Interrupting the Silence

Tag: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

  • What’s The Story Of Your Easter? – A Sermon On John 21:1-19

    What’s The Story Of Your Easter? – A Sermon On John 21:1-19

    I want to begin by asking a couple of questions about the Easter story. Here’s my first question. It’s pretty simple. If I asked you tell the Easter story, what would you say? How would you tell it? Most of us, I suspect, would talk about Jesus and his death and resurrection. We might offer Read more

  • Deliver Me From The Hand Of My Brother – A Sermon On Genesis 32:3-31

    Deliver Me From The Hand Of My Brother – A Sermon On Genesis 32:3-31

    We all have an Esau. Individuals, communities, parishes, religious orders, nations, you, and me – we all have an Esau. I am not talking about a literal Esau but a symbolic and metaphorical Esau. That does not mean, however, that Esau is not real. He is absolutely real. Esau is the face of our past… Read more

  • Judging and Sentencing

    One day, Abba Isaac the Theban went to a monastic community and he saw a brother doing wrong, and he condemned him. As he returned to the desert, an angel of the Lord came and stood in front of the door of his cell and said: “I will not let you in.”  He asked: “What’s the Read more

  • Interruptions

    “A brother came and stayed with a certain solitary and when he was leaving he said: ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have broken in upon your Rule.’ But the hermit replied, saying: ‘My Rule is to receive you with hospitality and to let you go in peace.’” – Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, Read more

  • Abba Poeman on Silence

    Abba Poeman said… A man may seem to be silent, but if his heart is condemning others he is babbling ceaselessly. But there may be another who talks from morning till night and yet he is truly silent; that is, he says nothing that is not profitable. (p. 171) If you are silent, you will Read more

  • Detachment – Opening the Way to Salvation

    A brother came to see Abba Macarius the Egyptian, and said to him, “Abba, give me a word, that I may be saved.” So the old man said, “Go to the cemetery and abuse the dead.” The brother went there, abused them and threw stones at them; then he returned and told the old man Read more