Early Church History 29

Desert Flowers

Galerius' nephew, Maximin Daia

Decian persecutions at Coma

Matthew 19:21 "If you be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven."

"anachoresis"

Pispir

Mother Teresa of Calcutta: There is a terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. I had been like this more or less from the time I started "the work."

Saint Athanasius

"The demonic stood not only for all that was hostile to man but also for what was anomalous and incomplete in man." James Cowan, The Desert Father: A Journey in the Wilderness with Saint Anthony.

askesis, asceticism

Der Mar Antonios

monos = alone

Pancretes

"In many ways the monastery replaced martyrdom as a method of exclusion from secular reality." Cowan

Mount Athos

parresia.  'an extraordinary communion with the risen Lord, conviction about the Truth for which he stood and courage about the proclamation of it ... I submit that the greatest need that we have at the present moment in our lives is for the grace of parresia.' Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans

"escatological environment" Mount Colzim in Egypt

sources: Saint Athanasius, Eusebius, Jerome, Socrates, correspondence with Constantine, Constantius, Constans

"Men had not been able to discover themselves as they were created, namely as an eternal substance."

Evagrius of Pontus, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzus

Roman matron Melania

nitria

Macarius the Egyptian and Macarius the Alexandran

Origenist

Isaac of Nineveh and John Cassian, translation by Rufinus

"Prayer is the rejection of concepts"

Archbishop Hughes: an extraordinary communion with the risen Lord, conviction of Truth, and courage of proclamation.

The Ogdoad

isochristoi

"how to make his life-and-death into a purely inward illumination mysteriously experienced by the heart"

anachoresis

Evagrius: "Charity is the killer of snakes in the garden of anger." Praktikos