Ebook: Eternal Wisdom from the Desert: Writings from the Desert Fathers

In the fourth century, thousands of men and women fled into the Egyptian desert seeking to recapture the passion of the earliest Christians through lives of prayer and solitude.

As records of the wisdom and purity of the "desert fathers and mothers" spread through the Roman Empire, Christians streamed to the caves of these desert hermits, seeking counsel on the interior life. The hermits' ascetic practices and wise words were a shining witness to a living faith that could be woven into the fabric of daily life.









About the book:
This volume contains Athanasius' famous The Life of St. Anthony, St. Jerome's The Life of Paul the Hermit, and the collected sayings of many of the desert fathers. Encouraging humility, patience, prayer, introspection, and love, the desert fathers and mothers teach today's believers that deep contemplative practice opens the door to eternal wisdom for daily life.


The work of the desert fathers is seminal to understanding the Christian faith generally, and the monastic tradition in particular--I expect, in fact, that most readers of the desert fathers would have some interest in monasticism. This translation, however, was "mildly modernized" by someone who hasn't the first clue about the monastic tradition. I'll take one particularly grating example: the replacement of the term "cell" with "prayer chamber". Apparently Mr Carrigan believes these two terms are equivalent. They are not. "Cell" is ubiquitous in all monastic literature, ancient and modern. A monk's cell is not where he goes to pray and then leaves. A cell is not a prayer chamber. It is not (as the author claims in the introduction) "simply a monk's dwelling place". It's where he prays, eats, sleeps, does lectio, and fights all his spiritual warfare against the demons which he, as a monk, considers very real and very personal entities.

A young monk asked Abba Moses to give him a piece of useful advice.
"Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you," the wise elder answered.

"Stay in your prayer chamber" just doesn't cut it.

Read the desert fathers. But move on from this translation.