Categories: spiritual-writings, lives-of-saints
Date: 13 May 2006 02:46:42
Cristo Berbistua!
[last entry: Afrikaans - Kristus het opgestaan!; response: Hom het waarlik opgestaan!]
There was an old man named Hierax in the region of the Thebaid who lived for about ninety years. The demons wanted for some time to cast him into the despondency of boredom, and so they beset him one day saying, "What will you do, old man, for you have another fifty years to live?" In reply, he said to them, "You have indeed distressed me greatly, for I had been prepared to live for at least two hundred years." And with great cries, they left him.from Word from the Desert
No doubt that is why I am greatly enjoying John Moschos' The Spiritual Meadow. He, with his friend Sophronios, travelled to monasteries in Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and recorded observations, stories told and wisdom they found on the way in short and memorable tales. Truly edifying, and at times challenging, reading: and I'm only up to the 18th! [there are 243 in my book] He truly has, as he writes, "plucked the finest flowers of the unknown meadow and worked them into a row which I now offer to you."