Sayings of the desert fathers

This app organizes the words or sayings, of various monks who lived in the lonely deserts of Egypt between 250 A.D. and 400 A.D. The topics cover such issues as love, poverty, fasting, humility, and prayer.

The thieves beheld a man in whom the word of the Gospels had become a reality. In the Orthodox Church, such men are called Holy Fathers. Over the course of two milennia, this ancient Church has striven to preserve precisely that truth received from the apostles, together with experience of living communion with God. Therefore the Orthodox Church has also been able to give birth to a multitude of saints, who have been bearers of this experience of heavenly life while still on earth.

The "desert fathers" encompasses an influential fourth century group of hermits and cenobites who settled in the Egyptian desert. The origins of Western monasticism lie in these primitive hermitages and religious communities. Paul of Thebes is the first hermit to set the tradition of monastic asceticism and contemplation, and Pachomius of Thebaid is thought to be the founder of cenobitism, or early monasticism. However at the end of the third century the famous St. Anthony of Egypt oversaw colonies of hermits in the middle region.