The sources of desert wisdom are the sayings of the abbas and ammas and written accounts of incidents from their lives. The wisdom embodied in their actions and teaching was formed through years of meditation and teaching about the Bible and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The Greek words used for patience in these sources can help us understand the role of patience in the lives of the desert monks.
The Greek verb “hypomeno” can have many meanings in English depending on its context: stay behind, remain alive, await attack from another, abide patiently, stand one’s ground, wait to do a thing, endure patiently and await something. 13 As a noun, hypomeno can mean endurance (of a condition), a negative obstinacy, or sojourn in a specific place. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Septuagint, patience is associated primarily with endurance of consequences from an external influence. The sufferings of Job are the clearest example. In the New Testament and early Christian patristic writings patience refers to not only a sense of enduring exterior challenges or hardships, but also an interior virtue of the soul or a personal characteristic. St. Paul speaks of an exterior context in 2 Corinthians 1:6 (NRSV): “If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are suffering.” In interior contexts patience takes on a demeanor of waiting, expectation and trust. St. Paul speaks, also, of these latter meanings:
“. . . but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:3-5, NRSV), and “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4, NRSV).
Thus, patience can mean resisting an exterior force or challenge as well as a demeanor of trust. The monk (the monk’s ego) realizes that he or she does not possess all that is necessary for life and is willing to extend the boundaries of his or her sufficiency to include God. Jesus spoke of this kind of patience often and added the challenge that patience is a form of “dying” to one’s control of life in order to find life in its fullness. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25, NRSV).
Patience Is a Fundamental Human Virtue
One of the natural consequences of ascetic life in the desert was the manifestation of God in the abbas and ammas. People around them recognized an authority and authenticity that did not depend on external knowledge or credentials. Like Jesus, they “glorified God’s name” by the way they lived. Although they would never have described themselves in this way or taken credit for such a role, the wisdom of the ammas and abbas was the child of their patience and persistence in ascetic practice in the context of their experience of daily life.
What was their patience like? Is it possible for us to understand what they meant by “patience” or “persistence”? How did they manifest patience? 14
Patience was, simultaneously, both a means and an end. It helped form the monk and, in time, became a characteristic of monastic life. There is no doubt that “staying with the program” and “showing up” in the presence of the hard work of ascetic praxis was a necessary part of seeking God. Abba Esias said, “Nothing is so profitable to the beginner as being insulted; for the beginner who bears insults with patience is like a tree which is watered every day.”15 In this context, insults were directed to the wearing down of both self-sufficiency and personal credit for proficiency. It takes time to develop a willingness to depend on God and the example of others.
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
13. A more detailed study of the uses of patience in the Bible and the desert tradition is found in Stelios Ramfos, Pelican, 45-49. The definitions used in this paragraph are taken from Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon.
14. I am indebted to Stelios Ramfos for his emphasis on the fundamental role of patience in desert asceticism, particularly ch. 4 in Like Pelican in the Wilderness. I am grateful also to Fr. Columba Stewart, O.S.B., professor of monastic studies at St. John’s School of Theology, Collegeville, Minnesota, whose course on monastic history has given me many insights.
15. Gerontikon, P. B. Paschos, ed. (Athens: 1961) Esias, 180D-181-A. Quoted in Ramfos, Pelican, 40.
