Letters (review)

Interest in the desert fathers has in recent years experienced an astonishing resurgence. The avid audience for their spiritual wisdom has grown beyond patristics scholars and clergy to include lay Christians thirsty for spiritual direction and an authentic vision of the Kingdom of God. Readers recognize the value of their perspective, which challenges both modernist and postmodernist assumptions in our society. We resonate to the refrain, "Give me a word, Abba," followed by a gem of spiritual discernment distilled in the austere setting of the wilderness rife with temptations, both demonic and human in the form of one's bothersome neighbor.

However, it is the very simplicity and apparent timelessness of the pearls of wisdom in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers that can be misleading today. The teaching of the desert fathers was not abstract and removed from human experience. Rather their responses were worked out in the midst of genuine human searching and failure. Real men and women struggled to live lives of prayer and ascetic discipline in communal monasteries and more isolated anchoritic cells. The needs of disciples and the efforts of spiritual fathers played out in actual human relationships, not merely in didactic anecdotes on the page.

The process of spiritual direction as it unfolded in the monasteries of late antiquity, with its false starts, pitfalls, and transformative potential is finally accessible to the modern reader, in the letters of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza, translated now into English by Fr. John Chryssavgis. The Old Men of Gaza, sixth-century holy men who resided outside the bustling metropolis which linked Palestine and Egypt, reveal with transparent honesty the ins and outs of discipleship as practiced in Gaza, only a few generations removed from the first monks of Egypt. Their letters detail the struggles, flaws, and hard-won triumphs of their monastic, clerical, and lay disciples, emphasizing the pervasiveness of human sin and the infinite mercy of God. "We are allowed to witness each of the painful stages unfolding in slow motion. What might normally have taken place on a face-to-face level is recorded in writing, with all of the mutual exchange of a personal relationship" (I.12).

The 850 letters of spiritual direction by the Old Men of Gaza are for the first time translated in their entirety from the Greek. This work builds on Chryssavgis' earlier translation of selected letters, Letters from the Desert: A Selection of Questions and Responses (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2003) with its ample introduction on the ascetic theology of the Old Men. The new work supersedes other partial collections based upon Russian translations of Barsanuphius and John's correspondence. Drawing upon the recent critical edition of the correspondence (Sources chrétiennes: 426-27, 450-51, 1997-2001) and his own study of the extant manuscripts, Chryssavgis has produced a lucid translation of a critical and underutilized text.

Barsanuphius came to Gaza from Egypt. He and his colleague John lived in cells near the monastery of Abbot Seridos, in the village of Tawatha, just a few miles from Gaza. They adopted a strict discipline of seclusion, in which they spoke to no one face to face, except for a single disciple each who served as their connection to the monastery and the outside world. This does not mean that they were inaccessible as holy men. Indeed, their physical isolation allowed them the time necessary to conduct an extensive correspondence with a wide range of disciples who addressed their questions to the anchorites in written form. Among those that petitioned Barsanuphius and John for counsel were clergy (including bishops and a patriarch), monks at every level of askesis, and a large number of lay people. The letters of the holy men were compiled by a monk who lived in the monastery soon after the death of John and the withdrawal of Barsanuphius. The compiler introduced each of the Old Men's letters with a short...