The goal of life for Christians is the kingdom of God, but early in the Church’s
history the men and women of the desert realized that the practice of the Christian
life re­ quired more proximate goals. In their writings the phrase used most
often to depict what one strives for in life’s daily struggles was “purity of
heart.” Without purity of heart, all yearning for holiness and all desire for
God come to naught, for hour by hour, even minute by minute, we are bent and
shaped by distractions and wayward thoughts, many good and legitimate, that
drive our minds and take our affections captive.

All the great spiritual writers have known this, but few in the Church’s history
understood it better, experienced it more deeply, and wrote about it with more
insight than John Cassian, the monk from southern Gaul who lived in the early
part of the fifth century. Yet Cassian is not well known except in monastic
circles and among connoisseurs of the spiritual life. While the sayings and
stories of the desert fathers have become popular, and names such as Origen,
Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, the Syrian Jacob of Sarug, and medievals
Richard and Bernard and John of the Cross and Theresa, are often invoked, Cassian
has languished. In part this is because of the vagaries of translation. Only
selections have been available in contemporary English. To have Cassian in full
one had to turn to the nineteenth–century translations in the Nicene and Post–Nicene
Fathers.

But perhaps Cassian’s time has come. In the last two years there has appeared
not only a first–class monograph on him by the fine scholar Columba Stewart
of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, but also an excellent translation
of the whole of Cassian’s major work, The Conferences, his presentation
and interpretation of the spiritual teachings of the monks of the Egyptian desert.
The translator, Boniface Ramsey, O.P., is a seasoned student of the church fathers
and an accomplished translator; for this task, it is not beside the point to
note that he is also a pastor of a large urban parish, and thus able to present
Cassian as he was intended to be read, as a guide to the Christian life. In
the same way Stewart’s book is not simply a book about “who Cassian was”; it
is, he tells us, also a book “about who he is for us.” One would not go far
wrong to look upon these two publications as upscale self–help books.

John Cassian was born in the middle of the fourth century in what is present
day Romania, and as a young man he became a monk in Bethlehem. From there he
traveled to Egypt, where he lived for many years and apprenticed himself to
the ascetic masters of the Egyptian desert. Eventually he returned to the West
and settled in southern France near Marseilles, where he founded two monasteries.
There he drew on what he had learned in Egypt and his own experience to compose
two works that have become classics, The Institutes, a kind of
introduction to the religious life, and The Conferences, a fuller and
more mature exposition offering richer fare for the advanced. The Conferences
takes the form of extended interviews with individual monks who are named and
whose words are sometimes prefaced by personal anecdotes. (Father Ramsey is
also due to publish a translation of The Institutes, again with Paulist
Press, this fall.)

Here is how the conference with Abba Serenus on the “principalities” begins:

When everything . . . that the solemnity of the day demanded
and the congregation in church had been dismissed, we returned to the old man’s
cell and there we first splendidly refreshed. For in place of the brine which,
along with a little bit of oil added to it, was his customary daily meal, he
mixed in some sauce and poured over it more oil than usual. For when anyone
is about to take his daily meal he puts in a few drops of oil—not so that he
may enjoy some kind of pleasant flavor from the taste of it (indeed, the amount
is so small that it is hardly enough to smear the passages of his throat, never
mind to pass through it), but so that by doing this he may weaken the boastfulness
of heart that usually creeps in flatteringly and surreptitiously with a stricter
abstinence. . . . Then he put out some salt and three olives each. Finally,
in addition to these other things, he produced a basket containing ground chick
peas . . . from which we took only five morsels each, two prunes and a fig apiece.
For whoever has ex­ ceeded this amount in the desert is blameworthy. When the
meal was finished . . . the old man said: “Pose your question, which we have
put off answering until now.”

Cassian was a natural teacher and his writings are carefully organized and
always concrete. He realized that the path to spiritual maturity was not attained
by reaching for lofty ideals. Specific areas of behavior have to be looked at
one by one, broken down into parts, worked on in bits and pieces until over
time one could begin to notice change. He liked to make lists: the eight vices
(gluttony, lust, greed, anger, melancholy, sloth, vainglory, and pride), the
three renunciations, four ways of interpreting the Scripture, three kinds of
fornication, etc. By the time he wrote some of this was commonplace (he learned
the eight vices from Evagrius, the most sophisticated thinker of the Egyptian
desert), but he adds his own insight and experience to what he had received.
It was not only what he said but his skill as a teacher that accounts for his
popularity over the centuries. Though he was not the first to make a list of
eight vices, it was from him that later generations learned to group the vices
in that way.

Here is how he handles the list of four kinds of prayer given in 1 Timothy
2:1: “I urge first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings
be made.” Before beginning his discussion of prayer, Cassian realizes he needs
to put to rest certain misconceptions. Cassian knew that “prayer” is too general
a category to be of much help in teaching someone to pray. Prayer is varied
and takes different forms at different times. A person prays one way, he says,
when he is happy and another way when burdened by a weight of sadness, one way
when enjoying spiritual successes and another when oppressed by troubles, one
way when begging pardon for sins and another when asking for grace or some virtue.
This being said, he can now analyze the different occasions for prayer in light
of the list given by Paul.

As an elderly man Cassian also wrote a theological work, “On the Incarnation
of the Lord Against Nestorius,” but as a thinker he does not move in the company
of the great theological minds of the early church—he is not an Augustine or
an Athanasius. His interest is always in the formation of souls (that is, how
one lives), and his books are practical and down to earth, filled with direction
and psychological insight, even “tips” for life. In Cassian’s world temptation,
not heresy, was the enemy. The Conferences is a book to be read as one
practices and practiced as one reads, digested slowly over time, as one might
read, for example, St. John of the Cross’ Spiritual Canticle. Cassian’s
aim is to change the behavior and attitudes and affections of his readers, not
their ideas. There are chapters on discretion, renunciation, desire, the vices,
changeableness of the soul, prayer, chastity, perfection, friendship, spiritual
knowledge, making promises. Ramsey’s translation makes it easy to enter into
Cassian’s world so that one can return changed to one’s own world.

Columba Stewart’s book is a scholarly monograph that situates Cassian in his
historical context, searches out the sources of his thinking, and analyzes the
central features of his spiritual teaching. Yet Stewart writes from within the
tradition of which Cassian was a part, and is eager to present him as a living
master of the spiritual life. I recall an electrifying moment a few years ago
at a learned conference on the church fathers when Fr. Stewart stood up and
challenged a speaker who was treating the early monks as though they belonged
to a forgotten and moribund past. He reminded her that people still practiced
what these monks had written about centuries ago.

Stewart discusses Cassian the theologian, his ascetical teaching, and other
matters, but fully a third of the book is devoted to prayer. Everything Cassian
teaches about prayer de­ pends on the Bible. Cassian does not mean that one
learns how to pray by studying the Scriptures; for him rather the words of the
Bible are the primary vehicle that one uses to pray. This requires of course
that large sections of the Bible be memorized, chiefly the psalms, and also
that one’s prayer take the form of repeating a biblical verse or phrase. In
Cassian’s words: “The unceasing recitation of the Holy Words should bring the
soul into a climate, into a disposition, from which its own prayer can arise
spontaneously.” He begins with the words of the Bible, and as these words are
repeated they become our words and free us to speak to God out of our deepest
self. As Cassian puts it: “Everything lies in the soul’s inner sanctuary.” But
we need to be led to this sanctuary, and it is the words of the Bible that line
the path.

Stewart concludes his discussion with what Cassian calls “fiery prayer,” that
intense communion with God that is “known and experienced by very few.” This
prayer is exuberant, fervent, pure, joyful, beyond words, and, as one can readily
understand, of brief duration. Yet it must have happened often enough for the
ancient monks to talk about it and for Cassian to find the words to describe
it. In a beautiful final chapter Stewart helps us understand what Cassian meant
by “fiery prayer,” but he also shows how his teaching fits into the larger tradition
that formed the practice of the great spiritual masters of the Christian past.
“In the end,” writes Stewart, “his importance is greatest not to the historical
theologians who puzzle over his thought but to those of both East and West who
recognize in him the great charism of Teacher.”

It is serendipitous that Stewart’s monograph should appear shortly after Ramsey’s
translation. For now one can read Ramsey and turn to Stewart for clarification
or read Stewart and open the pages of Ramsey for confirmation. Together they
invite us into a world that has much to teach us.

Robert Louis Wilken is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of
Christianity at the University of Virginia.