04 — The Ascetic
The asceticism the sayings describe: the gift of tears that wore furrows in his cheeks and the night-long vigils with his hands stretched out to heaven, and the anecdotes of his refined Roman background and the deliberate humility with which he both kept and judged the habits of his former life. These files set out the two faces of Arsenius the ascetic — the weeping vigilant and the humbled aristocrat — as the Apophthegmata preserve them.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of stillness)
Arsenius’ stillness was not idleness; it was filled with the hardest labor of the desert — compunction and prayer. The sayings remember him as the great weeper and the tireless vigilant, the man whose tears furrowed his face and whose nights were spent standing in prayer. They also remember, with unusual candor, the friction between his aristocratic formation and the desert’s poverty: the fastidiousness that survived his conversion, the comforts he was reproached for and defended, and the humility with which he held his own greatness in contempt. This section treats both — the ascetic discipline of tears and vigil, and the human portrait of the aristocrat in the desert.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Tears and Vigil | The gift of tears (penthos) that wore furrows in his cheeks; the all-night vigils with hands raised to heaven; the unceasing prayer and compunction that filled his stillness. |
| The Aristocrat in the Desert | The anecdotes of his refined Roman background and his deliberate humility; the fastidiousness he kept and was reproached for; the contrast of Rome and Egypt and the humbling of the great man. |
See Also
- Silence and Stillness — the stillness that the tears and vigils filled
- The Roman Tutor — the court formation behind the aristocrat in the desert
- The Apophthegmata of Arsenius — the sayings that record his asceticism
- Monasticism — the ascetic tradition of the desert
References
- Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.