Penthos, Discernment, and Humility

The moral and psychological core of the desert’s teaching: penthos — mourning and compunction, the gift of tears; diakrisis — discernment, the “queen of the virtues” that keeps asceticism from excess and delusion; and the humility and refusal to judge that the desert made the measure of a monk. These are the ethos the Apophthegmata transmits above all else.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Egyptian desert monasticism)

Penthos — Compunction and Tears

At the emotional center of the desert stands penthos — mourning, compunction, godly sorrow — and its outward sign, the gift of tears. The monk was, before all else, one who wept: not from despair but from a piercing awareness of his own sinfulness and of the mercy of God, a sorrow that the tradition regarded as a gift of the Spirit and a purifying grace (Irénée Hausherr, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, trans. Anselm Hufstader, Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1982, the standard study). The desert’s exemplar is Arsenius, who “had a hollow in his chest channelled out by the tears which fell from his eyes all his life while he sat at his manual work” (Arsenius 41, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Ward, Cistercian, 1984). Abba Poemen made weeping the very substance of the way: “Weeping is the way the Scriptures and our Fathers give us, when they say, ‘Weep!’ Truly, there is no other way than this” (Poemen 119, trans. Ward, 1984). And the desert’s teaching that the monk should “keep death before his eyes” (cf. Sarah 6; Evagrius) served this compunction: the remembrance of death and judgment kept the heart tender and mournful, guarding it from the hardness of presumption (Hausherr, Penthos, 1982).

Penthos was understood not as morbidity but as the doorway to joy — a “joy-making mourning,” as the later Sinai tradition would call it (St. John Climacus, Ladder 7, “On Joy-Making Mourning”; see St. John Climacus). The tears that washed the soul of its sins opened it to consolation; Syncletica’s image of the fire that begins in choking smoke and ends in warmth and light is the desert’s own account of how the labor of compunction issues in joy (Syncletica 1, trans. Ward, 1984; see The Ammas). This teaching flowed directly into the penitent-saint tradition, where the whole life becomes a weeping repentance (see Harlots and Penitents of the Desert).

The War of Thoughts and Its Discernment

The desert’s spiritual combat was, above all, a war of thoughts — the logismoi, the evil suggestions by which the demons assault the monk under the appearance of good (see Saint Antony and the Birth of Monasticism). Evagrius Ponticus, at Kellia, gave this warfare its classic analysis: the eight generic thoughts — gluttony, fornication, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia (listlessness, the “noonday demon”), vainglory, and pride — from which all particular temptations spring, each to be recognized, named, and refused (Evagrius, Praktikos 6–14; trans. John Eudes Bamberger, The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer, Cistercian, 1972). This scheme passed, through Cassian, into the West and became the ancestor of the “seven deadly sins” (see Cassian and the Desert in the West).

To fight the thoughts requires diakrisis — discernment, or discretion — and the desert exalted it above every other virtue. The tradition remembers Antony teaching that discernment is the greatest good, and Cassian devotes an entire Conference to it, in which the fathers, debating which virtue is highest, conclude that it is discretion, “the mother, the guardian, and the guide of all the virtues,” the eye and lamp of the soul without which even fasting, vigil, and poverty go astray into excess or delusion (Cassian, Conferences 2, “On Discretion,” the words of Abba Moses; trans. Ramsey, ACW 57, 1997). Discernment is the faculty that finds the royal middle way — that knows when to fast and when to eat, when to withdraw and when to bear with others — and that distinguishes the thought sent from God, the thought from one’s own nature, and the thought sown by the demon (Cassian, Conf. 1–2; Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, Oxford, 1993, on discernment). The desert’s suspicion of undiscerning zeal is constant: “Some have worn out their bodies by asceticism,” runs a word under Antony’s name, “but because they had no discernment, they were far from God” (cf. Antony 8, trans. Ward, 1984). Excessive austerity, undertaken without discernment and without a father’s guidance, was held to be as dangerous as laxity — a road to pride and delusion (plani) rather than to God.

Humility — the Ground of All

Beneath discernment lay the virtue the desert prized as the foundation of everything: humility. It was humility, not asceticism, that the demons could not overcome. Amma Theodora tells of a hermit able to cast out demons who asked them what drove them off — not fasting, not prayer, not vigil, they answered, but humility (Theodora 6, trans. Ward, 1984). Antony’s vision makes the same point on the largest scale: “I saw all the snares of the enemy spread out over the world, and I groaned and said, ‘What can pass through such snares?’ Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Humility’” (Antony 7, trans. Ward, 1984). Humility in the desert was not a feeling but a reality: to reckon oneself the least and the worst, to accept reproach without answering, to refuse honor, to obey. Its truest expression was self-accusation — the monk who, in every conflict, blamed himself rather than his brother — and its summit was Sisoes’ word on his shining deathbed that he did not think he had yet even begun to repent (Sisoes 14, trans. Ward, 1984; see Poemen, Arsenius, Moses, and Sisoes).

Not Judging

From humility flowed the desert’s most insistent moral demand: not to judge one’s neighbor. The refusal to judge is perhaps the single most repeated teaching of the Apophthegmata, and its classic image is Abba Moses’ leaking basket of sand — “My sins run out behind me and I do not see them, and today I come to judge the sins of another” — carried to an assembly gathered to condemn a fallen brother, who was then forgiven (Moses 2, trans. Ward, 1984). The desert grounded this in the Lord’s own command, “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew 7:1), and in the conviction that a monk who truly saw his own sins would have neither eyes nor leisure to see his brother’s. The stories multiply: Abba Bessarion and Abba Poemen refusing to add their word to a condemnation; the old men who, seeing a brother sin, said only, “He has fallen today; I may fall tomorrow” (a recurring motif; cf. the anonymous series, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers, trans. Ward, SLG Press, 1975). Not-judging was the practical face of humility and the guardian of charity — the recognition that the monk’s whole business was with his own heart, not his neighbor’s, and that mercy, not judgment, was the desert’s law (Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community, Oxford, 1993, on not-judging and mutual forbearance).

One Ethos

Penthos, discernment, humility, and not-judging are not four separate teachings but four faces of one ethos. Compunction keeps the heart tender and turned toward God; discernment steers the ascetic life between the ditches of excess and laxity; humility is the ground on which the demons have no footing; and the refusal to judge is humility and mercy made practical toward the brother. Together they form the desert’s answer to the question every disciple brought when he said “give me a word” — how a man may be saved (see Reading the Sayings). And together they became the inheritance of the whole later tradition of the heart: the neptic and hesychast fathers, the Ladder of St. John Climacus, the Philokalia, and the eldership of Athos and Russia all rest on this fourfold desert foundation (see The Desert and All Later Monasticism).

References

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo / London: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Antony 7, humility and the snares; Antony 8, asceticism without discernment; Arsenius 41, the tears; Moses 2, the leaking basket; Poemen 119, “there is no other way than this”; Theodora 6; Sisoes 14; Syncletica 1.)
Cassian, John. The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. Ancient Christian Writers 57. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. (Conf. 2, “On Discretion,” discernment as the mother of the virtues.)
Evagrius Ponticus. The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer. Trans. John Eudes Bamberger. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1972. (The eight thoughts, Praktikos 6–14.)
Hausherr, Irénée. Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East. Trans. Anselm Hufstader. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1982. (The standard study of compunction and tears.)
Burton-Christie, Douglas. The Word in the Desert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Discernment; the war of thoughts; not-judging.)
Gould, Graham. The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. (Not-judging and mutual forbearance.)
The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers: The Anonymous Series. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Oxford: SLG Press, 1975. (“He has fallen today; I may fall tomorrow.”)
Scripture: Matthew 7:1 (judge not).