Merton Thomas - A course in desert spirituality: fifteen sessions with the famous Trappist monk

Paul Quenon, OCSO

T he Desert Fathers were a special delight to Thomas Merton in his wide reading and research of the Church Fathers. One well-known photograph of him, by John Howard Griffin, shows him seated over a large tome, in a denim jacket, which was standard winter wear for all the monks; he is reading the volume and laughing at it. Upon closer inspection, you can discern the letters on the page were in a foreign language and one could easily conjecture it was the Migne Latin edition of the Apothegmata, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

Among the variety of conferences I attended by Fr. Louis in the Novitiate, the funniest were those about the Desert Fathers. The hermits odd behaviors, their blunt, simple answers to spiritual seekers, were evocative of the short, salutary words of Jesus himself. Words practical, unexpected, maybe off-putting like: Keep to your cell, and your cell will teach you all things. Or, Fuge, silere et tachere. Flee, keep quiet and be silent. The exotic names of these peculiar men began to ring in our heads, as well: Paphnutius, Arsenius, Pachomius. We heard stories of their quasi-prophetic behavior, such as one hermit who walked into the gathering of monks as they deliberated on the eviction of one brother who had greatly sinned. Upon his shoulder this wise Father carried a bag of sand with a hole in the bottom, trailing sand across the floor. He declared: I am another sinner and I leave a trail of sins behind me like this sand. After that, they decided to forgive and receive the wayward monk back into their midst. Unforgettable.

One of the chief concerns in this literature is the discernment of spirits; how do you know what inspirations come from God and what comes from the devil? John Cassian tells the sad story of Brother John who decided he would prove his faith by throwing himself down a well and show he suffered no harm. That he straightway didand perished.

Merton, in The Wisdom of the Desert, his translation of the Sayings, compared such tales to the Zen Buddhist masters, and one could as well include Shams Tabrizi, as recounted by Rumi. But one need look no further than the subsequent literature of the Greek and Cappadocian Fathers to see further flowering of that seminal inspiration of the desert monks: most remarkably Evagrius Ponticus, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and extending westward, John Cassian and St. Benedict. While much of this later writing wafted on lengthy wings of rhetoric rather than on cryptic, monastic brevity, at its core it came from men envious of the simple, rustic lives of these solitaries. Most of the authors found in this current volume were wannabe monks, and probably at heart they really were, while being caught up in the complexities and conflicts of a church suffering growing pains in a Hellenic culture.

None of this history was unsuitable for us fledgling novices in a modern monastery, to sample and taste. St. Benedict, in his Rule for monks, recommends such readings in preference to his very own little rule for beginners. In todays turbulent world many women and men in Europe, America, and Latin America are looking toward Benedictine and earlier traditions for a guide on how to live. They feel an urgent need for discernment of spirits on many fronts, personal, ecclesiastical, and political. How can we detect what is motivating peoplemyself, others, and those big faces on the TV screen? The path to purity of heart, to unselfish, authentic, and guileless intentions of the mind and will, were understood by these wise and simple men and women of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. Here they are carefully spelled out again for our guidance.