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Overview
This book explores the tradition and relevance of desert spirituality in the life and worship of the church today and offers a collection of pertinent writings by these and many other ancient and contemporary authors: Thomas à Kempis, Mother Mark Clare, Henri Nouwen, René Voillaume, Charles de Foucauld, Thomas Merton, R. S. Thomas.
The readings are ideal Lenten devotionals (but wonderful any other time of year as well) as you answer your own call of the desert.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819217288 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 10/01/1997 |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.39(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE DESERT
AN ANTHOLOGY FOR LENT
By John Moses
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 1997 John MosesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-1728-8
CHAPTER 1
Ash Wednesday
THE CALL OF THE DESERT
Behold, I am doing a new thing ... for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43.18a, 20b–21
ASH WEDNESDAY
Setting Out On The Journey
1. What really matters is that I have taken the fundamental decision to begin the journey.
Alessandro Pronzato
2. The desert is the threshold to the meeting ground of God and man. It is the scene of the exodus. You do not settle there, you pass through. One then ventures on to these tracks because one is driven by the Spirit towards the Promised Land. But it is only promised to those who are able to chew sand for forty years without doubting their invitation to the feast in the end.
Alessandro Pronzato
3. The desert is a place where the soul encounters God, but it is also a place of extreme desolation – a place of testing, where the soul is flung upon its own resources and therefore upon God. The desert, in this sense, can be any where.
Elizabeth Hamilton
4. The desert is both fascinating and terrifying. It is the great, lonely void, and human beings instinctively dread being brought face to face with themselves.
A Monk
5. The way you must go is the way you already know.
He has set it in your heart. The solitude will speak to you.
Derek Webster
6. Your call to the desert is as eternal as everything else concerning you, and it has its source in God's inexorable predilection for you.
A Monk
7. Open the first gate of the desert path that I may begin my journey.
Derek Webster
THURSDAY
The Inner Desert
1. For over three months I have laboured across the Sahara, and there have been few moments when I had experienced the magnetism of the desert to which so many people before me had succumbed. But now, in its utmost desolation, I began at last to understand its attraction. It was the awful scale of the thing, the suggestion of virginity, the fusion of pure elements from the heavens above and the earth beneath which were untrammelled and untouched by anything contrived by any human being.
Geoffrey Moorhouse
2. There is a physical desert, inhabited by a few exceptional men and women who are called to live there; but more importantly, there is an inner desert, into which each one of us must one day venture. It is a void; an empty space for solitude and testing.
Frère Ivan
3. For you, the desert is not a setting, it is a state of soul.
A Monk
4. Not everyone can or should live as a hermit. But no Christian can do without an inner hermitage in which to meet his God.
A Monk
5. The desert turns you inward.
A Monk
FRIDAY
The Presence And The Absence of God
1. The desert is an arid, scorching, frightening place where everything portends death. But at the same time it is also a place of rest, gentleness and life.
In the desert you find friendliness and hostility, anguish and joy, sorrow and exultation, trial and triumph. The desert is the land of malediction and the land of benediction. The desert can be hard and merciless. You might die of thirst there, but if it rains you could be drowned. In the desert nature manifests itself in its extremes: prodigal fertility and cruel barrenness. We wait for years and do not get even a drop of rain. Then, without warning, the rain comes down in torrents; and, with frightening speed, the wadis fill up and overflow, sweeping everything before them. You might come upon an oasis where there is life and vegetation. And a little farther on you could find yourself on a desolate patch where you fear for your sanity.
The desert can be tomb and cradle, wasteland and garden, death and resurrection, hell and heaven.
Thus in the desert you will find that God is simultaneously present and absent, proximate and remote, visible and invisible, manifest and hidden. He can receive you with great tenderness and then abandon you on the cross of loneliness. He consoles you and torments you at the same time. He heals you only to wound you again. He may speak to you today and ignore you tomorrow.
The desert does not delude and least of all does the desert delude those who accept it in its two-sided reality of life and death, presence and absence. Nor will they be deceived by God who calls them to the desert. God never abandons us.
Alessandro Pronzato
2. The desert is a good teacher. It is a place where we do not die of thirst. It is a place where we rediscover the roots of our existence. Once we grasp this lesson, we realise that the physical desert is not necessary to lead the life of a hermit. It then becomes pointless to go in search of a desert on the globe. You can find your desert in a corner of your house, on a motorway, in a square, in a crowded street. But you must first renounce the slavery of illusions, refuse the blackmail of pressure, resist the glitter of appearances, repudiate the domination of activity, reject the dictatorship of hypocrisy. Then the desert becomes a place where you do not go out to see the sand blowing in the wind but the Spirit waiting to make his dwelling within you.
Alessandro Pronzato
SATURDAY
Waiting Upon God
1. I have come into the desert to pray, to learn to pray. Prayer is the sum of our relationship with God. We are what we pray.
Carlo Carretto
2. In the desert, God has marked out no other routes, no other paths than those of prayer.
A Monk
3. In the desert the most urgent thing is – to wait.
The desert does not take kindly to those who tackle it at breakneck speed, subjecting it to their plans and deadlines. It soon takes its revenge and makes them pay dearly for their presumption. Instead, the desert welcomes those who shed their sandals of speed and walk slowly in their barefeet, letting them be caressed and burnt by the sand.
If you have no ambition to conquer the desert, if you do not think you are in charge, if you can calmly wait for things to be done, then the desert will not consider you an intruder and will reveal its secrets to you.
Alessandro Pronzato
4. A desert spirituality is a spirituality of waiting upon God. There is an element of timelessness, of eternity, about the desert. The characteristic prayer of the desert is a prayer of simple waiting.
David Prail
5. I have to walk the path to a deeper quiet in a hidden place.
Derek Webster
First Sunday in Lent
SOLITUDE
When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
St Matthew 5.6
SUNDAY
Alone With God
1. The purpose of the spiritual quest of solitude is the Finding of God.
Peter Anson
2. Let the desire to be with God goad you as often and as intensely as it may.
A Monk
3. As soon as you are really alone you are with God.
Thomas Merton
4. Seek to live alone with God and to live for God alone.
Jean Leclerq
5. Except a man or woman shall say in their heart, I alone and God are in this world, they shall not find peace.
Abbot Allois
6. He with whom God is is never less alone than when he is alone.
For then he can enter his joy, then he is his own to enjoy God in himself and himself in God.
William Saint-Thierry
MONDAY
The Solitude Of The Soul
1. Solitary places have always greatly helped the solitude of the soul.
Jean Leclerq
2. I should be able to return to solitude each time as to the place I have never described to anybody, as the place which I have never brought anyone to see, as the place whose silence has mothered an interior life known to no one but God alone.
Thomas Merton
3. Yet do not forget that you can be alone amid the noise of the world; and equally you can be surrounded by the hubbub of the world whilst withdrawn in your cell.
Theophan the Recluse
4. The desert ... taught me the distinction between solitude and isolation.
Alessandro Pronzato
5. Do not flee to solitude from the community. Find God first in the community, then He will lead you to solitude.
Thomas Merton
TUESDAY
Standing Before God
1. You seek the Lord? Seek, but only within yourself. He is not far from anyone. The Lord is near all those who truly call on Him. Find a place in your heart, and speak there with the Lord. It is the Lord's reception room. Everyone who meets the Lord meets Him there; he has fixed no other place for meeting souls.
Theophan the Recluse
2. When you retreat into yourself, you should stand before the Lord, and remain in His presence, not letting the eyes of the mind turn away from the Lord. This is the true wilderness – to stand face to face with the Lord.
Theophan the Recluse
3. As soon as a man or a woman is fully disposed to be alone with God, they are alone with God no matter where they may be.
At that moment they see that though they seem to be in the middle of their journey, they have already arrived at the end. For the life of grace on earth is the beginning of the life of glory. Although they are travellers in time, they have opened their eyes for a moment, in eternity.
Thomas Merton
WEDNESDAY
Waiting In Silence
1. Never be in a hurry. Do not expect to hear God's word immediately on your arrival in the desert. You must wait in silence. Your whole being should be in an attitude of listening. All other activities should be subordinated to the act of waiting for God. And God may speak through His word or through His silence.
Alessandro Pronzato
2. Without silence, there is no solitude.
Jean Leclerq
3. I find that silence teaches me more than many conversations.
Jean Leclerq
4. It is in silence that we love most ardently; noise and words often put out the inner fire.
Charles de Foucauld
5. Only silence of the heart allows us to reach the innermost secret of creation.
Frère Ivan
6. The Father only utters one Word, that is to say, His Son, in an eternity of silence. He is saying it for ever. The soul too must hear it in silence.
St John of the Cross
THURSDAY
The Deepest Silence
1. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love. For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith. But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought; So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T S Eliot
2. God's call is mysterious; it comes in the darkness of faith. It is so fine, so subtle, that it is only with the deepest silence within us that we can hear it.
Carlo Carretto
3. In the crucible of silence you will learn holiness, since silence is the door to humility, contemplation and mercy. By leading you to self-forgetfulness, silence will allow you to discover God and in the heart of God you will rediscover the world by God's light.
So live outward silence and enjoy it inwardly and you will taste the perfect delight of those who keep His commandments in their hearts and dwell silently in His love.
Jerusalem Community : Rule of Life
4. You must put down your roots in silence. And this silence, more than any spoken word, will unite you to your fellow beings.
Soeur Marie
FRIDAY
United With One Another
1. Holiness is life ... The solitude of a soul enclosed within itself is death. And so the authentic, the really sacred solitude is the infinite solitude of God, Himself, Alone.
Thomas Merton
2. There is one Solitude in which all persons are at once together and alone.
Thomas Merton
3. Men and women of solitude have discovered that the only way to be truly present to the world is to live in the presence of God.
Alessandro Pronzato
4. The more we are alone with God the more we are united with one another.
Thomas Merton
5. Solitude separates only to unite.
Brother Daniel-Ange
6. Solitude is genuine only when it is inhabited. And the best way not to have people in your way is to let them into your heart.
Alessandro Pronzato
7. The solitary cannot survive unless he is capable of loving everyone.
Thomas Merton
8. I have never loved nor prayed so much for my old friends as in the solitude of the desert. I saw their faces, I felt their problems, their sufferings, sharpened by the distance between us.
Carlo Carretto
SATURDAY
Finding The Truth
1. We fear to be alone, and be ourselves, and so to remind others of the truth that is in them.
Thomas Merton
2. I have often said that the sole cause of our unhappiness is that we do not know how to stay quietly in our room.
Blaise Pascal
3. The further I advance into solitude the more clearly I see the goodness of all things.
Thomas Merton
4. Society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members.
Thomas Merton
5. When society is made up of men and women who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love.
Thomas Merton
6. Mature religion as well as mature politics requires solitude.
Thomas Merton
7. There will always be a place for those isolated consciences who have stood up for the universal conscience as against the mass mind. But their place is solitude. They have no other. Hence it is the solitary person (whether in the city or in the desert) who does humankind the inestimable favour of reminding it of its true capacity for maturity, liberty and peace.
Thomas Merton
Second Sunday in Lent
TESTING
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil.
St Luke 4.1–2a
SUNDAY
Constant Warfare
1. The desert offers a number of classic struggles, which you will be hard put to win; the desert's own excellent qualities provoke them.
A Monk
2. Any one who is living in the desert is, in fact, at risk; the very extremity of their life-style quickly reduces them to extremes.
Frère Ivan
3. The desert is the land of mirage, that seductive hallucination, the only defect of which is to be unreal.
A Monk
4. Many acts of self-denial are heroic only in imagination, justified by some inaccessible ideal more dreamt than lived.
A Monk
5. The desert offers no respite. It prepares you for battle. The Promised Land is a place of war and peace at the same time. Anyone who prays does not only experience peace, they are also made to realise that the life of a Christian is a constant warfare. In this sense the experience of the desert takes you back to the point of departure, to your former environment, work and daily life. But the difference is that now you are a free person.
Alessandro Pronzato
6. When anyone penetrates deeper into the desert, they must take along with them faith, hope and charity. Their minds must be well made up and they must be firmly determined to achieve their goal. For combat will besiege them from every side.
A Desert Father
MONDAY
A Spirituality of Struggle
1. The life of the solitary will be a continual warfare, in which the flesh fights not only against the spirit but against the flesh itself and in which the spirit also fights not only against flesh but against the spirit.
Thomas Merton
2. Demons belong to the desert, to the solitude of the desert.
Andrew Louth
3. The desert is the country of madness ... it is the refuge of the devil... thirst drives a person mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence – lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else.
Thomas Merton
4. Not everyone is called to face the particular trials of St Antony but each one of us has, sooner or later, to confront the terrible demons which we carry inside: the demons of aggression, resentment, pride, sadness, despair.
Frère Ivan
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE DESERT by John Moses. Copyright © 1997 John Moses. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
THE STORY OF THE DESERT
THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE DESERT
AN ANTHOLOGY FOR LENT
1. THE CALL OF THE DESERT Ash Wednesday to Saturday
2. SOLITUDE First Sunday in Lent to Saturday
3. TESTING Second Sunday in Lent to Saturday
4. SELF-EMPTYING Third Sunday in Lent to Saturday
5. ENCOUNTER Fourth Sunday in Lent to Saturday
6. TRANSFIGURATION Fifth Sunday in Lent to Saturday
7. THE DIVINE MYSTERY Palm Sunday to Easter Day
THE LITERATURE OF THE DESERT
Notes
What People are Saying About This
"A fine introduction offers a history of desert spirituality, and an epilogue on the literature of the desert completes this lovely, simple book."
—Religious Resource International
"...counts down the days of Lent with appropriate quotes from the desert tradition of faith and prayer. Readers who use these quotations as a basis for daily reflection and prayer will find them divided into five themes: solitude, testing, self-emptying, encounter, and transfiguration. Moses includes brief chapters on the history of the desert tradition, its particular type of Christian experience, and the literature which has come from it."
—Lois Sibley, The
Pennsylvania Episcopalian, February 1998
"As a Lenten devotional, the reading provide an excellent introduction to experiencing the silence of desert spirituality."
—Robert Pearsall, South Dakota ChurchNews, March 1998
"...a collection of samples of classic spirituality both new and ageless, this book can be used as a personal reflective book or for group sharing and is especially timely as a Lenten book when Christians as a whole do take the time for a deeper understanding and inner reflection of their faith."
—Church & Synagogue Libraries
"...can be used as a personal reflective book or for group sharing and is especially timely as a Lenten book when Christians as a whole do take the time for a deeper understanding and inner reflection of their faith."
—Church and Synagogue Library Association
"This is definitely a reader-friendly book for Lent. The author is the dynamic new Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, whose predecessors include such literary giants as John Donne. First, he tells us the story of the Desert Fathers who retreated to the wilderness in the fourth and fifth centuries when the Emperor Constantine's establishment of
Christianity severely watered down the faith. He does this with a simple style, avoiding complex unpronounceable verbiage. When he has introduced us to the spirituality of the desert, to the use of solitude,
he then gives the reader daily soul food to chew on. Beginning with Ash
Wednesday, each day has a small selection of quotes, i.e. ‘In the desert you discover your true name, and God calls you by that name,' by
Allessandro Pronzato. It can be used for personal devotion or as a small group study resource."
—The Rev. Bob Libby, The Living
Church, February 22, 1998