The desert fathers were radicals. They sold their possessions and left society behind to spend all of their time in prayer and meditation. The further away they were from each other and especially from society, the better. They lived alone in their huts living on crusts of bread and water as they wove mats from reeds to sell at the market for sustenance. They devoted their silent lives to prayer and meditation.

There’s something inspiring about these figures. They’re portrayed as heroes, and in once sense, that’s true. These were the fundamentalists of the third and fourth centuries who gave their lives in drastic fashion on what they believed was the path to godliness.

The insight they developed into human nature is rich. Many of their writings cut to the core of what it means to be a human wrestling with sin. Consider this sentence on fleeing temptation:

"The Fathers used to say, 'if temptation befall thee in the place thou dost inhabit, desert not the place in the time of temptation: for if thou dost, wherever thou goest, thou shalt find what thou fliest before thee'" (94).

The ascetics realized that the temptations they fled society to escape from resided in their heart no matter where they went. Solitude gave them the focus to wrestle with that temptation.

Despite the legendary godliness of these saints, I struggle with their decision to leave society and mortify their bodies for a couple reasons.

1) Jesus spent his life rubbing shoulders with the people the Desert Fathers fled from. Although many of the stories concern people who tracked the saints down, the Fathers spent their life trying to avoid the very contact Jesus sought.
2) In mortifying their flesh, they were disdaining the body the good Creator gave them. This betrays an eschatology rooted in Platonism, far from the robust earthy spirituality of our Jewish heritage.

In the end, I can’t get past Paul’s advice:

"Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism … If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why do you as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh" (Colossians 2:18, 20-23 ESV).

While I respect the wholehearted passion of these men and value their insight, I can’t help but think of them as stunted savants—excelling in prayer, solitude, and humility, while all the while missing out on the fullness of eternal life. ( )

This book is an OK introduction, but otherwise disappointing. There are many other books out there much better. Helen Waddell did translate these writings from the Latin. The problem is that save for the first selection from St. Jerome (originally written in Latin) all of the selections are translations from the Latin but the Latin translations from which Waddell translates are translations of other authors from the original Greek.

Still, if you have not been exposed at all to the thoughts and beliefs of our early Christian monks it may be a good brief introduction. You will get a look into how these early monastic thought and lived their lives. Of course in any translation of the Desert Fathers you will find words of wisdom that you will benefit from. ( )

See review on my paperback copy. ( )

Although Ward's version is fuller, Waddell first introduced me to the Desert Fathers, and her version still conveys their powerful spiritual clarity. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/892620.html

Helen Waddell has selected her favourite bits from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers compiled by Pelagius in the early fourth century, perhaps a third of it, and then added on various other texts, concluding with the Lives of St Pelagia the Harlot and St Mary the Harlot, which are about as exciting as you would expect.

a fascinating insight into the lives and mentalities of the first Christian monastics - men and women who felt that they must go and live in the desert to get closer to God. There is an uneasy and sometimes consciously very funny tension running through the writings, between on the one hand being deeply devout and determined, and pulling up the other monks who are not trying hard enough; and on the other hand not showing off one's own piety. But at the same time you can't help but be impressed with the seriousness and dedication with which these people tried to develop their understanding of their creator and themselves by cutting themselves off from the world.

Waddell has written a respectful yet witty introduction to each of the ten pieces, and a longer one for the book of the whole, bemoaning the fact that the reputation of the early Christian monastics has never recovered from being mocked viciously in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She complains that St Simeon Stylites, who lived on a pillar for thirty years, was not in fact a very important figure in Christian history: "His present reputation, vast as it is, dates largely from the eighteenth century, and balances delicately on a paragraph of Gibbon's prose." ( )