Program / Course 2: The Solitary Christian in Depth / Lesson 2.2
What you will learn
- Describe what the Sayings of the Desert Fathers are, how they were collected and how they are arranged.
- Name some of the desert mothers, including Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora, and summarize their teaching.
- Explain why the desert tradition relied on a spoken word from an elder instead of on long theory.
- Read a short saying slowly and write a plain-language account of what it asks.
The big idea
The desert tradition passed on its wisdom in short sayings and small stories, gathered in collections called the Apophthegmata Patrum, usually translated the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Women also appear in them. Amma Syncletica, Amma Sarah and Amma Theodora are known as ammas, spiritual mothers, whose words were remembered and written down. The sayings show a practical wisdom: keep your cell, guard your heart, take counsel, do not judge. They were meant to be asked for, heard, chewed over and put to work, not simply read quickly.
Key terms
- Apophthegmata Patrum
- A Greek title meaning sayings of the fathers. It names several collections of short sayings and stories from the fourth to the sixth centuries.
- Amma
- A word meaning mother, used for a woman elder in the desert, as abba (father) was used for a man.
- Cell
- The hut or room where a monk lived. In the sayings, staying in one’s cell often means keeping to a steady discipline.
- Logismoi
- A Greek word often translated thoughts. In desert writing it means the stream of inner suggestions, such as anger, pride or despair, that a monk learns to notice and resist.
- Discernment (discretion)
- The ability to tell what is good from what only looks good, and to find the right measure. John Cassian called it the mother of the virtues.
- A word
- In the sayings, to ask an elder for a word means to ask for a short piece of guidance that one can use to live.
Background
The sayings were first passed on by word of mouth. A younger monk or nun would go to an elder and say, Give me a word. The elder might answer with a sentence, a story or silence. Later, in the fifth and sixth centuries, these answers were written down and collected. One well-known collection is arranged alphabetically by the name of the elder. Another is arranged by topic, such as patience or humility. English translations of both are available in modern editions.
Most of the sayings come from men, but a number are credited to women. The women appear in smaller numbers, since fewer women’s stories were recorded, though their words are given the same title of respect. Scholars note that the collections were edited later by monks, so the sayings must be read as remembered tradition, not as stenographic records. Even so, their consistency over many generations suggests that they preserve a real way of life.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Learn how to read a saying
A saying is not an essay. It is a short, sometimes startling piece meant to cut through a particular excuse. Read it slowly, twice. Ask who is speaking, who is asked and what problem the question assumes. Then ask how the saying would change what you do tomorrow.
Do not turn a saying into a rule for everyone. The elders spoke to individuals. A harsh word given to a proud young monk might be wrong for a discouraged one. The sayings themselves often show elders giving opposite advice to different people.
Step 2: Amma Syncletica
Syncletica, traditionally associated with Alexandria and the fourth or fifth century, is remembered as a teacher of other women who gathered round her. Several sayings are credited to her. One compares a virtue that is displayed to a treasure that is uncovered: it loses its value. Another warns that a person can sit in a mountain hermitage and still be filled with the noise of a town, while another can be in a crowd and keep a quiet mind. Her point is that solitude is an inner matter first, and a place second.
She also taught that the spiritual life is a struggle that needs patience, and that one should not trust a sudden feeling of ease. The sayings under her name are among the most quoted by modern readers on the dangers of showing off.
Step 3: Amma Sarah and Amma Theodora
Amma Sarah is said to have lived by a river for sixty years. A saying credited to her tells of a time when two elders came to humble her, and she answered that she was a woman by nature but not in mind, which was her way of saying that gender does not decide the quality of a person’s spiritual life. Another says that she would pray not that everyone approve of her but that her own heart be pure toward all.
Amma Theodora is remembered for her teaching on patience, and for a saying that neither asceticism nor vigils nor any other hard work saves a person, but only true humility. The collections preserve only a few lines from her, but they are a good example of what the tradition prized above the outward feats.
Step 4: Themes that recur
Across the sayings, a few themes recur. First, keep to your discipline, and do not run from your difficulties. A well-known saying credited to Abba Moses says that if you sit in your cell, the cell will teach you everything. Second, watch your thoughts and do not let them grow. Third, do not judge. Fourth, receive guests with love and set aside your rule when charity requires it. Fifth, ask for counsel and do not trust your own judgment alone. Abba Arsenius is said to have summed up his path in three words, usually rendered flee, be silent, pray.
Notice that the themes are not merely about being alone. They are about how to live well when alone.
Step 5: Use the sayings today
Pick one saying a week. Copy it into your notebook. Write what it assumes about the person who asks. Then write one ordinary decision it might touch. After a week, note whether it changed anything. If you cannot find any use for a saying, leave it alone and move on. The aim is not to master a book but to be formed slowly.
- What question would I bring to an elder if I could ask only one?
- Which saying I have read bothers me most, and why?
- Do I look for advice that supports what I have already decided?
- Am I tempted to treat a saying as a rule for everyone?
- What is the difference between my inner life and my outward place?
- Do I trust anyone enough to ask for a word?
Examples
The leaking basket
Abba Moses, asked to join in judging a brother who had sinned, came carrying a basket of sand with holes, from which the sand ran out behind him. He said that his own sins ran out behind him unseen, and that he had come to judge another. The tradition says the brothers forgave the man.
Sit in your cell
A young monk complained that he could not find peace and wanted to go elsewhere. An elder told him to go back and sit in his cell, and the cell would teach him. The advice fits the man who is running from himself. It does not fit a man who is being driven from home by abuse. (The saying is real. The application is the lesson’s own.)
Hospitality over fasting
A saying tells of a monk who broke his usual fast to eat with visiting brothers, and said that charity is greater than the rule. The desert elders, so often pictured as severe, valued kindness over the neat keeping of a rule.
Different perspectives
Orthodox
The sayings are read as part of the living tradition of the church. Orthodox monastics and many lay people read them as a school of prayer, and the collections remain in use in monasteries.
Catholic
Catholic monks have long read the sayings, and Benedict sends his readers to the writings of the Fathers, including Cassian’s Conferences, in the last chapter of his Rule (chapter 73). Modern Catholic writers on spirituality often draw on the sayings.
Protestant
Protestants have come to the sayings more slowly, but a good many now read them. Some find them valuable on humility and perseverance. Others note that the practice of seeking a spiritual father differs from the Protestant stress on direct access to God, and weigh the sayings with Scripture as the standard.
Scholarly
Historians treat the sayings as evidence for early monastic life, but note that they were edited, translated and arranged later. They look at what the stories show about social expectations, including the place of women, and about the growth of monastic authority.
Why it matters
The sayings are one of the best short introductions to the Christian tradition of solitude. They show a way of life described in everyday terms, by people who often disagreed with each other and said so. They also show the women of the desert as teachers, and not as footnotes. A solitary person who reads them gains companions across the centuries, and a standard against which to measure personal habits.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The sayings are rules to be copied exactly.
Correction: They are replies to particular people. Even the elders disagreed with one another about how much to fast or how strictly to keep a rule.
Misunderstanding: There were no women in the desert tradition.
Correction: Women lived as ascetics and taught. Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora are named in the sayings, and many more lived in women’s communities.
Misunderstanding: The desert elders despised ordinary life.
Correction: Many sayings praise hospitality, work and mercy, and place them above private feats.
Misunderstanding: Every saying is historically certain.
Correction: The sayings were gathered and edited later. They preserve a remembered tradition, and individual attributions may be uncertain.
Knowledge check
What are the Apophthegmata Patrum?
They are collections of short sayings and stories from desert monks and nuns of the fourth to sixth centuries, first spoken and later written down. Some are arranged alphabetically by the name of the elder, and others by subject.
What does Amma Syncletica teach about solitude as a place and as a state of mind?
She teaches that solitude is first inner. A person may live on a mountain with a noisy mind, or in a crowd with a quiet one. Mere distance does not make a solitary.
Why did young monks ask elders for a word?
Because they believed guidance was best received from a person with experience who could answer a particular need. A word was a short piece of advice meant to be put into practice.
Why should a saying not be treated as a rule for everyone?
Because each saying answered a specific person with a specific problem. The same elders gave different advice to different people, so applying one saying to everyone misreads it.
Think it through
- Which of the themes (stay put, watch your thoughts, do not judge, welcome guests, take counsel) is hardest for you right now?
- Why might the tradition have remembered the women’s sayings less fully than the men’s?
- Is there someone you could ask for a word? What would you ask?
- How would you tell the difference between staying with a hard discipline and staying in a harmful situation?
Independent assignment
Three sayings
From the library edition, choose three sayings, at least one by a woman. In your own notebook, write 300 to 450 words. For each saying, copy it in the translator’s words with a short note of the page, then explain in plain language what it asks, what problem it assumes and what it might change in your week. Do not turn any of them into a rule for others.
Further study
- Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection Read the sayings of Syncletica, Sarah, Theodora, Moses, Arsenius and Poemen.
- John Cassian, The Conferences Read Conference 2, on discretion, to see the same wisdom in longer form.
- Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict Read chapter 73, where Benedict points readers to the Fathers.
- Matthew 7:1 Judge not.
- Proverbs 12:15 The wise hearken to counsel.
- Hebrews 13:2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers.