Always Advent

In the days of the Desert Fathers, a young monk sought out an elder monk who was known for his great holiness. The elder agreed to teach the young man everything he knew about prayer and the spiritual life.

He took the young man to a river and instructed him to immerse himself. The young man did and immediately the older man pushed the young man’s head under the water and held him down. The young man submitted to this for a short time, but then he became frightened that he was going to drown. He began to struggle against the old monk’s grip, fighting for air.

Finally, when the young man thought his lungs would burst, the old man released him. The young man stood up, gasping for air, looking at the old man in astonishment.

The elder monk looked at him calmly. “What did you experience while you were under the water?”

“I thought I was going to die,” he spluttered.

“Why were you going to die?”

The young man was angry. “Old man,” he spat, “I needed to breathe. I came here to learn the ways of God, and of prayer. And instead you tried to murder me!”

“You wanted that breath of air more than anything else?”

“Of course.”

“When you desire God as much as you desired that breath of air, then you will understand.”

—-
Today, January 17, is the feast of St. Anthony of the Desert (A.D. 251-356), aka St. Anthony of Egypt, St. Anthony the Great, the father of all monks, the first Christian we know of who went out into the desert to seek union with God in solitude and silence.

Not sure if that was a tale of St. Anthony or of one of the other desert fathers, but it doesn’t really matter.

Links

Life of St. Anthony, written by St. Athanasius, online at New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm

Catholic Encyclopedia article (online at New Advent)
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01553d.htm

article at Catholic Online:
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=23

from the patron saints index at Catholic Forum. This page describes Anthony as the father of cenobites, but I alway thought Anthony was the father of hermits and Pachomius the father of cenobites:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainta06.htm

Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_the_Great

Books
(This list is certainly not exhaustive or authoritative. It’s just a couple of books I’ve read. Each has a good bibliography.)

The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life
by Paula Huston
Chapter 1–”Solitude: The Way of the Hermit”–Huston devotes this chapter to St. Anthony.
(They sell it on Amazon, but consider supporting your local brick and mortar Catholic bookstore by buying it there…)

The Way of the Mystics
by John Michael Talbot with Steve Rabey
JMT also devotes his first chapter to St. Anthony and the desert fathers. He also provides a very good list of books for further reading.

JMT sites: Little Portion Hermitage, JMT’s blog, Troubadour for the Lord (Catholic Record Distribution), JMT’s website.

Who, I ask, will search out the Most High in his own being, for he is beyond words or understanding? Who will penetrate the secrets of God? Who will boast that he knows the infinite God, who fills all things, yet encompasses all things, who pervades all things, yet reaches beyond all things, who holds all things in his hand, yet escapes the grasp of all things? No one has ever seen him as he is.

No one must then presume to search for the unsearchable things of God: his nature, the manner of his existence, his selfhood. These are beyond telling, beyond scrutiny, beyond investigation. With simplicity, but also with fortitude, only believe that this is how God is and this is how he will be, for God is incapable of change.

Who then is God? He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. Do not look for any further answers concerning God. Those who want to understand the unfathomable depths of God must first consider the world of nature. Knowledge of the Trinity is rightly compared with the depth of the sea. Wisdom asks: Who will find out what is so very deep? As the depths of the sea are invisible to human sight, so the godhead of the Trinity is found to be beyond the grasp of human understanding.

If any one, I say, wants to know what you should believe, you must not imagine that you understand better through speech than through belief; the knowledge of God that you seek will be all the further off than it was before.

Seek then the highest wisdom, not by arguments in words but by the perfection of your heart, not by speech but by the faith that comes from simplicity of heart, not from the learned speculations of the unrighteous.

If you search by means of discussions for the God who cannot be defined in words, he will depart further from you than he was before. If you search for him by faith, wisdom will stand where wisdom lives, at the gates. Where wisdom is, wisdom will be seen, at least in part.

But wisdom is also to some extent truly attained when the invisible God is the object of faith, in a way beyond our understanding, for we must believe in God, invisible as he is, though he is partially seen by a heart that is pure.

St Columbanus
a Celtic monk who was born the same year that St. Benedict died; he evangelized the Franks in the 7th century in what is now France.

I finally found a free evening to sit down and watch this amazing film. Throughout the experience, a phrase kept coming to mind: “Only one thing is necessary.” (Luke 10:42) And the brothers have found it, in poverty, silence, and simplicity, at the Grand Chartreuse.

Can I find it in my crazy, mixed-up life?

The brothers live in their own little houses (called “cells”) which have a couple of rooms and a private garden. A brother comes around with a cart and gives them their meals through a little hatch. They eat all their meals alone in their hermitage (except for Sunday lunch). They say all their prayers in solitude (except for some of the prayers of the Divine Office), and they do not speak at all (except during the scheduled time of recreation with the other brothers). They can study, read, work in their gardnes, and they take turns at various jobs around the monastery. Feeding the chickens and so forth. I’m sure a lot of modern, noise-deafened, hectic people (like me) look at that life and think, “I want to be a Carthusian, too!”

No, you don’t. Do not mistake discontent with your current life situation as a call to something as radically different as cloistered monasticism.

A friend of mine wrote, after a profound experience of God on a retreat, that he felt God calling him into the desert and saying, “Will you love me here?” For most of us, the real sand and rock desert is far away and we can’t move there. Nor can we or should we move to the desert of a monastery. (Some of us should because God is calling us there.) The desert — the good kind of desert, where non-essentials are stripped away–is anywhere the thirsty soul finds itself. I live in a non-descript suburb of a standard, large metropolitan area that is devoid of inspiring vistas. My life and my household is busy with children, a job, grad school studies, a faith community, and a to-do list a mile long. But the spirituality of the desert, or the monastery in the Alps, is possible no matter where a person lives and no matter what the circumstances. In a modern, computerized, plugged-in culture you must exert considerable effort to create the desert around you and within you. Strip away the essentials and live with the one necessary thing.

Find the hermitage within your heart and go sit at the feet of Jesus.

Links:

Steven Greydanus:
http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/intogreatsilence .html

Arts and Faith:
http://artsandfaith.com/index.php?showtopic=13153

Barbara Nicolosi:
http://churchofthemasses.blogspot.com/2007/03/into-great-lon g-silence.html

Jeffrey Overstreet:
http://lookingcloser.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-yorker-on-into -great-silence.html

Where to buy it:
http://www.amazon.com/Into-Great-Silence-Two-Disc-Set/dp/B00 0OYNVOY