Good morning.
I once won a scholarship to go exploring – finding out about what faith was like in a far off land.
I chose to go to Egypt to spend time with the Desert Fathers – monks who live in monasteries far off the beaten track in the Egyptian desert.
There I found vibrant communities and the strange combination of lives being lived according to ancient patterns of prayer but with some unexpected modern incursions too. Monks who by this time of the morning would have already completed several hours of chanted prayer would greet me later with the wave of a mobile phone or an invitation to sip a cool coca-cola in the heat of the day.
I remember things that seemed exotic to me amidst the dust and the dryness of desert life. The smell of incense as dawn was breaking. A line of monks chanting in the evening as the huge disk of the sun set more suddenly than I was expecting. The sight of the desert stretching away for thousands of miles, towards Libya and on and on for what seemed like forever.
St Anthony’s Feast day falls this week. He was the father of that kind of monasticism. Someone who lived his life in response to a single verse from the Bible he once heard read in church – If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven: and come, follow Me. (Matthew 19:21)
Anthony regarded boredom and laziness as great temptations – things to work to overcome and things to pray about too.
Knowing God,
whether this day is mundane
or whether it has a touch of the exotic about it,
help us to find ways to use every moment of our time well. Amen
You can hear it on the iPlayer for seven days.
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