Cardinal’s Comment: The work of a lifetime ...

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
30 May 2004

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Cardinal’s Comment: The work of a lifetime ...

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Cardinal’s Comment: The work of a lifetime ...

“Of all evil suggestions, the most terrible is the prompting to follow your own heart.”

This may sound strange, but these are not the views of some modern-day fundamentalist. They were written by Isidore the Priest, a fifth-century Egyptian Christian.

I found them in a recent book by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, titled Silence And Honey Cakes: The Wisdom Of The Desert.

In the third century AD, during the anti-Christian persecutions of the Roman Empire, spiritual men and women fled into the Egyptian desert to pray and fast so they could come closer to God.

When the empire granted Christians freedom of religion in the next century, more and more people joined them and eventually there were thousands in loose local communities. Sometimes these were called “the fathers of the desert”, although there were also women.

+ George Cardinal Pell
Archbishop of Sydney

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