Strange Timelessness of 'Vitae Patrum'

The extracts below are taken from ‘The Desert Fathers’ translated from the Latin by Helen Waddell, and published in 1936 by Constable & Co Ltd, London.

 Title Page of 'The Desert Fathers', Adapted from 1st Edition (1615)

In the Preface to the book, we learn that ‘the original of these translations is the Latin of the Vitae Patrum, a vast collection of the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers, edited by the learned Rosweyde, and printed at the Plantin Press in Antwerp by that most exact typographer and his very good friend  Balthazar Moret, in 1615. The texts assembled by Rosweyde, were those with which the Middle Ages were most familiar: not the Greek originals, with the translations into Latin made for the most part in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries.  Rufinus and Evagrius were contemporary with the men of whom they wrote: Pelagius and Paschasius a century or so later. Jerome and Cassian write at first hand of the desert, in Latin, not in Greek.The present book contains only a fragment of its vast original, which runs in the 1628 folio to more than a thousand pages in double column.’ 

‘I first came to the Vitrae Patrum sixteen years ago, not for its own sake, but in a plan I had of reading for myself, with a mind emptied, what the ordinary medieval student would have read, to find the kind of furniture his imagination lived among. It held me then, as now, with its strange timelessness. I began a translation of it, continued at intervals in the years since. This book is not a study of the Desert Fathers, their place in the ascetic tradition, or the authenticity of the sources. That would demand a range of languages and of knowledge far beyond me. A few of the gentlest stories of the Desert Fathers, the kindness between them and the wild creatures they lived among, appeared in Beasts and Saints (1934), and it must be remembered that whilst  the Desert has bred fanaticism and frenzy and fear:  it has also bred heroic gentleness” (Helen Waddell  - 1936)


The Desert Fathers  Of the Excellent Way of Life of Divers Holy Men -  (John the Sub-Deacon, Book III)

The Abbot Sisois was dwelling alone in the mountain of the Abbot Antony:  for his servant tarried in coming to him, and for ten months he saw no man.  But as he walked upon the mountain, he found a certain Pharanite herding cattle.  And the old man said to him, “Whence comest thou, and how long hast thou been here?” And he said, “Indeed Father, I have had eleven months on this mountain, and I have not seen a man except thee.” And the old man, hearing it, went into his cell and smote himself, saying, “Lo, Sisois, thou didst think thou hadst done somewhat, and thou hadst not done so much as this man who is of the world.”

This same Abbot Sisois sitting in his cell would ever have his door closed.  But it was told of him how in the day of his 'sleeping', when the Fathers  were sitting round him, his face shone like the sun, and he said to them, “Look, the abbot Antony comes.”  And after a little while, he said again to them, “Look, the company of the prophets comes.” And his face shone with a double glory, and lo, he seemed as though he spoke with others.  And the old men entreated him, saying, “With whom art thou speaking Father?” And he said to them, “Behold, the angels came to take me, and I asked that I might be left a little while to repent.” The old men said to him, “Thou hast no need of repentance, Father.” But he said to them, “Verily I know not if I have clutched at the very beginning of repentance.” And they all knew that he was made perfect.  And again of a sudden his face was as the sun, and they all were in dread.  And he said to them, “Look, behold the Lord cometh, saying, ’Bring me my chosen from the desert.’” And straightway he gave up the ghost. And there came as it might be lightning, and all the  place was filled with sweetness.

They told of the Abbot Macarius the elder, that he was once walking in the desert, and found the head of a dead man lying on the ground: and when he stirred it with the staff of palm that he had in his hand, the head spoke to him. The old man said to it, “Who art thou?”  And that head answered the old man, “I was a priest of the heathen that used to dwell in this place, but thou art the Abbot Macarius, who hast the Holy Spirit of God. Wherefore in whatever hour thou hast had pity on them that are in torment and hast prayed for them, then are they a little consoled.” The old man said to him, “What is this consolation?” That head made answer, “As far as the sky is distant from the earth, so deep is the fire beneath our feet and above our head.  And standing in the midst of the fire, there is not one of us can see his neighbour face to face. But when thou dost pray for us, we look one upon the other, and this doth pass with us for consolation” Then said the old man, weeping, “Woe to the day in which man was born, if this be the consolation of his pain.”

'An old man was asked by a certain soldier if God received a penitent man. And after heartening him with many words, he said to him at the last, “Tell me, beloved, if thy cloak were torn, wouldst throw it away?”  He said, “Nay, but I would patch it and wear it.” The old man said to him, “If thou wouldst spare thy garment, shall not God have mercy on His own image?”'   (‘Divers Sayings’ – John the Sub-Deacon, Book IV)


St Kevin and the Blackbird   (Beasts and Saints 1934)

‘At one Lenten Season, St Kevin, as was his way, fled from the company of men to a certain solitude, and in a little hut that did but keep out the sun and the rain, gave himself earnestly to reading and to prayer, and his leisure to contemplation alone.  And as he knelt in his accustomed fashion, with his hand outstretched through the window and lifted up to heaven, a blackbird settled on it, and busying herself as in her nest, laid in it an egg.  And so moved was the saint that in all patience and gentleness he remained, neither closing nor withdrawing his hand: but until the young ones were fully hatched he held it out unwearied, shaping it for the purpose.’ 

                                          Saint Kevin

For a sign of perpetual remembrance, many images of St. Kevin throughout Ireland show a blackbird in his out-stretched hand.
                                                        ***************
All you holy Saints and Hermits, pray for our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, and for the Church.

'Letter to Trilussa' - Pope John Paul I

                      Albino Luciani - Pope John Paul I

'The eldest child of working class parents, with two brothers and one sister, Albino Luciani was born on October 17, 1912, in the town of Forno di Canale, in the Dolomite Alps of north-eastern Italy.

 He attended seminary in the town of Feltre and graduated in philosophy and theology at the seminary of Belluno, a city in the Dolomite foothills, and  the home town of nineteenth century Pope Gregory XVI. He was ordained priest in 1935, and  returned to his home region to work as a parish assistant, a teacher of religion in a 'mining technician's' school, and a teacher of dogmatic and moral theology at the Gregorian Seminary in Belluno. 

In 1948, he was appointed by the Bishop of Belluno to oversee catechetics -  the teaching of the faith -  in the provincial diocese, later recounting his thoughts and experiences in a book, ‘Catechism in Crumbs’. 

In 1958 Pope John XXIII appointed him Bishop of Vittorio Veneto, a local diocese at the foot of the Alps, and subject to Venice. Pope Paul VI promoted him Patriarch of Venice in 1969 and named him a cardinal in 1973.

 He was elected the 263rd Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church on August 26th, 1978, in one of the shortest conclaves in Church history. 

The sixty-five year old Luciani adopted the name John Paul I. Thirty-three days later he died unexpectedly in his sleep.'

        He once said of himself: “I am only a poor man, accustomed to small things and silence.” 

Whilst Patriarch of Venice,  he wrote a number of open letters to illustrious writers, fictional characters, and historical figures of the past. These were then published in book form in Italy in 1976, under the title ‘Illustrissimi’. 

Cardinal Luciani was first and foremost a pastor of souls, and these letters were written to convey the truths of the Faith, but written in a light and sympathetic manner, reflecting both  the writer's compassion for the weakness of men, and his joyful faith and trust in the love and mercy of God

Reproduced below is his letter to Trilussa, (pseudonym of Carlo Alberto Salustri), a Roman poet (1871 –1950), whose satire, often light-hearted and good-natured, at times became bitingly sarcastic about what he saw as the hypocrisy, malice, and egoism of the contemporary world. His best known works are 'Fables' (1922) and 'Jove and the Animals'(1932)

 Dear Trilussa,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

I have re-read that melancholy and autobiographical poem in which you tell of being lost, at night, in the middle of the woods, when you met an old blind woman, who said: "If you don’t know the road, I’ll come with you, because I know it!" 

You were surprised: "I find it strange that someone who cannot see, can guide me".  But the little old woman took your hand, and said firmly: "Come along".  

This is faith.                                                                                                                                                           I agree with you to some extent: faith is truly a good guide, a dear and wise old woman who says; 'Set your foot here, take that path up there.'  But all this happens when faith has already established itself in our minds, and become a firm conviction, and from there directs and guides the actions of life.

The conviction however, must first be formed and planted in the mind. And here, my dear Trilussa, is our present difficulty. The journey of faith today is not a mere walk along a woodland path, but a journey at times difficult, often dramatic, and always mysterious.

It is difficult in the first place to have faith in others, accepting what they say just because they say it. The student hears the teacher say that the earth is 148 million kilometres from the sun. He would like to check this but how can he?  He summons his courage and with a deliberate act of faith, accepts: 'Our teacher is honest and well informed, I'll trust him.'

 

A mother tells her son about earlier years, of sacrifices 

made to protect him and  care for him. "Do you believe me ?" she says. "Will you remember how much I've done for love of you?"  

“How can I fail to  believe you ?” the son answers, “I'll do all I can to be worthy of your love."  

 This son must feel tenderness and love towards his mother as well as trust in her; only thus will he know the impulse to self surrender, the commitment to life.

                                                                                                                  Faith in God is something similar. It is a filial 'yes' to God, who tells us something about His own intimate life: it says 'yes’ to the things narrated and to Him who narrates them. The man who says 'yes' must have not merely trust, but also tenderness and love, and must feel like a small child. 

'I'm not the type who knows everything, who has the last word on everything, who checks everything. Perhaps I am used to arriving at scientific certitude with the most rigorous laboratory controls; here, on the contrary, I must be satisfied with a certitude which is not physical, not mathematical, but depends on good sense, on common sense. And more than that, by trusting in God, I know and accept that God may come into my life, and direct and change it.'

In his ‘Confessions’, my dear Trilussa, Augustine is far more impassioned than you are in describing his journey towards faith. Before saying his total ‘yes’ to God, his soul shudders  and writhes in painful conflicts. On one side there is God, inviting him; on the other, his old habits - his former 'friends',  who 'tug gently at his clothing of flesh', whispering, 'Dost thou cast us off? Remember the moment we leave you, that certain things  will no longer be allowed you - forever!’

God urged him to hurry, and Augustine  pleaded, ’Not at once, just another moment’, and he goes on for weeks in a state of indecision and inner turmoil, until assisted by a powerful thrust from God, he summoned his courage and made up his mind.

As you see, Trilussa, in the human drama of faith there is a

mysterious element; the intervention of God. Paul of Tarsus experienced it on the road to Damascus and describes it in this way: ‘That day, Lord, you seized me: through your grace I am what I am.' 

Here we are in the heart of the mystery. What, in fact, is this grace of God, and how does it operate? It is so difficult to say!

Conversion of Paul on the Road to Damascus (Caravaggio)         

Imagine that the unbeliever is asleep; God wakens him and says, ‘Get out of bed!’

Imagine that he is sick; God puts some medicine in his hands, and says, ‘Take this!’

The fact is that a non-believer, all of a sudden, without having thought of it, finds himself reflecting at a certain point on problems of the soul and of religion, and is potentially open to faith.

After this intervention, which happens ‘without us’, God does other things, but ‘with us’, that is to say with our free collaboration. Waking us from our sleep is done by Him alone, getting out of bed is up to us, even if we need His help in the first place. 

The grace of God, in fact, has force, but does not mean to force us; it has a holy violence, but intended to make us fall in love with the truth, not to have our freedom violated. It can happen that once wakened, invited to rise, taken by the arm, some may instead roll over on the other side, saying ‘let me sleep’.

In the Gospel we find cases of these sort. “Come follow Me,” Christ says, and Matthew rises from his work and follows Him; another however, though invited, answers; “Lord, let me go first and bury my father,” and never shows up again.

These are people, Christ reflects sadly, who put their hands to the plough, then turn back. This explains how there is a whole range in belief, going from those who have never had faith, to those with too little faith, those who are lukewarm and feeble in their faith, and finally those who have a faith that is fervent and productive.

But this explains only up to a point, my dear Trilussa. Why do some of us not believe? Because God did not give us His grace. 
But why did He not give us His grace?  Because  we did not correspond to His inspirations. 
And why did we not correspond to them? Because being free, we abused our freedom. 
And why did we abuse our freedom? This is the hard part, dear Trilussa; and something I don't understand. 
I prefer to think of the future rather than the past and follow Paul's invitation: “We exhort you not to receive in vain the grace of God”

Dear Trilussa!  Manzoni describes as a ‘glad marvel and a banquet of grace’ the return of the Unnamed to the faith.  Manzoni knew what he was writing about; he also had ‘returned’.

 

             Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) - Italian Poet/Novelist

The banquet table is always laid, available to us all. As for me, I try to profit from it every day, propping up the life of faith that the previous day's sins have toppled. I wonder if Christians who, like me, feel themselves sometimes good, sometimes sinners, will 'agree to be good dinner-guests with me'.

                                                                     

Ack. 'Illustrissimi' - Letters from Pope John Paul I -Albino Luciani.  Collins, London. 1978.      

Thoughts on the Monastic Life; Papa Stronsay 2011 - Muscovy 1650.

                                St Alphonsus de Liguori C.SS.R


We live on Stronsay in Orkney, and our small but growing congregation,  centred on ‘Our Lady’s Chapel’,  is served by the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (F.SS.R) from Golgotha Monastery, Papa Stronsay. We are blessed with daily Mass in the ‘extraordinary form’, with weekly Benediction, Confessions, etc.  On certain major feast-days and special  occasions,  eg. Holy Week, Christmas, clothing of novices, vows, centenary celebrations, etc. we are invited to Papa Stronsay, being conveyed by the monks in their sturdy little boat to and from the  island, and always treated with great hospitality, essentially  as part of the family. These joint experiences, the physical crossing of the sea, short though it may be, followed by participation in the most devout traditional liturgical ceremonies of the Church, sometimes lasting  two or three hours and often into the night, frequently followed by hospitable fare, combine over time, to  create a rather special  spiritual and experiential  bond between the monastic community  and  parishioners. We do not lose sight of the fact that everything  done is for the glory of God, and the salvation of souls, and this is  why we thank God for the presence of our monks here, and pray that their faith and holy perseverance will soon be rewarded by their full canonical erection in the Diocese.


I confess to having a considerable interest  in the history of monastic life. I emphasise that this is purely an aesthetic interest, as in the event of waking up one morning to find that mysteriously I had become a monk overnight, I fear that I wouldn’t even last the day!  We all recognise the admirable qualities that it takes to become a religious, and of course the final invitation is from God. I console myself by remembering that in God’s house there are many kingdoms, and that I would be more than happy to be the least of all the royal servants in the most insignificant of those kingdoms.


I am currently reading, for the second or third time, a book entitled ‘Borderland’ by Anna Reid, described by the author as ‘A journey through the history of Ukraine’; a paperback published in 1998 by Phoenix. I have no intention of reviewing this book except to say that it is a fascinating read, beautifully written, and I thoroughly recommend it. However whilst in monastic mind, I would like to quote a short passage from the book, relating to the year 1650 or thereabouts, in which the author recounts the experiences of an Orthodox cleric, who with his Superior, visited certain monasteries in Moscow and the Ukraine.  The author is writing about Kiev in the Ukraine:-


‘Seven hundred years of provincialism had its advantages. Third city of the empire, Kiev never felt the grip of government in quite the same way as Moscow and St Petersburg.  An early traveller to say so was Paul of Aleppo, an Orthodox cleric who accompanied his father Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch, on a fund-raising mission to the Tsar in the 1650s.  Landing at the mouth of the Dnieper,  this smooth  Mediterranean  pair were initially not much taken with Ukraine.  The mosquitoes  bit, the food was dreadful, and the services went on for ever. ‘We never left church,’ Paul confided to his diary, ‘but tottering on our legs after so much standing’.
Moscow, though, was far worse.  ‘Anyone wishing to shorten his life by five or ten years,’ Paul  wrote, ‘should go to Muscovy.’   In the monasteries ‘mirth and laughter and jokes’ were forbidden, and spies watched through cracks in the doors to see ‘whether the inmates practise devotional humility, fasting and prayer; or whether they get drunk and amuse themselves’.  Drinkers, he was told, were sent to Siberia; smokers were liable for execution – news which put him ‘in great fear’ on his own account.  After all this, as he wrote on his journey home, Ukraine seemed like paradise:
               ‘For during those two years spent in Muscovy ,  a padlock had been set on our hearts, and we were in the extremity of narrowness and compressure of our minds;  for in that country no person can feel anything of freedom or cheerfulness.......... The country of the Kosacks (Ukrainian Cossacks), on the contrary, was like our own country to us, and its inhabitants were to us boon companions and fellows like ourselves’.
           The battered pair were even happier to reach Moldova, where they ‘entered the bath, after twenty-seven months, during the whole of which time we had neither entered a bath nor washed ourselves with water’.

                                 ****************


Having read this, I imagine that vocations to the religious life in the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century, must have been few and far between! Probably even worse than today in our Church, with some notable exceptions - ‘Deo Gratias’!    By the way I haven’t heard of any of the F.SS.R community being banished to Siberia, and I haven’t heard of any executions – yet!   Only joking, of course, says he nervously, watching three formidable  figures in black walking slowly and deliberately  towards him, each carrying a black, rectangular object in their hand.  Phew, it’s Saturday morning and time for choir practice for sung Mass tomorrow!   It’s Brothers  Magdala,  Martin, and Peter, each carrying their ‘Liber Usualis’ ! Now where did I put my copy?
   
***************


Some really good and encouraging news for nurses (and the unborn)
Neil Addison, a Liverpool barrister, reports on his Religion Law Blog that he has 'recently successfully represented two Roman Catholic Nurses who were told that they could not refuse to work at a weekly Abortion Clinic run by their Hospital.'


  http://ccfather.blogspot.com           H/T Ben Travato   ‘Countercultural Father’ blog
  http://religionlaw.blogspot.com     H/T Neil Addison   ‘Religion Law Blog’


This is truly good news for all pro-life nurses and ultimately for the unborn.  Congratulations to Neil Addison for his dedicated and professional services. It is refreshing and encouraging to find the law on the side of individual conscience in moral matters of such importance.  Spread the good news, especially to all those in the nursing profession.


                                     *****************


‘Holy Mary, Queen Assumed into Heaven – pray for our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, and for our Country'