Two swam as best they could in the frozen waters, he explained. Toward the lights of the city...civilization. In a frantic race for their lives they swam...and were never found.
Yet the third man did a foolish, desperate thing. He sighted a solitary light, blinking in the darkness. It came from the opposite direction, the blackness of the open sea.. Swimming toward it, a buoy soon appeared in front of him. Somehow he hung on until morning. At daybreak he was sighted and picked up by a passing vessel. Saved.
Desperate fools? No doubt the world would so describe them. Their number included mystics such as Arsenius, a recluse who wouldn't let people visit him or look on his face. John the Dwarf, who wanted to become an angel. Palagia, the harlot so beautiful she turned a bishop's head with her splendor...only later to return and plead with him for Holy Baptism. And then to choose the discipline of the desert.
Thomas Merton (yes, these Fathers are jewels that belong to the East and West) helps us understand something of the uniqueness of these pilgrims and the wisdom which rests beneath their foolishness. In his introduction in The Wisdom of the Desert, Merton states, "Society...was regarded by them as a shipwreck from which each single individual man had to swim for his life.... These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster."
The persecutions had ended. Constantine had converted to the Faith and had declared Christianity the religion of the land. Henri Nouwen says of their motive: "If the world was no longer the enemy of the Christian, then the Christian had to become the enemy of the dark world." (Prologue, The Way of the Heart).
These Desert Fathers sought a new form of martyrdom in the life style they chose. It could well be that it was the very ease of the average Christian way of life that drove them. They embraced the severity of solitude, cold nights, and empty bellies in order to seek awareness of their own sins and pursue with zeal their own salvation.
What one could learn about fasting alone would make a study of these spiritual masters worthwhile. They employed many practical weapons to keep passions at bay. Their aim was simply to know God as best He could be known.
Though they withdrew from ordinary society, they were not rebels. Their bishops knew what they were up to. As to experimenting with theology and the teachings of the Church, they chose rather to cling to the simple and the old. And because completing their own journey was dear, they avoided lofty concepts and angel-on-a-pin philosophies, less they tread on dangerous ground.
Nor were they great in number, these pioneers. At least not until a biography by Athanasius on the life of his friend Anthony "set the Roman world afire with monastic vocations." (Merton)
The only monk I had positive impressions of as a Protestant youth was Robin Hood's sidekick, Friar Tuck. Hardly a full and accurate picture! Later, I read about the monk Martin Luther and his struggles with his vocation. Internal impressions on monasticism took a further dive here as my understanding of inner life spirituality was confused by the collision of separate Reformation issues. In my mind at the time monasticism and dead works were synonymous.
Only by going back to the beginnings of monasticism--there in the desert--was I able to separate its pure and uncomplicated simplicity from the western complexities so rampant in Luther's day. Only then in my journey toward Orthodoxy did the grace/works confusion begin to clear for me and I learned to respect greatly the roll monasticism plays and must play today for the life of the Church.
The Bride of Christ was One in those early days. No Catholic then. No Orthodox. No Protestant branches. Just one apostolic trunk rooted in the Holy Trinity. This was the Church. One faith. Her heroes during that period can and must be owned by all today who would trace their faith to that Old Time Religion, that of the Apostles, Jesus' disciples. The faith of these first monastics is, therefore, the heritage of all Christians.
It is the lifestyle and devotion of these fathers of the desert (and I have found that there were also mothers as well) that is so attractive. It is their wisdom and simplicity that can aid us in understanding our own desert. And who among us is without one?
These men fulfilled their unique calling and finished the contest of faith. Their race did not require great ability, physical strength, or talent. It did require enormous spiritual discipline and desire. They are indeed heroes, athletes in an olympic quest for authentic spirituality pleasing to God. If any learned how to walk with Jesus, they did. For them, disciplined faith was a friend of grace, not an enemy.
This saying is a favorite of mine: "It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent."
Also, the word of Abbot Macarius: "If wishing to correct another you are moved to anger, you gratify your own passion. Do not lose yourself in order to save another."
Then there's the one of the monk to whom a devil appeared. The devil made the claim, "I am the Angel Gabriel" to which the monk replied, "Think again. You must have been sent to somebody else. I haven't done anything to deserve an angel."
John Moschus, a monk form the monastery of Theodosius, tells the popular desert tale of the compassion of Alexander when one of his clerks stole his gold and fled to Egypt. The thieving worker lost his way and fell captive to other thieves, worse than himself, and soon after that, prison.
Alexander heard of his plight and sent to bail him out with 85 pieces of silver. When the clerk returned, Alexander treated him with such kindness that one man among the townspeople said, "Nothing is so profitable as to sin against Alexander."
There's also the desert tale of the student assigned by his spiritual mentor to pay people to insult him for a period of three years. He was later overwhelmed to learn that he could have gone to the marketplace and received this sort of treatment for free.
Who would not dream to someday be worthy to be numbered among these. Men who successfully finished what they had started? These Fathers would agree that our journey does indeed have a glorious beginning in Holy Baptism. But, as these mystics show us so well, our salvation has an equally critical middle road of discipline and rigor well before the finish line.
Those for whom the Desert Fathers serve as models will find help in deepening their experience with God. There are many lonely miles separating the thrill of the starting gun from the glory of the finish line. But it is there at the finish that the angels wait to cheer us on. At this finish line these desert monks wait for us as well. In the writings they left behind, we can find wisdom to help us on the road right now. This wisdom has survived through the centuries, waiting like an oasis in the desert to refresh all who would pursue a spirituality that cost something to obtain.
Dan Nicholas
Felton, CA
1988