BLOSSOMS IN THE DESERT

Abba Nistero asked Abba Anthony, “What thing is there so good that I may do it and live?" Abba Anthony answered him, “All good things are not the same thing. Scripture tells us that Abraham was hospitable, and God loved him for his hospitality. The Prophet Elijah was silent, and God loved him for his silence, and David was humble, and God loved him for is humility. Find the one thing in your soul that desires to follow God above all. Do that one thing, and you have found life.”—the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Lent is a time to look at our sins. You and I are sinners, not because we’re human beings and all human beings are sinners, but because you and I commit sins—real sins. We lie. We steal. We gossip. We hate. We take revenge. We claw over others to advance ourselves. We judge each other without knowing each other. We’re sinners because we commit sins, and we commit sins because we want to.

Lent is a time to say so—to God, to ourselves and to each other. But saying so is just the beginning, not the goal.

Many Christians, pious and well-intentioned, believe that confessing that we’re sinners and asking God to forgive us is the end all of salvation. However pious, well-intentioned and admirable they may be, though, they’re wrong about that.
The Lord Jesus said “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Our lives as Christians begin with an acknowledgement that we are sinners. But we’re meant to grow from spiritual infancy to maturity. The Prayer Book tells us, in the Baptismal rite, that from the time of our spiritual birth we are “manfully to fight against sin, the world and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant” to the end of our lives. Our Christian life is going to be an on-going struggled with sin from the beginning to end.

St Anthony the Great, the Father of monasticism, who lived in the Egyptian desert for 71 years (he died in AD 356), said “Every Christian must expect temptations until the day of his death.” St Anthony’s life in the desert was a life of continual struggle with temptation, but because it was, it was also a life of great holiness and profound joy.

If our lives are not a struggle with temptation and sin, it’s most likely because the tempter has us already sewn up.

Abba Nistero, one of the desert companions of the great St Anthony, sought out the old man in is desert solitude and asked him what was the one virtue he could practice, the greatest of virtues, the one which would win him a place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Anthony told Nistero to find himself that one virtue, the pre-eminent gift which God had given him, and to bring that gift to perfection. The saint understood that to perfect hospitality, Abraham struggled with the sins which cluster around unhospitality: selfishness, greed, lack of concern for others.

Struggling to overcome these things, God’s Grace revealed itself in what became the proverbial hospitality and generosity of Abraham. And so Elijah’s silence was born of his struggle with a desire for admiration and self-opinion; King David’s humility sprang from his spiritual wrestling with overweening pride.

What is your favorite sin? What sin do you want to keep God farthest from? If you examine yourself, you’ll find hidden within your spirit is your greatest spiritual gift. It’ll be your favorite sin turned on its head. “Find that thing,” Abba Anthony says, “Do that thing, and your soul will live.”

Now there’s a Lenten project!