Dorotheus of Gaza

Indeed, he would not be refused.

and at length st cyrides handed him over to that wonderfully holy man dorotheus the archmandrite who was at that time master of novices Dorotheus soon saw that his new pupil in the science of the saints was much too delicate to practice the austerities which were common everyday matters at that time.

So the saintly man began by correcting the lad's self-will, and by teaching him how to govern a somewhat unruly and hitherto undisciplined tongue.

For it must be remembered that Docetius was a very recent convert to the Catholic faith, that he had entered religion before he had had time to correct the faults of his past life and to break himself of the many bad habits he had acquired by living among soldiers very gently and prudently did the novice master begin to check the faults of his young charge unaccustomed to place any restraint upon himself in the matter of eating and no doubt encouraged by his late indulgent master to enjoy the good things of the table, Desethius was now taught how to practice a little mortification.

"'How much have you eaten to-day, my son?' inquired Dorotheus, some time after the lad's admission to the monastery.

"'A loaf and a half, father,' the boy replied.

"'This was five or six pounds, weight of bread.' "'That is pretty fair,' said the good man with a smile.

"'Suppose, my child, you take a trifle less than that to-morrow.' Now the delightful thing about Tosethius was that he always obeyed and tried to do so, and for this very reason everybody loved him.

But What do we say about the situations where you don't choose that? Because obviously someone insulting you can still expose

something, can it? Right, and this is where Abba Dorotheos is incredibly useful.

He gives the example of a man who is sitting peacefully.

Somebody comes along and says something irritating to him, and suddenly the man erupts.

Right.

And now this distinction is absolutely critical.

Abba Dorotheos is not saying that the other person was therefore right to offend him.

Let's be clear on that.

I mean, I come back.

again and again to one of those desert fathers, Dorotheus of Gaza, who I just think his metaphor for this is, both memorable and accurate, it's geometric.

He says that life is like a circle and all of us exist on its periphery.

And he says, if God is at the center of the circle, he says, there's no way for any two people from their points on the circumference of the circle to move toward God without moving closer to one another.

It's a subtle question.

And so rather than just give you my own view on what the fear of God is and risk getting it wrong myself and taking you in a different wrong direction, I thought maybe to lean upon one of the saints, the spiritual writers that I've already considered in this series called A Cloud of Witnesses, and that's St. Dorotheus of Gaza.

As you may remember, if you saw the other talk, Saint Dorotheus was a Palestinian monk and eventually an abbot, an archimandrite, and about the same time as Saint Benedict.

I think he's one of the most attractive spiritual writers.

um he's he didn't leave us much um only a handful really of discourses talks given to his monks on various topics of the spiritual life the monastic life um but they're very anecdotal in a sense they're very down to earth and they resonate at least with me with things that happen in everyday life and because of that they have a force they have a force really which drives home spiritual messages that very often we really need to hear.

That's what awesome means.

But there's a million miles, isn't there, between on the one hand, let's say, Adam and Eve running away from the presence of God, from fear, in the Garden of Eden, and on the other hand, God appearing to the prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb and him going outside the cave to where God was, but nevertheless burying his face in his cloak and bowing down to the ground before the presence of God.

There's a million miles, it seems to me, between those two things, and maybe St Dorotheus is one of the writers who can help us to negotiate the journey from one to the other, because it is, I think, a journey, as will emerge in this retreat.

Not to run away, not to look for the greener grass on the other side, but to really discover what the source of the problem is, which is within you.

Abba Dorotheos of Gaza, one of the great desert fathers, he says that if you want to see peace, what the passions are within you and with all of the passions within yourself.

He said, sit in yourself for three days without food, work, or distraction, and you will quickly see them surface.

In other words, just sit alone for three days without the distraction of people, without eating, without drinking, and you'll see that all of these things rise up within you.