This collection of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, previously available only in fragments, is now accessible in English in its entirety at precisely the time when there is a widespread desire amongpeople of all kinds to open their horizons to the spiritual atmosphere of those early monks and so to alter the quality of their own lives.
The wisdom of the desert speaks directly to all those who understand that in one way or another the time for rendering accounts is upon us. To meditate on that wisdom is to enter an eternal dimension. To translate it into the temporal has become an urgent necessity.
Archibishop Anthony says of the boo: 'We have a great deal to learn from their integrity and their unrelenting courage, from their vision of God - so Holy, so great, possessed of such a love, that nothing less than one's whole being could respond to it. These were men and women who had reached a humility of which we have no idea, because it is not rooted in an hypocritical or contrived depreciation of self, but in the vision of God, and a humbling experience of being so loved. They were ascetics, ruthless to themselves, yet so human, so immensely compassionate not only to the needs of men but also to their frailty and their sins; men and women wrapped in a depth of inner silence of which we have no idea and who taught by 'Being', not by speech: 'If a man cannot understand my silence, he will never understand my words.' If we wish to understand the sayings of the Fathers, let us approach them with veneration, silencing our judgments and our own thoughts in order to meet them on their own ground and perhaps to partake ultimately - if we prove able to emulate their earnestness in the search, their ruthless determination, their infinite compassion—in their own silent communion with God.'