Let’s take a quiz. Suppose you want to go all in on your faith and really get serious about knowing and serving God. Where do you think would be the best place to live in order to do that most effectively? Would you move into the inner city? Would you move downtown? Would you move to the suburbs? Would you move to a rural region? Would you move to the desert? Oddly enough (at least to me), beginning in the third century, numerous people who really wanted to know God thought it best to move away from the crowds and into the desert. We know these desert-dwellers as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. And while I might quibble with their choice of the desert over being closer to people, I have to take my hat off to their wisdom. In short, they were a remarkable group of saints.
Maybe some history would be in order. Paul of Thebes (227-341 AD) was the first monk to flee from the corruption in the world (2 Peter 1:4) and escape into the desert. He was known in church history as “Paul the First Hermit,” or in some circles, “Paul the Anchorite.” There is a difference in the terms. A hermit traditionally lived in caves or cavities in the ground. An anchorite was like a hermit in that both are religious recluses, but an anchorite took a vow to hunker down in a small cell someplace away from the madding crowd (usually the cell was attached to a church). Paul of Thebes was also a grazer. A grazer was a saint who only ate raw plants. Nothing too odd there, but how they did so was a bit particular. They would never cultivate plants or cook them (or anything else) with fire. Instead, they would get down on all fours like a wild animal and graze on whatever was edible among the plants. You could also tell if someone was a grazer by what they were wearing. Grazers were known for wearing clothes made exclusively of leaves and vegetation. And if no leaves or vegetation were available, they felt free to run around very naked. Now, please don’t confuse any of these with their spiritual cousins, the “dendrites.” The dendrites had the same philosophy of life, but would never stoop so low as to be a cave dweller. Instead, they lived in trees. They were closely related to other Christian ascetics of the day, namely the stylites who lived, not in trees, but on small platforms on tall pillars (for instance, Simeon Stylites). In any case, “Paul the First Hermit,” was the first to venture into the desert to get away from the secular world. He lived alone in the desert of Thebes in Roman Egypt from age 16 to his death at 113 years old. That’s right—he lived as a hermit alone in the desert for close to a hundred years. Now, that is devotion!
It seems likely that the whole “move-into-the-desert-to-escape-the-corruption-of-the-world” idea would have withered on the vine from the desert sun, if it was not for Anthony the Great. One Sunday in 270, Anthony heard a sermon that deeply moved him. It said that sinless perfection was within reach if we sold all of our possessions, gave everything we had to the poor and followed Jesus in the way of sacrifice. Around that same time, Anthony heard about Paul of Thebes (maybe in a dream) and went off to find him. That encounter changed Anthony forever—and much of church history (monks and monasteries, and nuns and convents would all trace their origin back to this meeting). Anthony was struck by Paul’s devotion, rigor, spirituality and sacrifice and decided right then and there, to follow in Paul’s footsteps (which literally led into the desert).
Now, world and church history obviously played a role in his decision. In 303, persecution broke out against all Christ followers (this was the persecution under Diocletian). This would be the last formal persecution of the church by the Roman Empire. Christians everywhere saw this persecution as a refining fire that separated the wheat from the chaff. If you were not serious about your faith, you would never join the church because you would be putting your neck on the line. A decade later, however, Constantine the Great, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Now there was no cost to being a Christ follower, and churches became filled with tepid believers. In one royal decree, the church was infested with secularization. Those that feared losing their salvation by being deceived by a false church felt a call to the desert to escape the sin that was now prevalent in society and, more importantly, in the church.
We need to give credit where credit is due here. Yes, Paul of Thebes may have been the first to go into the desert, but it was Anthony who started the movement that we know as the Desert Fathers. Few people followed Paul, but within a short time, many Christ followers turned their backs on life in the city and followed Anthony into the desert to embrace an extreme, austere lifestyle. Soon, deserts all over Egypt were being populated by Christian ascetics. Some lived alone, others lived in small groups. All of them renounced earthly comforts. All of them embraced a serious life of prayer, the singing of the Psalms, extreme fasting and seeking after God. All of them wrapped themselves in humility and chose to die to self rather than to make their way in the world. Soon, women were also joining the move into the desert. These women became known as the Desert Mothers. And before anyone knew what was happening, the movement to the desert was afoot.
And then, something else began to happen. Christian city-dwellers began to go into the desert to seek advice and counsel from these Christians hermits. These Christ followers were sincere in their faith, but didn’t feel it was necessary to surrender everything. But they recognized these desert fathers had a deep spirituality and an abundance of wisdom, and so they went out into the desert to glean godly advice from them. And they had many wise hermits from which to choose. Anthony the Great’s biographer noted that, by the time of Anthony’s death, there were so many Christians living in the desert that he felt it was appropriate to call the desert a “city” of Christians. And as this wisdom was shared, someone had the foresight to gather their thoughts together in a book so that we could also benefit from their godly insights. And this advice is as powerful for us today as it was back then. And that is what brings us to this moment.
In 1982, Yushi Nomura wrote a short book entitled, Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers. There is an introduction and epilogue in the book by Henri Nouwen. The book is beautiful because of all the artwork by Nomura, but its real value is found in the stories it tells of the Desert Fathers. In fact, the whole book (except for the parts written by Nouwen) are stories; and these stories are worth their weight in gold. And the parts written by Nouwen are quintessentially Nouwenesque: engaging, insightful, practical and spiritually significant. Nouwen takes the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and applies it to our lives today so that we can learn what it means to follow Jesus in any age.
This new blog series hopes to do two things. First, we want to hear from Henri Nouwen about what it means to live a godly life; and then second, we want to hear stories from the Desert Fathers. These stories will hopefully illustrate or emphasize Nouwen’s points and draw out the implications for life today. Along the way, I may add a comment or two, but I hope mostly to allow Nouwen and the Desert Fathers to take center stage and teach us what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. And we will begin looking at these stories next week.
Before I let you go, let me give you a feel for why you should invest some time in reading these posts.
Here are two quick stories that speak of the wisdom of the Desert Fathers that I hope will entice you to want to read more. We often talk about the spiritual discipline of frugality. Frugality is living simply and avoiding excessive consumption so that we can use what we save on ourselves to give to others.
I think it is safe to say, frugality was an essential characteristic of all the Desert Fathers. They consistently and joyfully denied themselves of anything and everything that even hinted of comfort or riches or abundance. We see this in the following short story (half the joy in reading these stories is the spiritual insight; the other half is the humor):
“Abba Pambo believed that a monk’s coat ought to be of such a quality that if you threw it outside your hut, no one would ever think of taking it.” (Desert Wisdom: page 16)
Our second story focuses on humility (also a very common theme in the Desert Fathers). This is one of my favorite stories. It also has a funny twist. It reads:
“The devil appeared to a brother in the disguise of an angel of light. The devil said: ‘I am the angel Gabriel and I have been sent to you.’ The brother replied: ‘You must have the wrong person. Are you sure you weren’t sent to someone else? I certainly do not deserve to have an angel sent to me.’ Immediately, the devil disappeared.” (Desert Wisdom: page 65)
Here’s the good news: There are more stories where these came from. Plus, there are numerous great insights from Henri Nouwen. I hope you will join us for all of them.
