The Crisis of the Desert

The ‘desert’ means three things:

Primarily, it is part of the human condition and spirit -
the experience of emptiness, of solitude, frustration, of routine and aridity. The occasional call of the desert is always present in the human condition.
Secondly, the desert is a spiritual attitude within the essential dimension of Christian experience, which transforms aridity and the ambiguities of the human condition by our maturing in love and purification.
Thirdly, the desert is the locus and external setting that aid us to maintain and nourish a proper spiritual attitude.

The desert reminds us of the struggle and arduousness of Christian and human life, as well as the feasting and consequent fullness in God that it offers as gift unmerited. The way of spirituality is a transition from the emptiness of asceticism to the fullness of the sacrament, from the solitude of the desert to human and ecclesial community.
What is the meaning of all this as a spiritual experience?

First, it is an experience of the Absolute God and of the relative reality of everything else, including persons and our own selves.

Second, the desert is the place of the authentic and the true. Alone before God in the barrenness of the desert, we can no longer delude ourselves, nor can we entertain illusions and continue to masquerade our lives.

Thirdly, the desert opens up to us true solidarity and mercy with our neighbor, teaching us to love in truth.

Fourthly, the desert is the place of temptation and crisis, as well as the situation in which we can overcome them.

In effect, the desert as a strong experience of spirituality is always a source of crisis and triumph over the demon, the place of encounter between it and God. Either we surrender ourselves to God or we close within ourselves fleeing from God; that is the temptation.

In all this the desert prepares us to overcome not only the “deserts” of the human condition, but also the temptations and crises to which we are subject and vulnerable in the course of our ordinary daily lives. To the degree that we have recognized and renounced the seductions of the ‘desert demon’ we are given the awareness and the strength to recognize and renounce him in the pilgrimage of life.

Renunciation as Corporal Asceticism

+Work was the first source of renunciation and asceticism of the Fathers.
+ The second essential value of the asceticism of the desert is silence.
+ There is also the ascesis of chastity. Chastity for them is the undivided love of Jesus.
+ They coupled control of eating and drinking with fasting.

Renunciation of Heart

The Fathers of the Desert did not fall into the trap of focusing their spirituality upon external renunciation. Instead they give us the idea of spirituality as an ‘internal warfare.’ It was equivalent to martyrdom, a bloodless martyrdom, a form of heroic oblation. This was one of their reasons for going to the desert in the first place, to live again the experience of martyrdom which the advent of Constantine’s peace had removed.

The Noon-Day Devil

The crisis or noon-day devil reveals itself little by little in maturity following the first ideals and achievements, as well as the first frustrations and failures. The human person looks back with hindsight and all accomplishments seem to have been insignificant, if not merely nothing; the present also contains nothing worthwhile.

One has lost the steam to start anew and would rather remain doing what is routine even when this tires them out.( Love due to his or her marriage vows or sacred commitment in the service of God have similarly lost their dedication and fervor. What remains is a vacuum or emptiness which pure fidelity does not seem to fill.) One desires to lead a more interesting and famous life, but this remains elusive in spite of all efforts. All illusions have faded, and a certain cynicism emerges. This is one of the symptoms of the crisis of maturity, a profound aridity and tiredness enveloping the human person.

The noon-day devil is that demon who gathers together all demons.
It is one of the temptations that is more radically subtle, showing that our first enthusiasm and dynamism on our path to spirituality is already gone, having given way to tiredness and despair. Prayer seems useless or fruitless. The practice of mercy to neighbor appears so much harder than before, welded to defects of temperament and egoism.

The passions seem to reappear constantly in various ways.
The spirit seems weak, insensible and obscure. Mystical writers call it dryness, aridity, the desert, the exodus, the night etc.

In all these, overcoming the fundamental temptation consists in recovering, little by little from the lack of feeling, surrendering to God, and beginning to manifest generosity and total surrender. The therapy of the hermits and all the mystics in the face of temptation at noon: Continue seeking the will of God, not motivated by illusion and insensibility, but by purified faith and love. Continue to be constant in prayer, despite the dryness of the ‘night.’ Refuge in the Word of God is fundamental for overcoming this temptation at noon and all temptations for that matter.


They thus insisted on the disposition of humility as the most secure weapon. As a consequence they insisted on the act of manifesting and unfolding one’s conscience to the brothers.
Thus these anchorites who exiled themselves in the desert in order to find God in solitude and in silence, showed themselves to be masters well initiated in the art of spiritual direction and discernment of spirits within the community.
Other contributions:
Owing to their isolation and the fact that they directed one another, the Fathers cultivated and developed to a broad and profound extent the practice of discernment.
Closely linked to this gift of discernment is the gift of spiritual direction or guidance. Discerning the spirit is habitually connected with spiritual directions. So the Fathers are considered the founders of spiritual guidance and the formation of Christian conscience.

Spiritual direction would take many forms in its history but always maintained the principle that guidance by the Church is necessary in our spiritual journey.

The Desert Fathers introduced the proper model of consecrated life, that of master-disciple relationship, where the latter seeks sanctity above all things.
The Prayer of the Heart
Prayer and contemplation of things about God constituted the lives of the Desert Fathers, and they surrounded their prayer and experience of God with such ideal conditions that they bequeathed future generations definite lessons regarding the paths of Christian prayer:
the unique knowledge possible here on earth regarding the mystery of God is bestowed by way of contemplation and not by way of mediation or reason or imagination which are inadequate and insufficient, that is, love is a privileged source of knowledge. Prayer in faith and love is the eminent way of finding and experiencing God.

The only adequate means to find Him is through faith, which is alike a ray of luminous light in the dark., which consigns the senses to the dark, and through love with which one suffuses one’s prayer

Secondly, the most important preparation for prayer is obtained by nourishing the faith. This they did by the constant reading of the Bible, the lectio divina or spiritual reading, was the preparation and indeed a prayer itself.

Thirdly, the Fathers remind us that he methods of prayer are vain if they do not flower into love. The primacy of love is part of the mystic tradition. With love, contemplation becomes a personal and loving dialogue between God and the human person.
Jesus Prayer
They did promote a particular method or school of prayer. Their form of prayer forms the basis of the prayer so well known in the Eastern Church: the hesychasm or the ‘Jesus Prayer.’ It brings prayer to the very deep recesses of our spirit, converting it into a litany of love. As one saying goes, “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart and there to be before the face of the Lord, who is always present and sees all that is within.”

They had recourse to prayer in litany: the repetition of a simple phrase capable of focusing one’s heart and whole being on the love of God. “Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” is the classical form of the Jesus prayer. The principle of litany-prayer is a universal phenomenon because of the values of concentration and penetration of the heart which religious prayer repetition brings.

The Jesus Prayer when reiterated is what brought many of the Fathers to a contemplative state of prayer. To the Fathers, this attitude of prayer consisted of two things. First, achieving in one’s life and one’s view of others the attitudes pronounced in the Jesus Prayer: graciousness, adoration, humility, compunction, and above all, love. Second, the litany form continues to surface during one’s tasks and relationships throughout the day, thereby allowing a recurring approach to God within the heart through these brief litanies.

The Fathers teach us that the prayer of the heart and its eruption in life is not possible without a great love of God. The prayer of the heart also teaches us that the synthesis of the desert saints ‘prayer-action’ and the synthesis of all their spirituality, is not possible unless the person is truly in love with God as was the case with the majority of them.