Desert Healing

It's been such a treat, preparing for the didactic session on healing in the eyes of the Egyptian desert fathers.  Here are some gems that I've come across.

On stability:

"A certain brother went to Abba Moses in Scete, and asked him for a good word.  And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."  (Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, 30).

On humility:

"One of the brethren had sinned, and the priest told him to leave the community.  So then Abba Besarion got up and walked out with him, saying: I too am a sinner!" (Wisdom of Desert, 40).

"To one of the brethren appeared a devil, transformed into an angel of light, who said to him: I am the angel Gabriel, and I have been sent to thee.  But the brother said: think again - you must have been sent to someone else.  I haven't done anything to deserve an angel.  Immediately the devil ceased to appear." (Wisdom of the Desert, 54).

On prayer:

"One of the Elders said: Pray attentively and you will soon straighten out your thoughts." (Wisdom of Desert, 78)

On the Name (of Jesus):

"The energy of the Holy Spirit. . . is manifested to those under spiritual guidance through the continuous invocation of the Lord Jesus, repeated with conscious awareness, that is, through mindfulness of God." (St. Gregory of Sinai, in Philokalia, translated by G. E. H. Palmer, 121).

On Repentance:

"Let us acquire the fruits of repentance: a humble disposition, compunction and spiritual grief, a gentle and merciful heart that loves righteousness and pursues purity, peaceful, peacemaking, patient in toil, glad to endure persecution, loss, outrage, slander, and suffering for the sake of truth and righteousness.  For...the king of heaven...is within us (Luke 17:21), and to him we should cleave through acts of repentance and patient endurance, loving as much as we can him who so dearly has loved us." (Gregory of Palamas, in Philokalia, 29).

On Theosis: 

"God made us so that we might become 'partakers of the divine nature' (II. Peter 1:4) and sharers in His eternity, and so that we might come to be like him (I. John 3:2) through deification by grace." (St. Maximus the Confessor, in Philokalia, 201).

On Miracles:

"Abba Poemen said of Abba Nisterus that he was like the serpent of brass which Moses made for the healing of the people: he possessed all virtue and without speaking, he healed everyone." (Abba Poemen, in Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated by Benedicta Ward, SLG, 155)