Reading List Update
Since I wasn’t doing my usual posts during Lent, I’m overdue for a Reading List update…
"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Since I wasn’t doing my usual posts during Lent, I’m overdue for a Reading List update…
At the Easter Vigil last night I was Godfather to my friend Mike who was baptized and received into the Church. Please pray for us 🙂
Hey everyone, I hope you had a really good Lent and you enjoyed the daily quotations from the Desert Fathers. Starting from tomorrow, the blog will be back to more usual postings.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have forty days of Facebook news to catch up on…
As today is the last of the Desert Father quotations I’m going to be doing for a while, I’m going to end with my favourite, the Desert Mother Syncletica:
[Syncletica] also said, “When the devil does not use the goad of poverty to tempt us, he uses wealth for the same purpose. When he cannot win by scorn and mockery, he tries praise and flattery. If he cannot win by giving health, he tries illness. If he cannot win by comfort, he tries to ruin the soul by vexations that lead us to act against our monastic vows. He inflicts severe illness on people whom he wants to tempt and so makes them weak, and thereby shakes the love they feel towards God…
Iron is cleaned of rust by fire. If you are righteous and suffer, you grow to a higher sanctity. Gold is tested by fire.
When a messenger from Satan is given to you to be a thorn in your flesh, lift up your heart, for you have received a gift like that of St. Paul.
– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V
They said that Silvanus had a disciple in Scetis called Mark, who possessed the virtue of obedience in large measure. He was a copyist of old manuscripts: and the hermit loved them for his obedience. He had seven other disciples, and they were sad that he loved Mark more than them.
When the nearby hermits heard that he loved Mark above the others, they took it badly. One day when they visited him, Silvanus took them with him out of his cell, and began to knock on the door of each of his disciples, saying, “Brother, come out, I have work for you.” Not one of them appeared immediately. When he came to Mark’s cell, he knocked, saying, “Mark,” and as soon as Mark heard the voice of the hermit he came out and Silvanus sent him on some errand.
So he said to the other hermits, “Where are the other brothers?” He went into Mark’s cell, and found a book which he had just begun to copy, and he was making the letter O, but when he had heard the hermit’s voice, he had not finished the line of the O. The visitors said, “You are right, abba, and we also love the one whom you love, for God loves him too.”
– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V
A timely warning, given that Lent is nearly over…
[Syncletica] also said, “The devil sometimes sends a severe fast which is too prolonged; the devil’s disciples do this as well as holy men. How do we distinguish the fasting of our God and King from the fasting of that tyrant the devil? Clearly by its moderation.
“Throughout your life, then, you ought to keep an unvarying rule of fasting. Do you fast four or five days on end and then lose your spiritual strength by eating a feast? That really pleases the devil!
“Everything which is extreme is destructive. So do not suddenly throw away your armour, or you may be found unarmed in the battle and easily captured. Our body is the armour, our soul is the warrior. Take care of both, and you will be ready for whatever comes.
– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V