THE FAHERS OF THE DESERT

THE ANCHORITES.

 

THE state of perfection is a thing which the world finds it very hard to understand, and yet which is very easy of comprehension when we reflect that the Divine Founder of Christianity was Himself perfect, that He requires His perfection to be imitated, and that by the gift of His grace He renders this imitation possible.

The anchorites were not merely lowly Christians who retired for a time into the forests and the wilderness, lest they should not be able to endure the tedious torments of the persecutions, which had been in force since the middle of the third century, under Valerian and Decius, and for fear they should fall away from the faith; not merely pious Christians, who fled for ever into solitude from the dangers and attractions of the world; not merely a counterpoise to the sensuality of those who were full of pride and self-love, evils which quickly grew up when the world was once more at peace, and the fear of bloody edicts had passed away; but they were the representatives of the supernatural aim of Christianity, and had received their direct authorisation from the words of our Blessed Lord: "Be you therefore perfect as your heavenly Father is also perfect."

As the natural man feels himself impelled to wish for the goods and pleasures of earth, and claiming to share in them as his right, calls it happiness; so is it the right of the spiritual man who lives according to the laws of grace, to be allowed to despise these things. The former feels himself drawn to the world by a thousand allurements, and bound to it by a thousand ties, and this bondage is pleasant to him; but to the latter it would be painful, because a higher union would suffer if he were to turn his soul towards the world and its happiness. He does not say, "I will renounce and sacrifice everything in order to drive the world from my thoughts;" but he feels no desire for it, and therefore has nothing to renounce; the world is nothing to him. Neither does he say, "I will now think only of God and eternity and never more of men," but his soul is so filled with God and heavenly thoughts, and images, that it finds nothing in earthly things to attract it; nor does he say, "Now I will suffer for the love of God;" but he loves God, and if suffering comes, he regards it not, for it is a part of love; and for him there can be but one sorrow, not to love God. This is the fire of love which Christ Himself brought down from heaven, making the Holy Ghost the source of this new love, and saying of it, "What will I but that it be kindled?"

He who lives in a state of grace, can also lead a perfect life in the midst of the world, sharing in its joys and its happiness, so long as he "possesses them as though he possessed them not;" that is to say, when his heart is not attached to them. This is shown by the history of the rich young man in the gospel. When he asked our Blessed Lord what he should do to have everlasting life, Christ simply answered, "Keep the commandments," for the commandments are from God, and they sanctify life because they remind man of his holiest duties, protect him from his strongest passions, and remove the possessions of others from his grasp. But the young man had imagined and desired something higher than this. Then our Blessed Lord said, "If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me." Thus He did not command, but He recommended a higher perfection—evangelical poverty.

In like manner, He reinstated marriage in its original sanctity and indissolubility, and added to it a new dignity by the seal of the sacrament; but nevertheless, He still more highly praised virginity, which has no thought but for the kingdom of heaven; and He adds with holy foresight, "He that can take, let him take it." Thus again He counsels, but does not command a higher perfection than that of marriage—evangelical chastity. And He gave, lastly, a third counsel, not so much by word as by deed—that of unconditional obedience; for He, the Son of God, most humbly obeyed not only His heavenly Father, but in His most sacred Humanity, the least of men, His creatures, and even those that were His enemies.

The Church has learnt from her Lord and Master to give the three evangelical counsels, as they are called, to those who can only find contentment in the most perfect deliverance of the soul from the fetters of the transitory goods of this world. Who can doubt that there are such souls? In all men, without exception, there exists a secret longing for something better, often misunderstood, and unconfessed. All men fell in Adam; and all desire to regain their purer state. In some this desire is so strong and so overpowering, that they have no other wish but to place themselves, as far as is possible here on earth, in that state, and to live according to the conditions of their original nature, in the likeness of God. There is surely many a Christian who, even if it were only for fleeting moments, has experienced this longing, and the unspeakable peace and joy which accompany it. Why could not this longing be lasting in the few who fostered it with all the powers of their soul and supported it by all the capabilities of their mind?

In consequence of the sin of Adam, an indescribable corruption invaded all the relations of life, poisoning and perverting them. Originally, man loved his Creator and all creatures in Him, but sin changed a self-sacrificing love into the venom of selfishness, and the love of the creature supplanted the love of the Creator. Originally, man possessed in God all the riches of the exuberant earth in their fulness, but sin destroyed this happy community of goods; and man, having learnt self-love, wished to possess property also, and prized it so highly that the more he had, the more he desired.

Originally, man's will reposed on God; he was the organ of the Divine will; but sin brought him into continual rebellion against God, and his will, which when it is in union with that of God, participates in the power, wisdom, love, and bliss of God, sank when he turned away from God into weakness, wickedness, misery, and self-will. That one drop of sin flowed through humanity in these three wild destructive torrents—self-love, covetousness, and self-will: from them spring all the desolation in the lives of individuals and of nations, all the wreck of the moral, spiritual, and material laws.

Then the Incarnate Redeemer came and crushed the triple head of the serpent, self-love through chastity, covetousness through voluntary poverty, and self-will through obedience. And as He willed to continue His life here below in His mystical body the Church, He added, by the three evangelical counsels, a member to this body, which continues, or at least strives to continue His glorified life on earth, and which is at the same time an ever-present remembrance on the part of humanity of its former higher condition, namely, the state of perfection; and a never-ceasing expression of the desire to return to it. He, the Divine Saviour, and the Church through Him, well knew that human nature, by reason of its earthly tendencies, is strongly attracted to the rich and broad lowlands of life, and that grace will have no other effect at best upon the majority of men than that of teaching them how to use, and not to misuse the goods of earth; therefore He, and the Church with Him, willed to keep open the path to ideal heights, to enable those to tread it whose natures incline to the ideal, because to keep them back from such heights would be to defraud them of the rights bestowed on them by Christ himself.

The Church has proceeded in this matter as she ever does with heavenly wisdom and discretion; that is to say, by inspiration. Earthly things belong to the great mass of mankind, and she sanctifies their goods and their enjoyments; but for those to whom the Holy Ghost has dealt a larger measure, she praises the heights of a life of renunciation. Since the first Apostles left their homes and their goods to follow our Blessed Lord, to this hour she has ever prized more highly voluntary poverty for Christ's sake than the noblest use of the goods of earth. And ever since the Apostle St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, she has held the marriage state to be holy and indissoluble, but less high than the state of virginity for Christ's sake. And since the Son of God, obedient even unto death, died on the Cross, and daily obediently offers Himself anew on Christian altars, she has placed humble obedience for the sake of Christ higher than the wisdom of ruling well over empires and kingdoms.

These three holy counsels ever silently preach that through Christ the triple bead of the serpent is to be trodden under foot. The Church has upheld these heavenly maxims with a firm hand, in every century, unwavering through all the assaults and wars which from the beginning were waged against them, for this in common with all her other teaching has been opposed by error. Some heretics rejected marriage for all mankind without exception. Others condemned second marriages. Some even considered marriage to be instituted by the devil. Those who held this morbid and exaggerated doctrine attacked the simple and wholesome teaching of the Church with the reproach that it was not sufficiently strict, whilst others, sunk in sensuality, waged war against virginity, and accused the Church which upheld it of requiring from mankind what was impossible. But the Church requires from men only what Christ himself has required, to "keep the commandments." Beyond that she only advises what He Himself has counselled: "And then follow me." And if she were not to require the one and to counsel the other, she would lie against the Holy Ghost who is within her. That she cannot do.

The secret conviction that to obtain a higher good, the lower must be renounced, the belief that an especial blessing rests upon renunciation, is a mystical instinct which pervades even un­Christian nations, if they are not kept in spiritual blindness by complete barbarism. This instinct betokens a common descent, which has faintly inherited and transmitted the tradition of the fall, and of the redemption to be hoped for.

To regain some precious lost good, to purify self by penance and mortification in order to become worthy of this good; this is the idea of the Divine mysteries of redemption through the Incarnation of God which exists in many nations, but which, without Christian revelation, is frequently misunderstood and distorted. What we read of the fearful penances amongst the tribes of Asia, in China, Thibet, and Hindustan; of the great law­givers of ancient countries who retired into deserts in order to withdraw from all exterior things, and to abstract themselves in contemplation that the truth might unveil itself before them; of the wise women and virgin priestesses to whom supernatural powers were subject at the price of renunciation; all this speaks of one universal attraction to something ideal. This tendency towards the ideal must be very strong in mankind, to have kept its place notwithstanding the fall.

The Essenes, a Jewish sect, who called themselves the disciples of the prophet Elias, acted upon this idea. They had renounced all intercourse with the remainder of the Jewish people, and lived in great numbers in the neighbourhood of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, practising celibacy and community of goods, and cultivating the ground. The Therapeuts in Egypt were similar to them, and led a contemplative life in community. The custom was general also amongst the Jews of the Old Testament for parents to consecrate their children, and for young men and maidens to dedicate themselves for a stated period to the Temple. They were then called Nazarites, that is, consecrated to God; and they lived under supervision in special buildings in the Temple, where they performed minor services, were instructed in the Holy Scriptures, and observed certain practices; for instance, to drink no wine, never to cut their hair, and others of the same kind.

The feast of the Presentation, on the 21st of November, marks the day on which, according to very early tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary was brought to the Temple by her parents as a child, and, being dedicated in an especial manner to God, became a Nazarite. Parents who separated themselves from their beloved children, and children who voluntarily withdrew from their families, hoped thus to become pleasing to God, and to participate in His choicest blessings. The idea of an accepted sacrifice appears everywhere, though dimly and under a veil.

But when the true Victim had been sacrificed, when the Lamb of God had been slain, the mist was cleared away, and all became plain. There is one sacrifice, namely the pure sacrifice which the prophet Malachias foretold daily from the rising of the sun even to the going down; and every Christian must henceforward offer himself up in union with this sacrifice.

The life and death of the faithful of the first centuries show how thoroughly they comprehended this, and acted upon it. They all looked upon themselves as dead with Christ, and buried with Him in baptism, as the Apostle St. Paul expresses it. All led a life more or less mortified and penitential, in which those chiefly excelled who, whether priests or laymen, were endowed with especially ardent dispositions, who gave their possessions to the poor, practised works of mercy, often living through humility upon the work of their hands, and who became, particularly in times of persecution, a support and a stay for all who were in need of advice, consolation, or encouragement. There were also, in those early times, great numbers of virgins consecrated to God. A virgin who had taken this resolution, declared it publicly and solemnly in church, took the vow of chastity, and received from the hand of the bishop the veil and a golden head-covering called the mitrella. She lived with her family, but in retirement from the world, for she was "veiled," that is, hidden in Christ; and if any one of them ever had the misfortune to marry, she became, according to the expression of St. Cyprian, "an adulteress to Christ;" branded and excommunicated by one of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon, while her husband was threatened by law with death; for there must be no frivolous trifling with the Most High.

Let each one prove himself, let him weigh his powers, let him not overrate himself, but humbly draw back from higher things rather than press forward uncalled. Before he makes his choice, he has the right to choose his path, and he is in duty bound to do so with conscientious consideration. After his choice, he belongs no longer to himself, but to those to whom he has solemnly vowed fidelity; whether it be to God, to whom the state of chastity is affianced, or to man, the spouse who has been chosen for the marriage state. There rests upon each choice a corresponding blessing, and the especial grace of God; but in return for this, the fidelity, and together with it the honour and dignity, of the man, is pledged to God, for He is the receiver of the vow. Whosoever breaks it, breaks a covenant with God, cancels his engagement with God, and becomes in both cases the enemy of God; for the vows differ only in this, that the one, that of virginity, is offered directly to God, and the other, that of conjugal fidelity, indirectly. The heresies which deny any weight or binding power to the former have very logically proceeded to reject the ever-binding power of the latter, and have been reduced to declare that marriage can be dissolved; and, so far as it lay in their power, have trodden under foot the sanctity of their pledged word, and the moral order which God has established for the earthly happiness and the eternal salvation of mankind. Earthly possessions and the ties of marriage were the first fetters thrown off by those Christians who were called to the state of perfection, in order to be able to give themselves up unshackled to a higher spiritual life. As by so doing they renounced all claims to earthly prosperity, they were called the Ascetics, that is, the renouncers. They remained in their own position in the world, because, in those early times, the world offered them nothing but death; and because a martyr's death for Christ, which leads instantaneously to inseparable union with Him and to the vision of God, was the happiest thing which could befall a Christian.

But the times altered and the world became full of dangers, especially in the middle of the third century. The persecution had long been ended, and external repose had breathed a soft and lukewarm spirit into Christianity. The faithful had entered into manifold relations with the heathen, had suffered themselves to be infected by their lax and easy principles, and becoming feeble and worldly, had loved riches and comforts, grandeur and possessions, and in short had set their hearts upon these transitory treasures.

Now, when a kind of persecution was raised under the Emperor Decius which had hitherto been unknown, and which had in view to exterminate Christianity by forcing its professors to apostatise rather than by putting them to death, the inward corruption of many was exposed, and denials of the faith and apostasies were unhappily of frequent occurrence; although these were far outweighed by the heroic courage and faith of the true confessors. This fearful example produced important results. If the world was so dangerously attractive, that its neighbourhood caused infatuation, and that intercourse with it paralysed the higher powers of the soul, how much wiser would it be to withdraw out of reach of its enervating influence, and to live at the greatest possible distance from it! Such were the thoughts of many souls that were mindful of their eternal salvation, and longed to escape from the dangers of pride and sensuality which abound in the world.

Others who, solitary in spirit, had ever followed an unworldly aim, felt themselves all the more powerfully attracted to a hidden life with God as this attraction became in the course of time more general. It was particularly frequent in the East, amongst nations of rich and fertile imagination, which, when it is purified and controlled by the faith, supports the soul in its efforts to ascend, by keeping a sublime pattern constantly before the eyes. The Christian ascetics who retired into solitude from the tumult of the world were first seen in Egypt as hermits or anchorites. They were the fathers of the later religious orders which were multiplied under various forms with divers rules and constitutions, with or without vows. They became, notwithstanding their solitude, the civiliscrs of their time. By their intercourse with God, they had imbibed such abundant light, that they enlightened both their own and future ages. They were living guides to heaven, because the things of earth had never misled them, because their gaze was fixed with untroubled clearness upon the Author of all being, and in His light they comprehended the connexion of all things. The Evangelist St. John, the holy solitary of Patmos, says of the Eternal Word at the beginning of his Gospel, " As many as received Him, he gave them power to be made the sons of God."

Children in their father's house are masters at the same time. The joyful father in the Gospel says to the eldest son, "All I have is thine." This was the case with the anchorites. They brought the spiritual life to wonderful perfection.

To have, and to desire nothing earthly, is not sufficient for union with God, not even when a man makes himself poor in order to share poverty with Christ. Not to be earthly, that is the inexorable condition ; and this abstinence from all that is earthly can be attained only through daily mortification of the will, the inclinations, the desires, and the passions. The body is in itself no hindrance to familiar intercourse with God and with spirits, nor to the sight of them; in paradise man saw God and spoke with Him. But when man separated himself from God by sin, he lost his heavenly privilege; and as formerly the soul spiritualised the body, because through its union with God, it had dominion over it, so now the body materialised the soul, after it had lost its supremacy and become subservient to the senses. Whomsoever men serve, by him will they be guided; they will obey him alone, and to him they will look for enjoyments and rewards. The soul followed its new mistress so blindly in its thoughts, desires, and purposes, that it could no longer say, "The Lord He is God," for it had no other Lord but the evil inclinations which embodied themselves and extorted worship under a thousand idolatrous forms.

To such extremes had the soul gone, to such low depths had it fallen. It had voluntarily turned away from heavenly things to follow sensual enjoyments, of which it obtained abundance in return, but it lost in equal measure its capacity for spiritual things. Then the Redeemer came, who took upon himself as man the sins of sensual mankind, and caused Himself to be nailed to the cross for their expiation, giving them simultaneously a pledge of redemption, sanctifying grace, which connected them for ever with their Redeemer. This strength continued to dwell in His followers, and being the fruit of His crucifixion, it impelled them, as He had lived a crucified life, to lead a life of suffering out of love. This mystery of the Cross is to many a folly and a scandal, and they neglect it altogether; to others it is a painful necessity which they imperfectly obey through fear of hell; but to many it is the ladder to heaven by which they attain here below the object of their desires, and by climbing to a greater or less height, reach a more or less perfect union with God. For suffering out of love causes outward uniformity with the Incarnate God, and restores the inward image of God. If man wishes to recover his supernatural prerogatives, which sanctifying grace enables him to do, he must courageously embrace suffering out of love, that is, the crucifixion of self, the mortification of sinful nature, the death of the sensual man. When this is accomplished, the redeemed can see God; for God says, "Man shall not see Me and live."

To enter into this death depends not upon the deeds or the strength of man. Out of the many who lovingly embrace the mystery of the Cross, only very few reach the last and highest steps of the heavenly ladder, although they have faithfully fought their fight. Such great graces flow freely out of the hand of God; and that time may truly be called happy in which they are poured in the greatest abundance over souls. The best school for the crucifixion of self is to be found in the state of perfection.

Sin had penetrated into the soul through sensuality, and become its master. Therefore sensuality must be combated step by step as a fortress is reduced by famine in order to expel the enemy. All the indulgence, the effeminacy, and the refinements of material life, and all enjoyments flattering to the eye and the ear, all the many results of culture and civilisation—work upon the soul as damp air upon the strings of a harp; they relax and soften it. The body becomes accustomed to require so much, and to consider so many things as necessaries, that until all of them are gathered together no thought can be bestowed upon higher wants.

On the other hand, a different system arises which begins by striving first to satisfy the highest needs. Because they are the highest, they are also the most comprehensive, and the more they spread the less room do they leave in which the lower can flourish, so that the latter are forced by degrees to wither away and die. Our Blessed Lord had said to the Jews, "You are from beneath, I am from above." There must therefore be one member of His Church which should ever bear witness that the Lord is from above.

Our effeminate ideas find as great, or perhaps still greater, difficulty in forming a conception of the extreme mortification of the sensual man and the complete government of the will, which was practised by many of the anchorites, as in realising the torments suffered by the martyrs. For, on the one hand, the sufferings of the martyrs were not so long—a few days or weeks, at the utmost some months, and the struggle was over; and on the other hand, their only choice was between a mortal sin, the denial of the faith, and martyrdom. Therefore they chose death, as every good Christian must do. But the anchorites led, of their own free will, a life of the most painful austerities, daily and hourly renewed during twenty, thirty, forty, and even more years, without the alternative of any mortal sin. They became like "Jesus, full of the Holy Ghost, led by the Spirit into the desert." 

And as the martyrs in Jesus suffered joyfully their bloody torments and died rejoicing, so the anchorites bore their unbloody torments joyfully in union with Him, and led a happy life. The sharp and prickly thornbush of asceticism bore for them the beautiful flower of mysticism, and their life resembled the cactus of Ethiopia, whose thorny branches produce the enchanting flower which only opens its fragrant golden cup at the quiet midnight, and is called the queen of the night. In the ancient holy anchorites we see how the mortified man can restore himself to his original state in paradise, and even here below regain his privileges; how he can partially attain to the goal of the blessed spirits, and become able to see God; and how, as our Lord said, streams of living water shall flow from those who believe in Him. But penance precedes the kingdom of God, as the great anchorite St. John Baptist announced to men.

The histories of the lives of these wonderful men have been preserved for us partly by the great doctors of the Church who had been their disciples, or the scholars of their disciples. St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in Syria, and Rufinus, the learned priest of Aquileia, occupied themselves in visiting the actual spots and collecting witnesses and accurate information. Other less renowned, though no less trustworthy men, followed their example; so that we possess a collection of lives of the anchorites which is no less sublime and edifying than the acts of the martyrs. It is undeniable that the miraculous aspect of many of these lives is legendary. For a legend in the religious world is only a subjective completion and picturing of the objective truth.

So has the Church, and with her all reasonable people, ever held it to be. She allows it to rest like the husk upon the fruit, but prizes the inner kernel of truth according to its worth. Amongst the old Florentine painters there is one called Sandro Botticelli who painted pictures of incomparable ideal grace; but the Mother of God and the Infant Jesus have always golden hair, not only gold-coloured, for he dipped his brush in liquid gold and painted their hair with it in order to express the beauty and the glory which surrounded them. No one will on that account deny the worth of Botticelli's pictures, nor will they believe that the Mother of God and the Divine Redeemer, in His most sacred Humanity, had threads of gold on their head instead of hair. It is the same with the legendary form of many historical deeds in the lives of the saints. The cause of miracles is in God, and the saints perform them because they stand in the midst of the kingdom of God which for them has already arrived. It is only a small territory, and is entirely encircled by the huge kingdom of this world in the middle of which we are placed. It is not demanded from us to scale the lofty heights of holiness from whence the streams of grace pour down in miracles. No one can require a dwarf to clothe himself in the armour of a giant. But it would be ludicrous in the dwarf to assert that because he could not handle the giant's armour, no one else was able to do so; and, moreover, that giants did not exist. What can he who has not fought them know of the giant combats of those mighty ones?

Human nature is so pliable, so capable of accommodating itself to persevering asceticism, that we cannot set bounds to its powers of endurance according to our sensual feelings of comfort and discomfort. And if thousands remain on this side of the usual boundary, and if ten, yea or if only one pass over, it shows that the boundaries are for the thousands but not for the whole human race. In the actual condition of his nature corrupted by sin and born again in Christ, man can only stand, as it were, above or beneath himself—above himself through sanctifying grace, or beneath himself through sin, Those ancient heroes received from grace the wings for which the great soul of David longed, "the wings like a dove to fly and be at rest," to rest in God. Oh, how can he measure the strength which abounded in them, the light which illuminated them, the liberty which elevated them, who not only has never attempted such a flight, but has never once even felt the wish to attempt it! 0 ye ancient solitaries, ye living temples of the Holy Ghost in the desert, ye are less known and less renowned in the world than your lifeless neighbours, the temples of Luxor, Thebes, and Baalbec.

Every child can tell of the Pyramids, one of the seven wonders of the world over which your eyes looked up to heaven, but no one speaks of you who are the living wonders of the new and redeemed world. A thousand songs speak and sing of the statue of Memnon which stands on the borders of your desert, and which is fabulously said to have sounded when struck by the rays of the morning sun, but no voice praises you who sang day and night the hymn of the glory of the Creator in His creatures. Deeper than the hieroglyphics in the sands of your home are you buried in the forgetfulness of the world ; but yet the key is not lost which opens and explains the sublime mysteries of your existence,—faith in redemption through the Incarnation of the Son of God.