Simplifying Life
Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent – March 20, 2015
Having withdrawn to the solitary life he [Arsenius] made the same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him, “Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the sources of sinlessness.”
[Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 9]
Arsenius was one of the most noted of the Desert Christians. Born about 360 in Rome, he was a well-educated and important person in Rome. A man of senatorial rank, he served as a personal tutor within the emperor’s palace. Desiring a life of meaning in God, he fled Rome secretly, sailing to Alexandria in Egypt. From there, he went into the desert as a novice under Abba John the Dwarf.
Arsenius was known for his austerity and the depth of his silence. His degree of formal education was unusual in the desert, and made him seem forbidding to many of the other desert monks.
He may be the poster-child for simplicity among the Desert Christians. By leaving the royal palace in Rome, he gave up a life of privilege and status. He gave up security. He gave up most everything that a typical Roman would seek in life. But Arsenius relinquished that life for an existence in the desert, seeking God in silence, prayer, and spiritual practice. This educated Roman even placed himself under the guidance of Abba John once he arrived in the desert, the typical form of entering monastic life as an apprentice to an older, wiser, more experienced monk.
Simplicity appears to be a downward path, a path of descent. This downward movement seems foreign to those of us accustomed to thinking of Christian faith as a path of ascent, which makes life better, easier, or smoother.
Jesus knew about simplicity, as well as the path of descent which took him toward a cross.
The Apostle Paul, too, knew about the path that meant relinquishment of his status as a Jewish “keeper-of-the-guard.”
Arsenius followed in the lineage of Jesus and Paul.
We, too, are invited into this fundamental simplicity.
Having withdrawn to the solitary life he [Arsenius] made the same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him, “Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the sources of sinlessness.”
[Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 9]
Arsenius was one of the most noted of the Desert Christians. Born about 360 in Rome, he was a well-educated and important person in Rome. A man of senatorial rank, he served as a personal tutor within the emperor’s palace. Desiring a life of meaning in God, he fled Rome secretly, sailing to Alexandria in Egypt. From there, he went into the desert as a novice under Abba John the Dwarf.
Arsenius was known for his austerity and the depth of his silence. His degree of formal education was unusual in the desert, and made him seem forbidding to many of the other desert monks.
He may be the poster-child for simplicity among the Desert Christians. By leaving the royal palace in Rome, he gave up a life of privilege and status. He gave up security. He gave up most everything that a typical Roman would seek in life. But Arsenius relinquished that life for an existence in the desert, seeking God in silence, prayer, and spiritual practice. This educated Roman even placed himself under the guidance of Abba John once he arrived in the desert, the typical form of entering monastic life as an apprentice to an older, wiser, more experienced monk.
Simplicity appears to be a downward path, a path of descent. This downward movement seems foreign to those of us accustomed to thinking of Christian faith as a path of ascent, which makes life better, easier, or smoother.
Jesus knew about simplicity, as well as the path of descent which took him toward a cross.
The Apostle Paul, too, knew about the path that meant relinquishment of his status as a Jewish “keeper-of-the-guard.”
Arsenius followed in the lineage of Jesus and Paul.
We, too, are invited into this fundamental simplicity.
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