Includes indexes.

Front Cover illustration by Courtesy of Courtesy of Slavisches Institut Munchen.

Bibliography: p. [210]-212.

This collection of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, previously available only in fragments, is now accessible in English in its entirety at precisely the time when there is a widespread desire among people of all kinds to open their horizons to the spiritual atmosphere of those early monks and so to alter the quality of their own lives. The wisdom of the desert speaks directly to all those who understand that in one way or another the time for rendering accounts is upon us. To meditate on that wisdom is to enter an eternal dimension.To translate it into the temporal has become an urgent necessity. Archbishop Anthony says of the book: 'We have a great deal to learn from their integrity and their unrelenting courage, from their vision of God – so – Holy, so great, possessed of such a love, that nothing less than one's whole being could respond to it. If we wish to understand the sayings of the Fathers, let us approach them with veneration, silencing our judgements and our own thoughts in order to meet on their own ground and perhaps to partake – if we prove to emulate their earnestness in the search, their ruthless determination; their infinite compassion – in their own silent communion with God.'