Silence. Prayer. Work.
Both of my readers will recall that I often reread the Desert Fathers during Lent.
Today is the feast day of one of them, Saint Arsenius. He was a wealthy, educated man who gave up everything to worship God in the desert.
Quite a contrast with yesterday’s feast of Saint Arnulf of Metz!
Benedicta Ward gives the following summary of his life:
Arsenius was born in Rome about 360. A well-educated man, of senatorial rank, he was appointed by the Emperor Theodosius I as tutor to the princes Arcadius and Honorius.
He left the palace in 394 and sailed secretly to Alexandria. From there he went to Scetis and placed himself under the guidance of Abba John the Dwarf. He became an anchorite near Petra in Scetis. He seems to have had only three disciples, Alexander, Zoïlus and Daniel.
He was renowned for his austerity and silence and this combined with his learning made him seem somewhat forbidding to the Coptic monks. After the second devastation of Scetis in 434 he went to the mountain of Troë where he died in 449.
(The Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
He is one of the most quoted of the Desert Fathers, and two of his books have survived. He is most famous, however, for his silence.
Many times I spoke, and as a result felt sorry, but I never regretted my silence.
He sought God in the Desert, and he found Him in the ordinary people and ordinary things of Egypt.
One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts. Someone noticed this and said to him, ‘Abba Arsenius, how is it that you with such a good Latin and Greek education, ask this peasant about your thoughts?’
He replied, ‘I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.’
Indeed, I can see in him many of the monastic threads later gathered up by Saint Benedict. Silence. Prayer. Work.
Evagrius Ponticus said to blessed Arsenius, ‘How is it that we, with all our education and our wide knowledge get no-where, while these Egyptian peasants acquire so many virtues?’
Abba Arsenius said to him, ‘We indeed get nothing from our secular education, but these Egyptian peasants acquire the virtues by hard work.’
Today, let’s contemplate the words of this Desert Father and try to put them into practice in our own lives.
Saint Arsenius, pray for us.