Saint Antony of Egypt - 17 January

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE DESERT FATHERS AND MOTHERS

With the ending of the time of persecution and the ‘peace of the Church’ the kind of idealism and total dedication in following Christ that were available to Christians throughout the centuries of persecution were no longer offered in the same form. A desire for complete dedication and a radical following of Jesus led many to the edges of normal, civilised life and even into the desert to seek to be with Christ there.

Forms of ascetical and monastic life were not unknown even before this time in pagan as well as Jewish contexts. Augustine in his Confessions tells us about some of these, reporting in particular how what he heard about the dedication of monks in Egypt affected his own life. In Confessions Book VIII 6.14 he tells how a fellow African, Ponticianus, came to visit him in Milan and told him about ‘the monk Antony of Egypt, whose name was illustrious and held in high honour among (God’s) servants, though we had never heard it until this moment’. Augustine and his friends were amazed at what they were being told, while Ponticianus was amazed that Augustine had not yet heard of Antony:

His (Ponticianus’) discourse led on from this topic to the proliferation of monasteries, the sweet fragrance rising up to you from the lives of monks, and the fecund wastelands of the desert. We had known nothing of all this. There was even a monastery full of good brothers at Milan, outside the city walls, under Ambrose’s care, yet we were unaware of it (Confessions VIII 6.15).

Augustine and his friends had been considering how they might withdraw from ordinary life and live together with leisure for study and the pursuit of wisdom, as a community of friends sharing their resources, while also recognising the difficulties presented by celibacy and chastity (Confessions VI 11.18 – 16.26). Now Ponticianus told them about some friends at Trier who had come across The Life of Antony and were so moved by it that they gave up their plans to pursue careers in the Emperor’s service and gave themselves instead to the pursuit of friendship with God.

Hearing of Antony, and the effect of his example on others, provided the impulse for a fresh departure in Augustine’s journey of conversion. Now he was hearing about a more radical form of religious life, not one centred on the desire for leisure and study but one given in the first place to the love of holiness and to the service of God. Note that there are already ‘desert mothers’ included among the desert ‘fathers’: among the sayings of the early Christian monks are contributions from Sarah, Theodora, Syncletica, Matrona and Mary of Egypt.

It was above all the life of Saint Antony of Egypt (251-358) that made the desert form of religious life known throughout the Church, East and West. The life is attributed to Saint Athanasius, the great Bishop of Alexandria, and was translated into Latin by Jerome’s friend Evagrius. At about the age of twenty Antony chose to live a life of seclusion. He had already been thinking about the freedom needed to live a spiritual life when, listening to the gospel being read in church one day, he heard the Lord Jesus say to him ‘if you would be perfect go and sell all you have and then come, follow me’. He took this as the sign that he should seek to implement what he had been considering, sold all he had, gave the money to the poor (having first seen to the economic security of his sister), and then moved to the outskirts of town to live as far as possible without distractions.

The stages of Antony’s spiritual life have been identified as the reordering of life, spiritual warfare, and spiritual fatherhood. The reordering of life meant his disengagement, as far as possible, from the affairs of the world, in order to free himself from the attachments and duties that bound him to the world up to then. What happens initially on doing this, as Antony’s experience teaches so clearly, is that a person becomes aware of just how distorted and disordered their thoughts and desires have become. Saint Paul too had spoken about this in writing to the Romans:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot (Rom 8:5-7)

The asceticism required to help ‘the mind’ gain mastery over ‘the flesh’ involved manual work, charity, and prayer. The first helped him meet the necessities of living, the second was possible because he needed less, and the third was nourished particularly on Scripture. He realised very quickly how much he needed a discipline or training appropriate to the project he had undertaken.

This first stage of re-ordering life involved a twofold process, firstly coming to know himself better and the ways in which his thoughts and desires were confused, distorted, and directed; and secondly, through the grace of the Spirit coming to have thoughts and desires worthy of the calling to which he had given himself. The various ascetical practices in which he and the other desert monks engaged were designed to facilitate this change of mind, this ‘metanoia’, and to turn their thoughts and desires away from the world and towards Christ and his kingdom. The penitential disciplines, especially prayer, were aimed at keeping the mind pure in thought so that God could be known and even seen (Matthew 5.8).

This initial stage of ascetic purgation was followed by a second, that of spiritual warfare. Here the one seeking to follow Christ and to grow into Him has greater strength and so is ready for a deeper exploration of the roots of sin. This experience, particularly among the Desert Fathers, contributed to their understanding of the deadly sins (see section 2E below). What is involved is a battle with Satan and his angels whose points of entry into human hearts and lives are the places of vulnerability and weakness in human nature – fears, insecurities, conflicts, self-deceptions.

The people of Israel, in the course of their wandering in the desert, learned about these things in themselves. In the temptations of Jesus he is presented with these possibilities of pride, gluttony, and vainglory. But in him we see a human nature that has greater power than any of these things and he proves victorious over them all. The early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, for example, show us how Jesus has authority over all the forces of nature, whether these forces are animal, cosmic, or demonic.

The desert fathers saw a reference to the deadly sins in Jesus’ account of a house that has been swept and put in order only for the demon that had been driven out of it to return with seven demons more evil than himself (Matthew 12:43-45). The monk in the desert became aware, through this spiritual warfare, of the ways in which his house was still occupied by the enemy. He learned that he needed to re-double his efforts at prayer and rely ever more deeply on the grace of God’s Holy Spirit.

What resources did they have for responding to the challenges of the demons? One of the most important ones is what they call ‘talking back’. In this they followed the example of Jesus who in response to the temptations of Satan ‘talked back’ to him, and did so by quoting the scriptures. it is therefore the Word of God which is the main weapon of the monk in his struggle (Ephesians 6.17; Hebrews 4.12). Talking back is also what David does in many of the psalms which are particularly powerful in seeking God’s help and for repulsing demons. The psalms are Christological, they reveal human nature in all its different moods and moments, and are therefore formative of the person seeking to live towards union with God. So the recitation of the psalter moved to the centre as one of the central elements in all monastic spirituality.

When these two stages have been negotiated – ascetic purgation, spiritual warfare – the monk is ready to engage once more with the world. He is not now in danger as he was before he entered the desert. At the same time the danger is never completely removed: many of the stories from the desert are about monks who think they have finally gone beyond one or other of the deadly sins only to discover that they are still all too prone to it! But in this third stage they become teachers, even if they are still sinners and still engaged in the spiritual warfare. They have reached the stage of spiritual fatherhood (or motherhood) where they can gather disciples, as Antony did, and teach them what is involved in the spiritual journey.