he had fallen into a state of prelest (spiritual deception). They broke into the cave, chased out the demon by their prayers, and dragged the recluse from his place of seclusion.
No sooner was Nikita parted from the demon than he forgot all he had learned of the Old Testament; he was convinced that he had never read it. Indeed, it appeared that he had even forgotten how to read, and when he came round he had to be taught all over again, like a child.
Nikita understood his error and wept bitterly in repentance. He began to struggle on the true path of humility and obedience. And the Lord, seeing his fervor, forgave him, in token of which He made Nikita a shepherd of His rational flock. Elevated in 1096 to the episcopal throne of Great Novgorod, Nikita was granted grace to work miracles. The Lord thereby assured the faithful that their archpastor had been fully cleansed of his delusion and that his labors of repentance had found favor with God. Once, for example, during a severe drought, God answered his prayer for rain; another time, a fire in the city was extinguished by his prayers. For 13 years St. Nikita skillfully guided his flock before leaving this world on January 30, 1108 to enter into eternal and blessed repose with the saints.
St. Nikita was buried in Novgorod’s St. Sophia’s cathedral which was frescoed according to plans he had designed. In 1551 the earthly remains of the holy hierarch were discovered to be incorrupt and he was officially canonized. On the eve of his glorification, a priest saw the Bishop in a dream: he was vested and censing the holy icons. When his coffin was opened, everyone was struck by the light which emanated from his face. Today his relics–encased in a large, intricately carved reliquary–are located in the church of the Holy Apostle Philip, the only church in Novgorod which remains open for worship.
St. Nikita had no beard and so he is depicted on his icons.”
(Based on a translation from “1000 Years of Russian Sanctity” compiled by Nun Taisia; Jordanville, 1983.)
http://www.roca.org/OA/66-68/66p.htm

HYMN OF PRAISE: SAINT NIKITAS OF THE CAVES IN KIEV
By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

Nikitas, to the Creator, prayed,
That the Creator make him worthy,
That he, the Creator, may be able to see.
“Appear to me, O God, O God!”

O Nikitas, sin is pursuing you,
That this, from God, you implore!
Make yourself worthy and you will see
The All-eternal One in eternity.

The Immortal God does not allow
That mortal eye upon Him gaze;
Even to the celestial world, it is frightful
To gaze at the Almighty.

To us is given this life,
That, by it, to prepare ourselves,
That worthy, only after death
To gaze upon the eternal light.

But, Nikitas asks and prays,
That the Creator make him worthy,
That he, the Creator, may be able to see:
“Appear to me, O God Most High.”

Then, to him the devil appeared:
“Bow down before me!” said he,
And Nikitas, the faster, the better,
Before him, on his knees he knelt!

For he thought it was an angel:
It was the devil all in glow,
With the glow of falsehood,
Filled Nikita’s entire cell.

O, my brother, God, do not tempt;
This age is the age of preparation;
In this age is faith;

In that age however, is vision;
First the battle, then the victory;
First the pain, then satisfaction;
All occurs in its own time.
http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/01/saint-nikitas-of-kiev-caves-and-bishop.html

See also: http://middleism.org/wordp/the-life-of-saint-nicetas-of-the-kiev-caves/
http://risu.org.ua/en/index/monitoring/kaleido_digest/40494/

Modern Acedia, Again

From “Their Noonday Demons, and Ours” by John Plotz
Published: December 23, 2011 “The New York Tims” Sunday Book Review

“By some miracle, you set aside a day to tackle that project you can’t seem to finish in the office. You close the door, boot up your laptop, open the right file and . . . five minutes later catch yourself thinking about dinner. By 10 a.m., you’re staring at the wall, even squinting at it between your fingertips. Is this day 50 hours long? Soon, you fall into a light, unsatisfying sleep and awake dizzy or with a pounding headache; all your limbs feel weighed down. At which point, most likely around noon, you commit a fatal error: leaving the room. I’ll just garden for a bit, you tell yourself, or do a little charity work. Hmmm, I wonder if my friend Gregory is around?
This probably strikes you as an extremely, even a uniquely, modern problem. Pick up an early medieval monastic text, however, and you will find extensive discussion of all the symptoms listed above, as well as a diagnosis. Acedia, also known as the “noonday demon,” appears again and again in the writings of the Desert Fathers from the fourth and fifth centuries. Wherever monks and nuns retreated into cells to labor and to meditate on matters spiritual, the illness struck.
These days, when we try to get a fix on our wasted time, we use labels that run from the psychological (distraction, “mind-wandering” or “top-down processing deficit”) to the medical (A.D.H.D., hypoglycemia) to the ethical (laziness, poor work habits). But perhaps “acedia” is the label we need. After all, it afflicted those whose pursuits prefigured the routines of many workers in the postindustrial economy. Acedia’s sufferers were engaged in solitary, sedentary, cerebral effort toward a clear final goal — but a goal that could be reached only by crossing an open, empty field with few signposts. The empty field is the monk’s day of spiritual contemplation in a cell besieged by the demon acedia — or your afternoon in a coffee shop with tiptop Wi-Fi.

In the later Middle Ages, monks performed fewer solitary tasks, and as the historian Andrew Crislip has shown, their vulnerability to the torments of acedia diminished. But for early medieval writers, acedia’s symptoms were so prolific as to be often contradictory. For St. Benedict, the affliction took the shape of “a little black boy pulling the monk away by the hem of his garment,” while to the great fourth-century ascetic Evagrius it sometimes appeared as “demons that touch our bodies at night and like scorpions strike our limbs.” Gluttony and laziness can betoken acedia, one Desert Father, St. John Cassian, warns. However, “excesses meet” and “reluctance to eat and . . . lack of sleep put me in much greater danger.” The only real constant, during acedia’s heyday, was that it prevented monks and nuns from keeping their minds on their tasks, and their bodies in the right place. “Have you deserted your cell?” Basil the Great asks. “Then you have left continency behind you.”
If the diagnoses in medieval texts were so psychologically acute, it’s very likely because the most ferocious accusers and denouncers were themselves acedia sufferers. Today, too, it takes an acediac to know acedia. When I read Cassian on “disgust with the cell,” I look around my own office and sigh deeply; and I greet like an old friend the monk whose gaze “rests obsessively on the window” while “with his fantasy he imagines the image of someone who comes to visit him.” Cassian’s description of acedia as mental drift, meanwhile, perfectly encapsulates the pointless and random detours that stop me from bearing down on a particular page: “The mind is constantly whirling from psalm to psalm, . . . tossed about fickle and aimless through the whole body of Scripture.”
Of course, the desert monks were emphatically not us. Stripping their lives down to the bare bones, they sought the divine and fought the demonic alone. What could be more different from us, tap-tapping away with social media always at hand? They gazed upward toward God; we shoot sideways glances at one another while trying to resist the allure of e-mail (nowadays, you can “desert your cell” without shifting from your chair). Still, “excesses meet,” and now that solitary unstructured brainwork has returned with a vengeance, we may be suffering an epidemic of early medieval acedia. Is there anything we can learn from the monks and nuns who came before us?
As the motto orare, laborare et legere (pray, work and read) suggests, monasteries and convents from the sixth century onward found ways to situate divine contemplation within an essentially convivial context. For community-oriented orders like the Benedictines, collective singing, tilling the soil and shared meals were as crucial as divine reading. There are some parallels to this kind of enforced sociability among contemporary lab scientists, who stave off both distraction and torpor by sharing with their colleagues a contentious and collaborative life of the mind.
Those of us for whom long stretches in an acedia-hazard zone are unavoidable may have to look farther afield for comfort. It’s worth noting that an acquaintance with ancient philosophical traditions concerned with self-control and mastery of the passions (especially Stoicism and Platonism) did much to shape the mental prescriptions offered up by the Desert Fathers. The mental exercises Evagrius urges on those whom acedia has laid low — for example, dividing oneself into two, “one the consoler and the other the object of consolation” — unmistakably anticipate the self-disciplining (and self-forgiving) exercises of modern cognitive-behavioral therapists.

There is also comfort to be found in the realization that monks who knew the dangers of acedia nonetheless kept going to the desert — not because they thought they would be safe from acedia’s temptations, but because they courted those temptations in the hope of strengthening themselves for further work. One of Cassian’s most moving stories involves a rebuke to an aged monk who scorns a young monk’s acedia because he himself has never experienced it. The old man, Cassian writes, was no sort of spiritual guide for a young monk looking to overcome these inevitable temptations.
One lesson to be drawn from those monastic stories is that persistent, alluring stimulation may be just as unavoidable in our new digital life as it was in the Egyptian deserts, though it now takes the form of Fruit Ninja rather than hem-tugging demons. Flight by itself is no solution. Disconnecting the Internet or confiscating a teenager’s cellphone probably helps less than looking for ways to live with persistent temptation and to move beyond the mixed pleasure that every post, tweet or “level up” affords.”

John Plotz teaches English at Brandeis University. His current book project is entitled “Semi-Detached: Absorption and Distraction Reconsidered.” See http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/english/faculty/docs/plotz.html

Orthodox Psychotherapy

“Orthodox Psychotherapy” By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

“The term I used in my first book, published in 1986, caused considerable reactions – positive and negative – and thus I have had to explain it on various occasions. I will present some of these explanations here.

First, the term “psychotherapy” was coined in the West by various psychological, psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic schools of thought which did not comprehend the soul (“psyche” in Greek) in the same way the Orthodox Tradition does. By “psyche”, modern psychology denotes the set of conscious and unconscious manifestations of experiences and behaviors. In the Orthodox Tradition, however, the term “psyche” denotes the spiritual element of man’s existence, which is in unity with the body and constitutes a hypostasis. I used the term psychotherapy adding the word Orthodox, and as I have explained many times Orthodox psychotherapy has a different anthropology than the anthropology of western psychotherapy.

Second, I associate closely the term “psychotherapy” with the neptic-hesychastic tradition. This is a life described in the works of the Holy Fathers regarding man’s inner life, in watchfulness (“nepsis”) and prayer. Of course, this neptic-hesychastic tradition can also be found in the books of the Old and the New Testament. Thus, the term “Orthodox psychotherapy” is to be understood not as a psychological, emotional and intellectual balance, but as the way for man to know God. In essence, it is the cleansing of the image of God that was darkened due to the original sin, it is the activation of the path to the likeness of God, which constitutes man’s communion with God, namely deification, theosis.

Third, although the discussion is about Orthodox psychotherapy and this refers to the term “psyche”, it is actually used for the cure of the entire person, both body and soul, without, of course, ignoring the medical science. In fact, as we see in the patristic tradition, the soul is closely linked with the body and there are interactions between these two elements of human existence. Therefore, inner peace is related to both the soul and the body.

It is important to note that the hesychast movement that occurred in the 14th century, as expressed in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, and in the texts of the Councils between 1341-1368, some of which are read on the Sunday of Orthodoxy in the Synodikon, refers not only to the soul but also to the body. Barlaam, the philosopher who expressed western scholasticism, devalued the human body. On the contrary, St. Gregory Palamas demonstrated the great significance of the human body, due among else to the incarnation of the Son and Word of God, and developed theologically the teaching of the Church regarding the deification of the whole person, soul and body.

The entire work of the Church deals with the cure of soul and body. Through the Sacraments, that is, Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Communion, Ordination, Marriage, Unction, Confession, the whole person is blessed, consisting of soul and body.

Fourth, Orthodox psychotherapy does not overlook medical methods for therapy, even modern psychology, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Orthodox psychotherapy aims at man’s deification, while humanistic psychotherapy is interested in man’s psychosomatic balance and his socialization either within the family or within the society. In fact there has to be a cooperation between the Spiritual Father who employs Orthodox psychotherapy and the psychiatrist who is interested in curing illnesses related with the neurological system and psychological imbalances.

I believe that to a great degree the term “Orthodox psychotherapy” refers to psychology, psychotherapy, and neurology. We know that in the past there had been a great divergence between psychotherapy and neurology. Recently, however, it has been realized that these two disciplines have to cooperate, because illnesses of the neurological system affect man’s psychological aspect, and likewise psychological illnesses affect the neurocells, the genes, etc., namely the body itself. Thus, Orthodox psychotherapy relates psychology to neurology, but goes beyond them because, as will be explained later on, Orthodox psychotherapy functions beyond the limits of science, without ignoring it. At the same time it helps both the psychosomatic composition and the socialization of a person.

Compared to the several schools of psychotherapy in the western world, “Orthodox psychotherapy” has more similarities with existential psychology-psychotherapy, as articulated by Viktor Frankl, without being identical to it.

It is in this context that I have employed the term “Orthodox psychotherapy”, and it has been comprehended as such by those who study things in a serious and responsible manner, not irresponsibly. To be fair, I have to mention that in my analysis I was influenced by Fr. John Romanides who taught that Orthodox theology is a therapeutic science and that if Christianity had first appeared in the 20th century it would have been received as a therapeutic science, and in its methodology it would appear to be psychotherapy or neurology.

The title of one of his articles is indeed telling: “Religion is a Neurobiological Illness and Orthodoxy is Its Cure”.

In any case, the term “Orthodox psychotherapy” was accepted by scholars, as demonstrated in the voluminous book titled “Manual of Psychotherapy and Religious Diversity”, published by the American Psychological Society. The book describes therapies offered by religions.

In a chapter titled “Psychotherapy With Eastern Orthodox Christians”, written by Tony Young, there is extensive reference to the psychotherapy offered by the Orthodox Church and the calming effects deriving from Confession and the Jesus Prayer recited in the heart.

Another important article has been written by Paul Kymissis titled “From Neurobiology to the Uncreated Light”, which discusses the great significance of the Orthodox Tradition for man’s spiritual health.”
An extract from http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2013/03/the-foundations-of-orthodox.html

“His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios (also Ierotheos) serves the Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlasios in the Church of Greece. He has been Metropolitan of Nafpaktos since 1995. He was born Georgios S. Vlachos in Ioannina, Epirus, Greece, in 1945 and graduated from the theological school of the University of Thessaloniki. He was ordained a deacon in 1971, taking the monastic name Hierotheos, followed by his ordination as a priest in 1972. He served at the Archbishop’s House of Offices in Athens, as a preacher and Youth Director. He was consecrated bishop on July 20, 1995, and elected Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St. Vlasios in the same year.
He taught Greek for several semesters and gave lectures on Orthodox ethics to the students of the St. John of Damascus Theological School at the University of the Patriarchate of Antioch, in northern Lebanon.
Already in his youth he was particularly interested in the Fathers of the Church, working for a time in the monastery libraries of Mount Athos, on the recording of the codices. He was especially interested in the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas.
The influence of Fr. John Romanidis, the study of the patristic texts and particularly those of the hesychast Fathers of the Philokalia, many years of studying St. Gregory Palamas, association with the monks of the Holy Mountain (Mount Athos), and many years of pastoral experience, all brought him to the realisation that Orthodox theology is a science of the healing of man and that the neptic fathers can help the modern restless man who is disturbed by many internal and existential problems.
Within this framework he has written a multitude of books, the fruit of his pastoral work, among which is Orthodox Psychotherapy. Some of these books have been translated into various languages, such as English, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. With these books he conveys the Orthodox spirit of the Philokalia to the restless and disturbed man of our time. This is why they have aroused so much interest.”
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Hierotheos_%28Vlachos%29_of_Nafpaktos

His publications include:

• Hesychia and Theology: The Context for Man’s Healing in the Orthodox Church (2007).
• The Illness and Cure of the Soul in the Orthodox Tradition (1993).
• Life after Death (1996).
• Orthodox Psychotherapy (1994).
• Orthodox Spirituality (1994).

• The Person in the Orthodox Tradition (1999).

See http://thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/writings-of-metropolitan-hierotheos-of-nafpaktos/

Acedia: A Modern Study

Kathleen Norris “Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life“ [Riverhead Hardcover, 2008]

“Kathleen Norris’s masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its relevancy to the modern individual and culture.

Kathleen Norris had written several much loved books, yet she couldn’t drag herself out of bed in the morning, couldn’t summon the energy for daily tasks. Even as she struggled, Norris recognized her familiar battle with acedia. She had discovered the word in an early Church text when she was in her thirties. Having endured times of deep soul-weariness since she was a teenager, she immediately recognized that this passage described her affliction: sinking into a state of being unable to care. Fascinated by this “noonday demon,” so familiar to those in the early and medieval Church, Norris read intensively and knew she must restore this forgotten but utterly relevant and important concept to the modern world’s vernacular.

Like Norris’s bestselling “The Cloister Walk”, “Acedia & me” is part memoir and part meditation. As in her bestselling “Amazing Grace”, here Norris explicates and demystifies a spiritual concept, exploring acedia through the geography of her life as a writer; her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness; and her keen interest in the monastic tradition. Unlike her earlier books, this one features a poignant narrative throughout of Norris’s and her husband’s bouts with acedia and its clinical cousin, depression. Moreover, her analysis of acedia reveals its burden not just on individuals but on whole societies— and that the “restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that we struggle with today are the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.”

An examination of acedia in the light of theology, psychology, monastic spirituality, the healing powers of religious practice, and Norris’s own experience, “Acedia & me” is both intimate and historically sweeping, brimming with exasperation and reverence, sometimes funny, often provocative, and always important.”

“In this penetrating theological memoir, Norris details her relationship with acedia, a slothful, soul-weary indifference long recognized by monastics. Norris is careful to distinguish acedia from its cousin, depression, noting that acedia is a failure of the will and can be dispelled by embracing faith and life, whereas depression is not a choice and often requires medical treatment. This is tricky ground, but Norris treads gingerly, reserving her acerbic crankiness for a section where she convincingly argues that despite Americans’ apparently unslothful lives, acedia is the undiagnosed neurasthenia of our busy age. Much of the book is taken up with Norris’s account of her complicated but successful marriage, which ended with her husband’s death in 2003. The energy poured into this marriage, Norris argues, was as much a defiant strike against acedia as her spiritual discipline of praying the Psalms. Filled with gorgeous prose, generous quotations from Christian thinkers across the centuries and fascinating etymological detours, this discomfiting book provides not just spiritual hope but a much-needed kick in the rear.” [Publisher’s Weekly, Sept. 16]

Mosaic: Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière

“According to the “Oxford Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church”, acedia (or accidie) is “a state of restlessness and inability either to work or to pray”. It can be a precursor to sloth—one of the seven deadly sins. St. Thomas Aquinas identified acedia with “the sorrow of the world” that “worketh death.”

John Cassian, (ca. 360 AD – ca. 435 AD) a monk from Southern Gaul who introduced Eastern monasticism into the West, wrote a great deal about acedia, including the following:
“[Acedia is] what the Greeks call ἀκηδία, which we may term weariness or distress of heart. This is akin to dejection, and is especially trying to solitaries. . . [W]hen this has taken possession of some unhappy soul, it produces dislike of the place, disgust with the cell, and disdain and contempt of the brethren who dwell with him or at a little distance, as if they were careless or unspiritual. It also makes the man lazy and sluggish about all manner of work which has to be done within the enclosure of his dormitory. It does not suffer him to stay in his cell, or to take any pains about reading, and he often groans because he can do no good while he stays there, and complains and sighs because he can bear no spiritual fruit so long as he is joined to that society; and he complains that he is cut off from spiritual gain, and is of no use in the place, as if he were one who, though he could govern others and be useful to a great number of people, yet was edifying none, nor profiting any one by his teaching and doctrine.”””
http://inigohicks.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/increase-your-catholic-wordpower-acedia.html

“Before the Seven Deadly Sins there were the Eight Bad Thoughts. This was the name given by the Desert Fathers of the early church to that swirl of temptations by which the devil sought to drive a wedge between them and God.

Acedia, anger and pride — these were the worst of the eight, thought those proto-monks. They were powerful urges that could drive a spiritual seeker to abandon the quest, give up on holiness and give in to despair.

The first of these, acedia, was eventually absorbed into the deadly sin of sloth and the word slowly disappeared from common use. But Kathleen Norris hopes that through her new book, acedia will once again get the attention it deserves.

“It’s not depression but it shares a lot of the symptoms,” the well-known American author and poet explained in a Nov. 14 interview with “The Catholic Register”.

If acedia isn’t a household word, its synonyms are: apathy, lassitude, indifference, torpor, to name a few. In her new book, “Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks and a Writer’s Life” (Riverhead, 330 pages, $29.50 hardcover), Norris offers a quick history of its many guises:

“To the ancient Greeks it was the black gall; to the fourth-century monks it was a vicious and tenacious temptation to despair. Petrarch called it the nameless woe, and Dante named it a sin. It became known to Robert Burton and others in the Renaissance as melancholy. In Shakespeare, it is the boredom of Richard III, arguably as responsible as ambition in triggering his monstrous violence. Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope called it spleen; to Baudelaire, and to many writers in the years to follow, it was ennui. . . . To the nineteenth-century French, it was mal du siècle, or the illness of the age.”

Yet to the modern mind, acedia is completely foreign.

“When people would ask me what I was writing about, I dreaded answering,” she explained during the last stop of her Canadian tour. “Nobody knew what I was writing about.”

But when she would describe the symptoms, light bulbs would go on. They understood about those times when they felt like giving up, beyond all caring about anything, leaving phone messages unanswered, bills unpaid, friends neglected. For those of a religious bent, acedia manifests itself as complete despair about God. Praying and going to church become unbearable. None of it seems to matter any more.

Sometimes it is actually full-blown clinical depression. But often, it is more a spiritual malaise than a medical problem. And it can have social spin-offs such as withdrawal from community life and civic action.

However, its symptoms are not always lethargy and emotional paralysis. It can be unceasing restlessness and an addiction to constant stimulation in the form of television, video games, physical activity or “compulsive productivity.” We end up “doing more and caring less,” she writes.

In her study of acedia, Norris, whose earlier works “Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, were both New York Times best-sellers, once again weaves her autobiography into spiritual reflection and her own wide reading to produce a compelling journey into faith.

It will be a familiar journey for her many fans. Norris has done arguably more to reacquaint the modern world to monastic life than anyone since Thomas Merton. While in her 30s, her spiritual questing drew her to a Benedictine abbey in South Dakota where she became fascinated by the timeless spiritual life of the monks. She became fast friends and eventually an oblate, or lay member, though continuing her membership in the Presbyterian parish near her home.

The monks (and cloistered religious women) proved to be a spiritual treasure house and loom large in her major prose works. In this latest, they prove, once again, to have wisdom in abundance.

In fact, it was a fourth-century monk, Evagrius Ponticus, who introduced Norris to acedia. While reading his “The Praktikos”, she came upon a description of something that perfectly fit her own experience.

“That was a thunderbolt for me,” she said. “Here was another writer describing and naming an experience I had and had never been able to name. And he was someone who died in 399.”

What Evagrius described seemed to match a time during her teen years in Hawaii. A studious and socially awkward teenager, Norris found herself withdrawing from the pressures of her social circles. Later, through her university years in an East Coast college and her budding career as a writer and poet, she occasionally found her usual vast stores of ambition and zeal flagging. She would go on to marry another poet, David Dwyer, and move to her grandparents’ house in South Dakota where the couple planned to pursue their writing in a peaceful rural setting. But the outward changes could not dispel the bouts of acedia, which became more oppressive as she struggled with supremely difficult challenges such as her husband’s depression, his suicide attempt and eventual death from cancer in 2003.

She found strength in daily tasks, the prayer discipline of the Benedictine rule and the sustaining life of being part of a community of believers. The idea of turning her thoughts on acedia into a book started in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t really until after her husband’s death, followed soon afterwards by her father’s, that she was able to concentrate on writing the book.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in terms of writing,” she said. “I kept working on it, then putting it aside. It was the first time in my life that I missed the deadline.”

The writing itself draws upon her own experiences, combined with her deep reading. Literary references mingle easily with quotations from theologians and philosophers — along with those ever-present Desert Fathers.

“Those early monks are actually fairly accessible as writers. They really talk in pretty concrete terms along with metaphors from nature.”

Their timeless wisdom Norris marries with a thoroughly modern sensibility; she knows firsthand our distractedness, superficiality and hunger for authentic spiritual experience. That experience, she discovered, will be found where it has always been.
http://www.catholicregister.org/item/11477-mining-the-minds-of-ancient-monks

“Acedia may be an unfamiliar term to those not well-versed in monastic history or medieval literature. But that does not mean it has no relevance for contemporary readers. . . . I believe that such standard dictionary definitions of acedia as ‘apathy,’ ‘boredom,’ or ‘torpor’ do not begin to cover it, and while we may find it convenient to regard it as a more primitive word for what we now term depression, the truth is much more complex. Having experienced both conditions, I think it likely that much of the restless boredom, frantic escapism, commitment phobia, and enervating despair that plagues us today is the ancient demon of acedia in modern dress.” This observation comes from Kathleen Norris, the award-winning poet and author of “The Cloister Walk”, “Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith”, and “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography”. A popular speaker and editor at large at The “Christian Century”, she is an oblate of Assumption Abbey in North Dakota. She divides her time between Hawaii and South Dakota.

In this profound book, Norris shows how acedia, which was once viewed as a terrible scourge that affects the soul, has now become acceptable, and in certain circles, even fashionable. The desperate yearning for escape from the tedious present moment and the need for novelty are driven by the powerful engines of our consumerist culture which compels us to constantly want something new, better, and different. In this context, repetitive tasks are considered boring and unimportant. Taking care of ourselves, our intimate relationships, and our environment take second place to our quest for self-indulgence.
Norris first came across acedia in the writings of Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth-century monk who described it as “the noonday demon.” She notes that at its Greek root, the word means the absence of care:
“When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, yet you can’t rouse yourself to give a damn. . . . Caring is not passive, but an assertion that no matter how strained and messy our relationships can be, it is worth something to be present with others, doing our small part. Care is also required for the daily routines that acedia would have us suppress or deny as meaningless repetition or too much bother.”
Norris was caught in the grip of acedia when she was an adolescent even though she didn’t know about the term at the time. It manifested itself in her life as sloth, a boredom with repetition, and an eagerness to value the future over the present moment. But the desert monks had another strategy. No escape; just perseverance. Norris quotes the story of an abba who took a piece of dry wood and told his disciple: “Water this until it bears fruit.” She uses this as a lead-in to the challenge given her to nurture a marriage over a span of 30 years and to keep up the discipline of writing and revising for even longer.
With riveting honesty, Norris writes about the many struggles in her life with her husband David, a poet afflicted with alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and a catastrophic series of illnesses. She discusses their battles with depression and provides a thoughtful assessment of how this malady is different from acedia. Caring, perseverance, and repetition become saving graces in her marriage. Whether probing “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression” by Andrew Solomon, looking at Soren Kierkegaard’s understanding of despair, or pondering John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, Norris reveals an openness to the ways in which others have dealt with difficulties that constrict the soul.

Over the years, the author tries to stave off the constant temptation of acedia in her writing career. She confesses:
“As a writer I must begin, again and again, at that most terrifying of places, the blank page. And as a person of faith I am always beginning again with prayer. I can never learn these things, once and for all, and master them. I can only perform them, set them aside, and then start over. Beginning requires that I remain willing to act, and to summon my hopes in the face of torpor.”
As a caring wife, as a creative author, and as woman of faith, Norris is taught by the words of the desert fathers who had an antidote to acedia — being truly present to the tasks and responsibilities of everyday life: “The monastic endeavor, now as in the fourth century, is to purify one’s heart so as to better reflect God’s creation.” Norris concludes the book with a top-drawer collection of quotations on acedia. It is a fitting finale to her incisive and edifying treatment of this pesky condition of the soul.
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=18361

“Kathleen Norris (born in Washington, D.C. on July 27, 1947) is a best-selling poet and essayist. Her parents, John Norris and Lois Totten, took her as a child to Hawaii, where she graduated from Punahou Preparatory School in 1965. After graduating from Bennington College in Vermont in 1969, Norris became arts administrator of the Academy of American Poets, and published her first book of poetry two years later. In 1974 she inherited her grandparents’ farm in Lemmon, South Dakota, moved there with her husband, David Dwyer, joined Spencer Memorial Presbyterian church, and discovered the spirituality of the Great Plains. She entered a new, non-fictional phase in her literary career after becoming a Benedictine oblate at Assumption Abbey Richardton ND in 1986, and spending extended periods at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Since the death of her husband in 2003, Norris has transferred her place of residence to Hawaii, though continuing to do lecture tours on the mainland.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Norris_%28poet%29

Reflections on The Desert Fathers

An interesting blog providing short comments on the sayings of the Desert Fathers is http://ijboudreaux.com/category/desert-fathers/ published by Irvin Boudreaux, currently in the Spiritual Director Certification program at Perkins School of Theology of Southern Methodist University and serving as Senior Pastor of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in New Orleans.

Some recent posts:

Call to Perfection

“While still living in the palace, Abba Arsenius prayed to God in these words, ‘Lord, lead me in the way of salvation.’ And a voice came saying to him, ‘Arsenius, flee from men and you will be saved. ‘Having withdrawn to the solitary life he made the same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the source of sinlessness.’ “

Threefold is the call to perfection. First we must flee. We flee from the slavery of the demands of the world. We are no longer obedient vassals to what “everyone else” is doing and saying. Second, we must practice silence. The call to silence is a call to be attentive to the voice of God. God speaks loudest when we are silent . The third call is to pray always. In the practice of constant prayer ,we open ourselves to the will of God, and we draw closer to Him. These three concepts are a path to perfection.

What Does this Mean?

If a monk does not think in his own heart that he is a sinner, God will not hear him. The brother said, ‘What does this mean, to think in his heart he is a sinner?’ Then the old man said, ‘When someone is occupied with his own faults, he does not see those of his neighbor.’

This type of theme of careful introspection resonates very loudly in our grudge filled and judgmental society. The poet Anne Currin writes, “You’re so devoted to all your grudges, You cherish them like they’re a prize; You hold them with pride on your pedestal Bursting with bliss as your relationships die.” Many years before the poet wrote those words the people of the desert were pondering how to deal with such things. In this saying the Abba points us directly to our awareness of personal sin and its effect on our behavior toward others.
His advice is quite simple. We are called to believe in our hearts that we are sinners, and sin is our nature. Until we can recognize our nature, it is very difficult to improve our lot. When we turn our energies toward self – improvement we steer away from judgment of others, and towards unity with God. That unity, after all, is our primary goal. Own your sins and ask God to give you the grace to overcome.

Some Advice About Living

It was said of Abba Theodore of Pherme that three things he held to be fundamental were: poverty, asceticism, flight from men. He also said, ‘The man who remains standing when he repents, has not kept the commandment.’

The advice from the monk is to have your life characterized by some fundamental attitudes that lead us closer to God. He goes on to tell us that true repentance is manifested in outward humility. The words poverty and asceticism can be summed up by just saying that we are called to a life of simplicity. This type of simplicity allows us to put God first in our lives. Such a simplicity keeps us away from many temptations. Those that live the simple life are generous, compassionate and without greed or envy. The expression “flight from men “can be summed up by saying, put aside the things of the world and spend time with God. This life is designed to keep us constantly distracted and occupied with the things of the world. Such a state of affairs gives us little time for the things of God. We all want to get to a place where we find peace and harmony with ourselves and the rest of the world. That was the Abba’s goal and ours, too.
Striving towards that simplicity demands repentance, not just a casual confession, but true repentance. That repentance is one of depth and conviction, and it brings about conversion. Such a conversion will affect us greatly. There are too many professing Christians who can simply “remain standing” surrounded by their sin. All of us are called to a repentance and conversion of heart that brings us to our knees, helpless without the grace of God.

Flowers Blooming in The Desert

“There is something incredibly powerful about flowers blooming in the desert. I think it has to do with the awareness that our own interior desert – experienced as dryness, lack of consolation, disappointment, or unfulfilled longing – is often the very condition needed to spring us into fresh spiritual awareness. For example, if we feel unattractive to human society due to apparent personality flaws, lack of physical charisma or advancing age, this situation can catapult us into a love affair with something much larger and grander – the Goddess of the Earth, Sophia Wisdom, the Great Beyond, God. In fact, without the experience of dryness on one level, we would most likely lack the motivation to seek out fulfillment in the deeper realms!”
http://www.naturephoto-quotes.com/2014/05/flowers-in-desert-bring-us-powerful.html

This comes from the inspiring blog “Nature Photo-Quotes. Celebrating the Mutual Mirroring of Nature and the Human Spirit” – http://www.naturephoto-quotes.com/ – published by Stephen Hatch [Fort Collins, Colorado]. He desribes the blog thus: “I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you’ll discover photographs that I’ve taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I’ve paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes – literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world.”

Fortis Gabrielli, Hermit

May 13 is the Commemoration of Blessed Fortis Gabrielli, Hermit in the mountains near Scheggia, Italy. Spiritual student of Blessed Ludolph. Benedictine monk-hermit at the monastery of Fontavellana. Died 9 May 1040 of natural causes.
http://saints.sqpn.com/blessed-fortis-gabrielli/

“Fonte Avellana or the Venerable Hermitage of the Holy Cross, is a Roman Catholic hermitage in Serra Sant’Abbondio in the Marche region of Italy. It was once also the name of an order of hermits based at this hermitage.

Established by a group of hermits living at that site around the turn of the first millennium, it was closely connected to the reforms of St. Romuald, and its early customs and documents share much in common with the nearby hermitage of Camaldoli which Romuald founded. The community, in fact, eventually became part of the Camaldolese congregation.
It was raised to the status of an abbey in 1325, and remains the only Camaldolese house to have such a designation (all other such houses being designated simply as hermitages or monasteries). It soon came under lay control, however, and the fortunes of the community quickly deteriorated. The community, nevertheless, continued in existence, until it was scattered by Napoleonic forces. Yet after the upheavals of that period, the monastic community was again established and continues today as a major house of the congregation.
One notable feature of its architecture is that the cells of the hermits were built as suites. This way a hermit and his disciple could share the cell, yet each had their own sleeping space within it. This reflects the ancient custom of a hermit taking a young monk as a disciple, whom he would train in the ascetic life and often who would care for the older hermit as he aged.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonte_Avellana

Mael (Mahel), Ascetic on The Isle of Bardsey

May 13 is the Commemmoration of Saint Mael (Mahel), Ascetic on the Isle of Bardsey.

Maël was a fifth-century Breton saint who lived as a hermit in Wales. He was a follower of Cadfan from Brittany to Wales, ultimately to the Isle of Bardsey. Mael is believed to have been a Briton, and to have been related to St Patrick.

“Saint Cadfan, (Latin: Catamanus); (English: Gideon) was the sixth century founder-abbot of Tywyn and Bardsey, Wales, primarily accepted as the founder of the monastic settlement on Bardsey Island in north Wales, in 516 according to multiple sources, serving as its abbot until 542.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Cadfan

“During the fifth century [Bardsey Island] became a refuge for persecuted Christians, and a small Celtic monastery existed. In 516 Saint Cadfan arrived from Brittany and, under his guidance St Mary’s Abbey was built. For centuries the island was important as “the holy place of burial for all the bravest and best in the land”. Bards called it “the land of indulgences, absolution and pardon, the road to Heaven, and the gate to Paradise”, and in medieval times three pilgrimages to Bardsey Island were considered to be of equivalent benefit to the soul as one to Rome. In 1188 the abbey was still a Celtic institution, but by 1212 it belonged to the Augustinians. Many people still walk the journey to Aberdaron and Uwchmynydd each year in the footsteps of the saints, although today only ruins of the old abbey’s 13th-century bell tower remain. A Celtic cross amidst the ruins commemorates the 20,000 saints reputed to be buried on the island.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardsey_Island

“Ynys Enlli [Bardsey Island] is an ancient Holy Island whose religious associations pre-date the Christian era as indicated by the name given to it by raiding Vikings, Bardsey – the “Bards’ Island”. As with so many pagan centres, the Christians took the site over and St. Cadfan and his companions founded a monastery there in AD 546. It became a sort of Iona of Wales, a holy burial place for Royalty and holymen alike. Some 20,000 saints are said to lie beneath its soil: an assertion which led to the Pope proclaiming three pilgrimages to Ynys Enlli to be equal to one to Rome. The place has always been considered something of a health spot. Giraldus Cambrensis declared of the island that “no one dies except from old age”.”
http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/archaeology/bardsey.html

Bardsey Island is a small island off the coast of the Llyn Peninsular in North Wales. Its Welsh name is Ynys Enlli. It is also known as The Island of 20 000 saints since, it is said, the graveyard holds the bodies of 20 000 people who lived and prayed on the island over the centuries. As the whole island measures only 1½ miles long by ½ mile wide, this may be an exaggeration! Whatever the truth of it, Bardsey was one of the most important places of pilgrimage of the Middle Ages. Its remoteness and its reputation as a place of prayer led to its being called the “Rome of Britain” since three (some even suggest two) pilgrimages to Bardsey were considered to be the equivalent of one to Rome.
The community was established by St Cadfan in around 430 AD and is believed to be the first monastic settlement in the whole of Britain. The pattern of monastic life was rather different from that of today’s monks and nuns. There would have been a church but the monks themselves would have lived in individual circular huts – not unlike old-fashioned beehives. The life was austere and demanding physically as well as spiritually. However, people were attracted to the solitude and peace of the island and, as the figure above suggests, many people lived and died there.
In the 7th century, it offered refuge to the monks who fled from Ethelfrid’s pagan army. It had conquered Chester and destroyed the monastery of Bangor Is-coed where over 1000 monks were killed.
The remoteness of the island and the treacherous waters that separate it from the mainland made it an ideal refuge. Eventually, the form of monasticism we are more familiar with was introduced to Bardsey and in the twelfth century, the Augustinian Abbey of St Mary was built.
http://www.wellsprings.org.uk/wellspring_of_pilgrimage/bardsey.htm