On Preparation and Discernment: A Reflection on Abba Gelasius 6

On the whole, the Desert Fathers were eccentric individuals. This is obvious enough from their radical way of life, but some times we can also see it in their personalities, which at times shine through the ancient stories about them. Today I’ll be reflecting on one such story, about a certain Abba Gelasius of Nilopolis, who just couldn’t get the idea of becoming a hermit in the wilderness out of his head. It’s a humourous story (to me at least), but I think it contains a lot of wisdom for us too, whatever it is we might want to try.

It was said of Abba Gelasius that he was often assailed by the thought of going into the desert. One day he said to his disciple, ‘Do me the favour, brother, of bearing with whatever I may do, and say nothing to me for the whole of this week.’ Taking a reed, he began to walk in his little atrium. When he was tired, he sat down a little, then stood up again to walk about. When evening came, he said to himself, ‘He who walks in the desert does not eat bread, but herbs; so because you are weary, eat a few vegetables.’ He did so, then said to himself again, ‘He who is in the desert does not lie in a bed, but in the open air; so do the same.’ So he lay down and slept in the atrium. He walked thus for three days in the monastery, eating a few chicory leaves in the evening and sleeping the whole night in the open air and he grew weary. Then, taking the thought which troubled him, he refuted it in these words, ‘If you are not able to perform the works of the desert, live patiently in your cell, weeping for your sins, without wandering here and there. For the eye of God always sees the works of a man and nothing escapes him and he knows those who do good.’ (Gelasius 6)

I think this is a great story about the importance of discernment in the life of faith. Gelasius was not a young man, prone to flights of whimsy, but an elder with disciples of his own. And yet, no matter his age or maturity, Gelasius knew he still had to put his desires to the test and discern whether his impulses were legitimate callings from God, or a figment of his imagination. The particular way he chose to discern his path is also instructive: He undertook an experiment in which he did as many of the things that would go into living alone in the desert as he could while remaining within the closed environment of his monastery. This approach had the bonus advantage of also acting as training, so that if he did decide to go ahead with the path he was discerning, he wouldn’t have to start from scratch. For Abba Gelasius, testing his vocation to solitary life wandering the desert involved living in silence, spending his days walking around a courtyard, eating wild vegetation, and sleeping outside under the stars. This experiment gave him clear results: An itinerant life under the sun was not for him. And so he redoubled his commitment to living his quiet life in the monastery.

This idea of questioning our wild ideas in our spirituality has been a recurring theme in the series so far. Again, the desire to do our best for God and to challenge ourselves can easily bleed into doing things that look impressive to others, or things for which we are just not prepared. Bigger and bolder is not always, or even often, better in the life of faith. So whenever we can’t just get a big idea out of our heads, we would do well to take it seriously but put it to the test. And we could do far worse than picking up on Abba Gelasius’s approach to discernment.