Lent with the Early Church Fathers - Day 2

Lent with the Early Church Fathers

A daily post from Tom Bandy

 Based on Day by Day with the Early Church Fathers (Eds. Christopher D. Hudson, J. Alan Sharrer, and Lindsay Vanker: Hendrickson Press, 1999)

 Spiritual Exercise

Basil the Great 

Preparing the heart means unlearning evil prejudices. It is dusting off the tablet before attempting to write on it. Now solitude is most useful for this purpose. It quiets our passions and makes room for holiness to cut them out of the soul.

So then, set aside a place for yourself, separate from contact with other people so that your spiritual exercises won’t be interrupted. Pure, devoted exercises nourish the soul with godly thoughts. What could be better than imitating angel choruses on earth, or beginning the day with prayer and honoring our maker with hymns and songs, or, as the day brightens, praying throughout our duties and seasoning our work with hymns, as with salt? 

Soothing hymns composed the mind, bringing into it a calm, cheerful state. So then, as I have said, quiet is the first step in our sanctification. It is the time that has been purified of the world’s gossip. It is the eyes that are unexcited by beautiful color or lovely shape. It is the year that doesn’t relax the tone or mind by sensual songs, nor talk flippantly and joke about people. In this way the mind is saved from external sensations. It falls back on itself and not on worldly senses. As a result, the mind rises up to contemplating God. 

TGB: The world struggles between the twin tensions of distraction and obsession. The institutional church solution is fellowship because relationships give us perspective and help us relax. But the monastic solution is solitude because it makes room for holiness. We listen to no other voice, look at no other face, and touch no one else, but God.