Three Counsels - St Anthony the Great

Someone asked Abba Anthony: "What should I do to please God?" The old man replied: "Observe these commandments of mine: wherever you go, always keep God before your eyes; whatever you do or say, base it on the Scriptures; and wherever you once dwell, do not easily depart from it. If you do these three things, you will be saved.

A man who wants to please another man is prepared to do a lot. A change of attitude, a change of behaviour - everything is on the table, especially if there is a tangible gain in sight.

But what should a person do if he wants to please God? 

Whoever put this question to Anthony received an answer consisting of three tips.

1. Always have God before your eyes - that is, live with the awareness that God exists and that your every action, your every word, your every thought is clear and obvious to Him. There are no secrets from God.

This injunction is not meant to make me believe that I am a participant in some "God's Reality Show" or that I am under some kind of constant surveillance.

Keeping God always before my eyes does indeed mean that I should remember Him in all my actions and treat Him with seriousness and respect. 

Having God always before my eyes is also not an invitation to build some kind of neurotic vision of Christianity (I recently read such a term somewhere on Facebook in reference to a more traditionally understood religiosity). It is an invitation to show the same respect to the personal God as to a loved one. To include God in one's plans and actions in the same way that one includes a husband, wife and children in one's daily life. ....

2. Whatever you do or say, base it on Scripture - this sounds like a big nudge to modern man, who is often unfamiliar with Scripture, and even if he is, he does not necessarily see it as a source of inspiration for his words and actions.

This reference, however, is a testimony to the way in which St Anthony and his contemporaries approached the Word of God. For them, it was not just one of the many "cultural texts" which, of course, are worth reading, but with which they should not concern themselves... For them, the way to study Scripture was to go into the desert and learn it by heart, if not in its entirety, then at least in fragments. Their journey into the desert usually began with inspiration from the words of Scripture.

In addition, they came with the quite reasonable conviction that the more in line with Scripture their words and actions were, the closer they were to what God was calling his followers to do.

3. Wherever you live, don't just leave - in a world as interconnected as ours, this seems impossible. After all, many modern people move at least several times in their lives. It is increasingly difficult to achieve stability, understood as a fixed place in the world.

But this injunction can be understood more sincerely, even though monks did indeed attach themselves firmly to their goals and cared deeply about what the Rule of St Benedict developed into the vow of stabilitas loci. A broader understanding will be concerned primarily with perseverance. Especially perseverance in the pursuit of the good. Perseverance in the pursuit of heaven. 

It can be expressed, for example, in faithfully getting up every morning and starting the day with prayer. It can be expressed in devoting 15 minutes a day to reading the Scriptures. It can be expressed in ...

This injunction is also about developing the ability to see your resolutions through to the end. Not getting discouraged too easily.

It can also be about not giving in to the volatility and instability that is so fashionable today, but building your life on something sustainable.

The asceticism of the monks

What we owe in a special way to the monks of the desert is their teaching on asceticism. It is not, in fact, a structured teaching, but rather a set of guidelines developed for the needs of certain people. Within these guidelines, however, there are some specific concepts with which it is useful to become familiar.

Desert

It meant total isolation. Going into the desert meant leaving everything you had 'in the world'. The desert did not only have a geographical meaning, implying a place of departure. The desert also had a spiritual meaning - it signified the rejection of evil, selfishness, all that the world brings.

The desert is a way that is described many times in the pages of Scripture. It was the way of Abraham, who walked through the desert to the Promised Land and only reached it by leaving everything behind. It was the way of Moses and the chosen people. The prophets were associated with the desert: Elijah and John the Baptist. Christ also prepared for his public appearances by spending time in the desert.

The desert is also a place of temptation and difficulty. In a way, it symbolises the kingdom of Satan. The scorching heat, the emptiness - all these are symbols of his work and power.

The exodus into the wilderness was to defeat Satan at the very heart of his kingdom. The weapons were repentance, mortification and humility. And the fruit of the struggle was a renewed paradise to flourish in that desert through the development of angelic life.

The Word

Going out into the desert was like going out into the battlefield. And it was necessary to prepare oneself for battle. Each monk therefore underwent a novitiate under the guidance of an 'old man'. The word 'old man' does not refer to age. It is used to emphasise the experience and wisdom of the monk.

The old man was the one who guided the novice with the 'word'. It was a special grace and gift.  It was given with prudence. More than once a young monk had to wait for such a "word" and earn it by humility, perseverance and faith.

The true "word" could also be silence, which the novice had to learn.

The old man's "word" was tailored to the current need and situation. It was a response to a specific problem. The old man who was the "giver of the word" is here understood as the "bearer of God", and his word is understood as the word of God himself.  Such a word, once spoken, must be fulfilled. And this is the task of the disciple. It is he who must face the word of the old man. He must ponder it in his heart and put it into practice.

Hesychia

Hesychia is the ideal to which every monk aspires. The Greek word, which is difficult to translate, means above all a particular way of silencing everything that comes from the world. This silence is disturbed by temptations, the intensity and nature of which are adapted to the individual.

The attainment of hesychia is achieved through struggle. Man must master the desire to possess through poverty, the desire to exalt himself through humility, the desire to satisfy himself through fasting.

But the most important thing is humility. It alone can defeat Satan. Humility is what Satan fears the most. It is the best help to achieve hesychia - peace of heart based on serenity.

Holiness

Holiness is the universal vocation of all Christians. It is not reserved for monks.

This is the conviction we have today, but it was very difficult for monks to come to the conviction that holiness could be achieved by a way of life that seemed less perfect than the monastic vocation.

Among the various vocations, the monastic way of life stands out in a special way because of its radicalism of life, which is expressed above all in the uncompromising acceptance of the Gospel.

For the monks it was clear that there is only one treasure for man: God. For this treasure it is worth selling everything and leaving everything behind to gain it. And this was the true meaning of their lives.

What a times...

 The origins of desert monasticism lie in the late third and early fourth centuries. This was the last period of the great persecution of Christians. Especially in Egypt, the persecution was very bloody and cruel.

The situation calmed down when Constantine the Great, Emperor of the Western Empire, who was sympathetic to the Christians, came to power and together with Licinius, Emperor of the Eastern Empire, issued an edict of tolerance, granting religious freedom to all the inhabitants of the Empire. The Great Persecution was practically a thing of the past (it would only return once more, when Julian the Apostate came to power). Instead, other problems arose from within Christianity itself.

The first half of the fourth century was the time of the first serious doctrinal disputes. These were caused by Arius, a priest from Alexandria. Arius' teaching included a false view of the Trinity and a rejection of the deity of Jesus Christ. As Alexandria was a port city and Arius himself a popular figure, his theses spread very quickly across the Mediterranean and beyond, causing much unrest among Christians. One measure of this unrest became the fights and battles between the followers of Arius and the followers of the bishops who professed belief in the one and eternal Trinity and that Jesus Christ was both God and man.

The unrest surrounding Arianism became so significant that the Emperor Constantine led the convening of the First World Council, which was held in Nicaea in 325. This council brought together some 250 bishops or their representatives. As a result of their deliberations, the teachings of Arius were condemned and declared heretical. There is also an event associated with the Council which is linked to the well-known and popular bishop, Nicholas of Myra. He was a strong opponent of the theses put forward by Arius, and it is said that when Arius was speaking before the Emperor and the assembled bishops, Nicholas stood up and struck him in the face because he could not bear to deny the divine nature of Jesus Christ. As this happened in the presence of the Emperor, Nicholas was imprisoned for a time, but was soon released.

The Council's decisions did not end the controversy, and factionalism continued for a long time. They had an impact on the lives of the monks of the Egyptian desert, who, while remaining adherents of the doctrine promulgated at the Council, were not infrequently expelled from their cells and forced to leave Egypt.

It is interesting to note that the unrest did not in any way diminish the popularity of monastic life. Moreover, in the second half of the fourth century, pilgrims from Western Europe, from Rome, Spain or Gaul, arrived in the desert. This is related to the beginnings of monasticism in the West. It was not uncommon for imperial visitors to learn the rudiments of monastic life from desert monks, who would later return to their homelands and transplant the experience they had gained in Egypt to Europe, thoughtfully and appropriately adapted.

Life in the desert was fraught with danger. Attacks on the monks were not uncommon. All thanks to the wild peoples of the desert. The invasions of the Bedouin tribes on Sketis - the informal capital of Eastern monasticism - contributed to the decline of desert monastic life, which was never revived to the same extent as at the height of its popularity.

The end of the era of the desert monks is closely linked to the Christological disputes of the fifth century. Admittedly, the disputes themselves did not make much of an impression on the monks and, with a few notorious exceptions, they did not get involved in the affairs of the Council of Ephesus (431) and the disputes between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius. However, it happened that Dioscurus, an unscrupulous man and supporter of the thesis that Christ had only one divine-human nature, became Patriarch of Alexandria. (The Church teaches that both natures, divine and human, are fully present in Christ). Through influence and intrigue of various kinds, he involved the monks in ongoing theological disputes. He even led the monks to break up the Council of Ephesus in 449. Several Council Fathers were killed as a result of this tragic event. 

After the Council of Chalcedon (451) proclaimed the doctrine of two natures united in the one person of Christ, the monks "dug in their positions" and became a bastion of monophysitism (the view that Christ has only one nature). This initially led to a division between the two camps, which were relatively gentle with each other, but over time the Monophysites gained the upper hand and by the end of the fifth century there was monastic life in the Egyptian desert, but it was no longer linked to Christianity, which was united around the person of the Bishop of Rome.

And it was a text with a lot of historical and theological content. But those were the times, and if we are to continue to search for our treasures in the wilderness, we need to be aware of this, at least in general terms. Why? Because those to be discussed are children of that time, just as we are children of the 20th and 21st centuries. And just as we are influenced by access to television, the Internet and the older experiences of communist times, so the events I have described today influenced those who sought an encounter with God in monastic life.

For the good start

I heard about the so-called Desert Fathers when I was still in seminary. Actually, I didn't hear about them literally, because I bought a book in which the author had selected 365 apophatic verses and assigned them to certain days of the year.

In the course of time, I discovered the 'Book of the Ancients', which is published in alphabetical order and, over time, also in thematic order.

I refer to both quite often, and each time I am delighted by the simplicity and common sense that characterise these wise parables and, no doubt, their authors.

What is important to me is that the source of this way of life, which I myself read as wisdom, is the experience of a radical living of the evangelical counsels, a profound meditation on the Word of God and obedience to God. 

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I once called monks "treasures of the desert". But it is a treasure of a kind that you cannot keep to yourself. That is why this blog was created. So that I can share this treasure with others.