Around the year 300 the first signs of the monastic movement began to appear. Monks settled down in various places, first in uninhabited regions, and then in the desert. Scholars are still arguing over the origins of monasticism. Obviously there were some non-Christian sources. The Bible itself issues no call to monastic life. Monasticism is a broadly human movement that can be found in all religions, a primordial longing to live for God alone, to prepare oneself, through asceticism and flight from the world, for union with God.
Christian monks followed this longing, but they always interpreted it from the perspective of the Bible and found in the Bible a justification for their radical imitation of Christ. Greek philosophy also played a role. Some ideas and practices of the monks resemble, for example, those of the Pythagoreans. The connection of asceticism with mysticism, the vision of God, is typically Greek. The ascetical vocabulary comes, for the most part, from the language of Hellenistic popular philosophy: asceticism, anachoresis (withdrawal from the world), monk (from monachos, someone who separates himself), coenobite (member of a monastic community), and many more.
Beginning around the year 300 monks withdrew into the wilderness from all the surrounding areas. They worked and prayed there the whole day long; they fasted and vied with one another in asceticism. They didn’t invent asceticism but took over in their practices what they found already present in other religious movements. Without this knowledge their lonely life in the wilderness would have ended in psychic collapse and madness. The monks borrowed the wisdom and experience assembled earlier by ascetics from all religions and from philosophical circles. Only in this way could they endure their life in continuous isolation and vigils as well as in the constant search for God; and so they acquired a great knowledge of human nature and a real flair for God.
The monastic fathers turned into the psychologists of their day. In solitude they made careful observations of their thoughts and feelings and then discussed them on Sunday, when they came together and celebrated the Eucharist with their abba (spiritual father), so that their ascetical struggles wouldn’t go astray. They talked about their thoughts and feelings, about their concrete way of life, and about their path to God. Thus there arose the so-called monastic confession, which was not primarily about forgiveness of sins, but about spiritual advising, the guidance of souls. This was an earlier form of the therapeutic dialogue developed by modern psychology.
In any case a great many people, even from abroad, from Rome, for example, set out as pilgrims to visit the hermits who had withdrawn from the world and to seek their advice. People from all over traveled into the Egyptian desert. They obviously sensed that there were men and women living there who understood something about being human and who spoke authentically about God, because they had experienced him.
The common bonds between rich and poor, between the various ethnic groups, became…a sign that the kingdom of God had come. Although the monks had withdrawn from the world into the wilderness, they nonetheless left a deeper mark on the world than any other force of waning antiquity.
As far back as the second half of the fourth century the monks were passing on the sayings of the great fathers. Even though these remarks had been made in concrete situations about specific problems, “the reader nevertheless sensed that the saying (apophthegma or apothegm) of the father, who had been filled with the Spirit, had a much more general and wide-ranging implication.
They seem to come from experience, never remaining theoretical. They offer guidance, and they are full of wisdom. But we shouldn’t view the sayings of the fathers as some kind of universally valid maxims for the spiritual life. They are always addressed to a concrete case: they are meant especially for this questioner, as a therapeutic path for this particular person. Hence many sayings are one-sided and exaggerated. Here we don’t have truths meant for everyone. The saying is intended for a given person in a given situation. They are designed as a stimulus to prompt that person to do what is necessary in the moment — instantly, today, this very day, not tomorrow.
~Adapted from Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
