The Wisdom of the Desert (New Directions Book 295)

by Thomas Merton

These men seem to have thought, as a few rare modern thinkers like Berdyaev have thought, that there is really no such thing as a “Christian state.” They seem to have doubted that Christianity and politics could ever be mixed to such an extent as to produce a fully Christian society.

The Desert Fathers declined to be ruled by men, but had no desire to rule over others themselves. Nor did they fly from human fellowship – the very fact that they uttered these “words” of advice to one another is proof that they were eminently social. The society they sought was one where all men were truly equal, where the only authority under God was the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience and love.

What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ.

They sought a God whom they alone could find, not one who was “given” in a set, stereotyped form by somebody else.

“Therefore, whatever you see your soul to desire according to God, do that thing, and you shall keep your heart safe.”

He had to lose himself in the inner, hidden reality of a self that was transcendent, mysterious, half-known, and lost in Christ.

Rest, then, was a kind of simple nowhereness and no-mindedness that had lost all preoccupation with a false or limited “self.” At peace in the possession of a sublime “Nothing” the spirit laid hold, in secret, upon the “All” – without trying to know what it possessed.

With the Desert Fathers, you have the characteristic of a clean break with a conventional, accepted social context in order to swim for one’s life into an apparently irrational void.

We have buried them, so to speak, in our own routines, and thus securely insulated ourselves against any form of spiritual shock from their lack of conventionality.

They had no set doctrine about freedom, but they had in fact become free by paying the price of freedom.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

the great travellers and colonizers of the Renaissance were, for the most part, men who perhaps were capable of the things they did precisely because they were alienated from themselves.

They were humble, quiet, sensible people, with a deep knowledge of human nature and enough understanding of the things of God to realize that they knew very little about Him.

If these men say little about God, it is because they know that when one has been somewhere close to His dwelling, silence makes more sense than a lot of words.

Charity and hospitality were matters of top priority, and took precedence over fasting and personal ascetic routines.

Love means an interior and spiritual identification with one’s brother, so that he is not regarded as an “object” to “which” one “does good.” The fact is that good done to another as to an object is of little or no spiritual value. Love takes one’s neighbour as one’s other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion and reserve and reverence without which no one can presume to enter into the sanctuary of another’s subjectivity.

Abbot Moses, that great gentle Negro, who walked into the severe assembly with a basket of sand, letting the sand run out through many holes. “My own sins are running out like this sand,” he said, “and yet I come to judge the sins of another.”

But in the end he concluded that not even the devil was purely evil, since God could not create evil, and all His works are good.

The Coptic hermits who left the world as though escaping from a wreck, did not merely intend to save themselves. They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them.

Therefore, whatever you see your soul to desire according to God, do that thing, and you shall keep your heart safe.

IT WAS said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.

Rhymes with Les Miserables story of Jean Valjean.

It is better to eat meat and drink wine, than by detraction to devour the flesh of your brother.

Modesty.

I spoke no word to him because he is a trader in words, and seeks to glory in the words of another.

Martha is necessary to Mary, for it was because Martha worked that Mary was able to be praised.

for three years I have been paying for this kind of thing and now you give it to me for nothing.

Despise no one, condemn no one, rebuke no one, God will give you peace and your meditation will be undisturbed.

One man carries an axe all his life and never cuts down a tree. Another, who knows how to cut, gives a few swings and the tree is down. This axe, he said, is discretion.

If a man settles in a certain place and does not bring forth the fruit of that place, the place itself casts him out, as one who has not borne its fruit.

Get away from any man who always argues every time he talks.

Worldly men have ruined Rome and monks have ruined Scete.

Truly Abbot Joseph alone has found the way, for he replies that he knows not.

Any trial whatever that comes to you can be conquered by silence.

Go and pray to the Lord to command some struggle to be stirred up in you, for the soul is matured only in battles.

Jen Valjean, pt 2

But each man should act according to his own spiritual way. And if one were not able to get along without the flower, he should plant it again.

That man hates evil who hates his own sins, and looks upon every brother as a saint, and loves him as a saint.

The Lord has accepted your offering. Go, now, and give it to the poor.

Better light work that takes a long time to finish than a hard job that is quickly done.

If he is not edified by my silence, there is no hope that he will be edified by my words.

Fasting has its reward, but he who eats out of charity fulfils two commandments, for he sets aside his own will and he refreshes his hungry brethren.