• Healey, "Eastern Monasticism," Christian Spirituality, 27-64;
• Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses. The Classics of Western Spirituality, 29-33; 55 - 63; 68-74; 81-85; 94-97; 111-120; 133-137.
The challenge in this series of readings appears to be the struggle against human nature and the pursuit of spiritual perfection which, due to the imperfection of the human condition is unattainable. However God’s Grace is that which supply’s us with the power to overcome temptation. As in the life of Anthony the Great, one of the first pioneers of the monastic life, he describes the Christian life of asceticism as a spiritual climbing of a ladder. A clear insight that was gained by the reading is that the monastic life leads to greater fruits and ultimately like all types of spirituality leads to service of others and the spreading of Christ’s love and the spreading of the Gospel. One of the end results of Anthony’s monastic life was his ability to heal others. This in turn was used to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ, and not to Glorify Anthony himself to ultimately glorify God from whom the graces flow. The end result was not only a strong personal relationship with God but a relationship to the greater community. We see this also in the development of monastic life from the individual founders to the development of communities. Just as the Trinity is a family, so too does monasticism later reflect this in the community of brothers or sisters that become “family”. This too is inherent in the name of the members of the communities as “brothers and sister” to reflect the family nature of monastic life.
The notion of unattainable perfection however is also to be tempered by the notion that we are to “attain as much perfection as possible” (Nyssa 31). So we are not to eschew the life of the pursuit of spiritual perfection just because it is not fully realizable within the flesh but we are to imitate Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit as a lifelong struggle. And so the apparent theme within the articles is that while it is important to retreat for a time into the wilderness to commune with God and suppress the evils of human nature to more fully allow the Holy Spirit to take over one’s life, the ultimate objective is that the individual returns back to the community with greater spiritual strength in order to complete the work that God as set forth for them to accomplish. This is true in the life of Moses as after his banishment, encounter with God and conversion, he was sent back to Egypt and Pharaoh to complete the work of liberating the ancient Israelites from slavery. Jesus Christ as well sets forth this model for us to follow when after his baptism he retreats into the desert to be tempted by the devil and ultimately overcome temptation, does the being, fully, his ministry to the Jews and the rest of the world. Retreat and monastic life is not an end in itself but rather a preparation period by which we are strengthened to take the Gospel message back into the “World”.