Give me a word by which I may live

One of the typical phrases of the Desert Monastics is heard when a younger monk approaches an elder, a spiritual mother or father, and says: ‘Give me a word by which I may live.’ We find this often in the ‘Conferences of the Fathers’ that John Cassian wrote in the early fifth century after leaving Egypt to bring the wisdom of the desert, including meditation, to the West. He came to Marseilles, not so far from Bonnevaux, and founded a double monastery of men and women. His work offered the order of wisdom to a wild, anarchic time of social breakdown, not so different from ours. We too need to be seeking words of wisdom.

Tasting Wisdom, Laurence Freeman OSB