The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Morning Session
The title for the day is 'The Desert Fathers and Mothers' but I think it is helpful to go back to the earliest accounts of Christian prayer to provide a context for understanding what these people who headed out to the desert were doing. It focusses around what it means to “Pray without ceasing” [1Thess 5:16-18].
Jesus, particularly in Luke’s gospel, is said to have gone out to wild places alone to pray and we assume that it was time that he spent in communion with his father God.
When he was asked to teach the disciples about prayer he gave them what we now call the ‘Lord’s prayer’, a simple expression of praise, of trust in God to meet our needs and a desire to live according to God’s commandments. It is not so much a technique of prayer as an expression of our relationship with God.
[Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4]
In Matthew’s gospel it follows on from Jesus saying we do not need to pray in many words, and that we should pray in secret, in our ‘inner room’, which has traditionally been interpreted to mean inwardly, in our hearts. It points to the importance of prayer as a personal practice, something that is an expression of our own particular relationship with God.
St Paul, who never met Jesus in his earthly life, clearly had an overwhelming experience of the risen Christ dwelling in his heart, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’ [Gal 2v20]. His teaching in his letters has him wrestling with this experience and how to live it out in the life of the Christian community. He points to the way that prayer is not just personal, it has a corporate dimension that springs out of our being called together into the body of Christ, the church.
We see this at the end of John’s gospel too where Jesus in Chapter 17 v 21 says ‘As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us’ and v 23 ‘I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’ Prayer is indeed about our personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ but it is something that draws us into relationship with one another too.
This finds expression in corporate prayer and the practices of the early Christians grew out of that of the Jewish people. They prayed as God’s chosen people who shared a particular way of life and prayer in response to God’s calling. It came to be expressed especially in the prayer of the temple.
By the time of Jesus there was the practice of praying three times per day in the direction of the temple to unite themselves with the sacrifices being made at the three designated hours.
No doubt Jesus as a devout Jew would have observed these hours of prayer, although there is no mention of this in the Bible. But we do have mention in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 3 of Peter and John going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. Perhaps it was not often mentioned because it was taken for granted? Certainly we know that these hours of prayer became the foundation of the regular offices of the Christian church.
But these hours of prayer are held in tension with the teaching we find throughout the New Testament that we should pray at all times. Most notably it occurs in various forms in Paul’s letters, for example in 1Thess 5:16-18, which gives the sub-title for this day – ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.’
Christians explored various ways of fulfilling this injunction such as praying in relays so that prayer was being said continuously. I thought ‘how odd’ but then realised that we still like to do this, for example the watch through the night on Maundy Thursday is usually divided between numbers of people rather than everyone praying through the night. There are monastic communities that devote themselves to maintaining a constant watch before the blessed sacrament, shared between all the members of the community. You know you will always find someone praying when you go to the chapel.
There is power in this but it is not the same as each one of us praying without ceasing, which is surely the meaning of Paul’s teaching.
In the early Christian centuries many women & men who were serious about following Christ went out into the deserts of Egypt to live simple lives devoted to prayer. They were seeking the deep silence within which they could encounter God. Mostly they lived solitary lives, carrying out simple manual work such as weaving baskets to earn a living and reciting the psalms as they worked. This was their way of ‘praying without ceasing’.
They also spent time meditating upon scripture and in these ways they internalised the teaching of the Bible. The constant repetition of scriptural texts focussed their whole being on God and formed them in the likeness of Christ.
It was as much bodily as it was words and feelings. Prayer used gesture, posture and orientation in space to open the heart to God, something we find throughout the Bible.
At Compline every night we recite Psalm 134:
Come, bless the LORD,
all you servants of the LORD,
who stand by night in the house of the LORD!
Lift up your hands to the holy place,
and bless the LORD.
Here the servants of the LORD stand to pray and they lift up their hands towards the holy place in temple. For the early Christians too, to pray was to stand with hands lifted up to the LORD.
Once you start to look you will find it everywhere. An example from the New Testament, from Mark 11:25, Jesus said ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone;’ Standing to pray was simply what you did.
There are some lovely examples from the Desert tradition:
It was said of [Abba Arsenius] that on Saturday evenings, preparing for the glory of Sunday, he would turn his back on the sun and stretch out his hands in prayer towards the heavens, till once again the sun shone on his face. Then he would sit down. [Arsenius 30]
This is also an example of the importance of ‘orientation’ for the early Christians – facing to the east, symbolising turning away from darkness to the light of Christ.
Another example:
Abba Macarius was asked, "How should one pray?" The old man said, "There is no need at all to make long discourses; it is enough to stretch out one's hands and say, 'Lord, as you will, and as you know, have mercy.' And if the conflict grows fiercer, say, 'Lord, help!' He knows very well what we need, and he shows us his mercy." [Macarius 19]
Here we have an example of the simplicity of Christian prayer, expressed by a bodily gesture and just a few words. The posture and gesture are one with the words. I am going to draw on this teaching of Abba Macarius for our prayer exercise this morning.
Of course this idea of a ‘prayer exercise’ takes us into paradoxical territory, because it is important to remember that prayer is always God’s gift to us, not something we can achieve ourselves. Yet from earliest times it was realised that we need to be disciplined, to adopt practices that makes us ready to receive that gift. It is like cultivating the soil for plants, the plants grow themselves but there are all sorts of things we can do to make it more likely that they will grow well.
Each one of us is different and bring different experiences to this day, so what I share with you may not be appropriate for you but I hope that it will at least provide some inspiration for your practice of prayer.
An important thing to remember is what Dom John Chapman, Abbot of Downside Abbey in England said: “pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Wise advice. But that has to be held together with the importance of allowing ourselves to be challenged and drawn out of our comfort zone, which is perhaps what a day like this can do. That said, please don’t feel pushed into doing things that don’t feel right for you.
Jesus said ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' Our whole being, our mind, body, and feelings needs to be engaged when we pray. In our prayer exercises I will lead you into ways of touching in to that holistic knowing which was much more natural to the early Christians.
As we drop into a place of stillness of mind and body we touch into a deeper way of knowing where we are open to the divine presence. Our spiritual senses come alive. In that place we are less likely to fall prey to all the forces of our modern world that distract and seduce us into behaviour that is not necessarily that of God’s kingdom.
Now to come back to the prayer of Abba Macarius – ‘Kyrie Eleison’, ‘Lord have Mercy’, is a very early and important Christian prayer and has been carried forward in the original Greek even when the rest of the liturgy has been translated into other languages. To this day it pervades Orthodox liturgies.
At Malling Abbey we use the phrase ‘Lord Have Mercy’ frequently in our liturgy, both in English and in the original Greek, as you will hear at the office of Sext.
These days it is often seen as specifically penitential and is used in many Eucharistic rites in place of a prayer of confession. I used to get hung up on a sense of grovelling before God and so felt uncomfortable using this phrase. But it’s central to Christian prayer and worth understanding more of its background so that it can take its rightful place in our prayer.
It is in fact a plea for God’s help in all things, not specifically focussed on our sinfulness. We see this in its liturgical use, especially in the Eastern Churches, as a response in a litany of intercession.
We do this in our own Eucharist at Malling Abbey, responding to each petition with ‘Lord have mercy’. The Kyrie Eleison without any petitions in our offices is the residue of what was once a longer litany of intercession.
The writer Helen Luke in her book ‘Old Age’ points out that the literal meaning of the word ‘mercy’ has to do with exchange. I’ll quote Cynthia Bourgeault who also picks up on this in her discussion of Abba Macarius’s prayer. She says:
‘At those innermost depths of our being, the human and the divine are always commingling in a dynamic and life-giving exchange.
And in fact, that's the literal meaning of the word "mercy." It comes from the Old Etruscan root merc – as in "commerce" or "mercantile" – meaning "exchange." Mercy has fundamentally nothing to do with "pity" or "clemency," with which it is often confused.
It is rather the direct experience of the unity restored: my own aliveness and God's aliveness flowing as a single united will. And from this sacred commerce, renewed continuously at the center of our being, all else will flow.’
It’s also interesting to note that we do use the word ‘mercy’ in ways that have nothing to do with ‘pity’ or ‘forgiveness’, such as being at the mercy of the elements or of evil forces. When we are at the mercy of someone we are vulnerable to them and immersed in the qualities they bring to the relationship. The Lord upon whom we call for mercy is loving and gracious, so when we call upon the Lord we are opening ourselves to God’s loving kindness.
That ‘mercy’, that loving exchange between me & God is at the heart of prayer. God’s mercy is the expression of God’s longing for relationship with us.
We can sense ourselves immersed in God’s mercy, at one with it, whilst also knowing God’s otherness and the need for God’s mercy to reach across the gulf between us. It’s one of the paradoxes of prayer.
In my own prayer I touch into ‘Lord have mercy’ in a physical way, as does Abba Macarius when he talks about stretching out one’s hands and saying ‘Lord have mercy’. In this exercise we will use this linked gesture and verbal prayer. We will do this now whilst I give guidance and explanation to familiarise you but I will keep it fairly short. When we go to the church later I will give more time for us to share this prayer in silence.
[see handout Prayer Practice: "Lord have mercy"]
Mother Anne Clarke, Abbess OSB, Malling Abbey
© The Benedictine Community at Malling Abbey 2026