Another old man came to see one of the Fathers, who cooked a few lentils and said to him, “Let us say a few prayers,” and the first completed the whole psalter, and the brother recited the two great prophets by heart. When morning came, the visitor went away, and they forgot the food.22
Sanctification of the monk is a state of being in which the life of the person manifests the likeness of God. Sanctification is a living in the now, rather than a goal to be achieved at some later time. The cell is a place where the challenges and hardships of life, inside and outside the cell, may be seen from a wider point of view. This wider perspective is essential to developing openness to God’s grace.
Patience, therefore, was not seen as the simple passing of time. It was a different understanding of time, itself. It was a willingness to place one’s self in “God’s time” (in Greek, the eschaton, or eschatological time). In eschatological time each moment is filled with both “what needs to be done” and the inner awareness that God is present in that need and desires its fulfillment. Once again, I am indebted to insights of Stelios Ramfos for understanding the relationship between monastic patience and time from the Eastern Orthodox point of view.23 While this wisdom is present in Western churches, especially in monasticism and liturgy, it has remained a hallmark of Eastern Orthodox spirituality since the formation of the desert tradition.
Time was experienced differently by the desert elders. Chronological time depends on duration. It can impose limitations on the ego when it is associated with completing a goal. It establishes a boundary for expectations and the ego strains to accomplish what it desires. Time accentuates the need for control of what happens within time. This is a major source of anxiety and can lead to despair. 24
An old man said, “For nine years a brother was tempted in thought to the point of despairing of his salvation, and being scrupulous he condemned himself, saying, ‘I have lost my soul, and since I am lost I shall go back to the world.’ But while he was on the way, a voice came to him on the road, which said, ‘These nine years which you have been tempted have been crowns for you; go back to your place, and I will allay these thoughts.’ Understand that it is not good for someone to despair of himself because of his temptations; rather, temptations procure crowns for us if we use them well.”25
Patience is the resistance to duration. We resist the duration of time, not its passing-time does not demand resistance, seeing that it passes anyway. We resist that which endows time with duration: affliction, waiting, anxiety, and it is precisely in this resistance that the soul is shaped. 26
In the case of the monk mentioned above who despaired of his temptations, the duration of time was filled with traces of pain, anxiety, endless wicked thoughts and fear for his salvation. The old man was saying that patience resists these traces which give the duration, the seemingly endlessness, of time its power. The patient enduring of the temptations in the context of ascetic praxis is an opportunity for the soul to be formed and grow. The power of enduring patience (in this case nine years!) is its awareness that in the midst of the temptations the “crown” or fulfillment of the monk’s seeking God is also present. The old man had learned from his own temptations that patience is not merely the “passing of time;’ but the faithful awareness that God’s time is present in our waiting. By being open to the presence of God in the duration of what the monk is experiencing, with its anxieties, the monk is also open to release from the temptations and inner healing.
The young monk despaired for his salvation because his ego-controlled mind assumed his progress was too slow. The old man was aware that lack of patience can lead to despair because what the young monk wanted to accomplish was linked to the passage of time. When this happens we panic and lose vision because it seems we do not have “enough time.” A patient person links his or her hope to the new life which is possible, not to the passage of time. Time is no longer the master. Patience makes the boundary of chronological time transparent. Without patience, time is a despot (managed by our ego) in which we succumb to “…. the illusion that we hold in our hands all the potentialities of existence.”27
~David G.R. Keller, Oasis of Wisdom: The Worlds of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
22 Ward, Wisdom, 5.
23 See Ramfos, Pelican, 46–49.
24 Ibid., see 47.
25 Ibid., 25.
26 Ibid., 47.
27 Ibid., 47.
