Today I listened to the reading of the Gospel on temptation and attended a Sunday School discussing Jesus in the wilderness being tempted. Yet my mind kept coming back to Evagrius and listening, to relationship and imprinting not memorizing the Bible but absorbing Jesus the Christ and his words into my life. Evagrius Ponticus the fourth century monk, I wrote my thesis about, took Christ's example of responding to the Devil with scripture as how we needed to respond to temptations or rather evil thoughts. However, Evagrius was not focused on the memorization of scripture but on the imprinting of scripture on the heart, mind and soul. He wrote a book containing scriptures to use against the various different kinds of evil thoughts and stressed to the monks the idea of meditating on scripture throughout work and play.
From my thesis,
"Scripture clears the mind of distracting images and representations that it may understand the mysteries of God. The Holy Spirit inhabits the mind. According to Evagrius spiritual knowledge is the only knowledge needed. As the monk contemplates the mystery, God needs no form or shape or color or symbol. David Brakke writes, “As contemplation, the reading of scripture is a dynamic and fluid process, in which the distinctions between reader and text break down and the text becomes internalized within the monk’s intellect.”[1]
More clouds, sun and sky, more brightness and bloodiness, pain and healing, a journey towards holiness knowing that the Divine is in me and I am being transformed.
From my thesis,
"Scripture clears the mind of distracting images and representations that it may understand the mysteries of God. The Holy Spirit inhabits the mind. According to Evagrius spiritual knowledge is the only knowledge needed. As the monk contemplates the mystery, God needs no form or shape or color or symbol. David Brakke writes, “As contemplation, the reading of scripture is a dynamic and fluid process, in which the distinctions between reader and text break down and the text becomes internalized within the monk’s intellect.”[1]
[1] Brakke, “Reading the
New Testament,” 290.
Evagrius viewed immersion in scripture not as a means to an end but rather to become part of and participate in the Holy Mystery. For after all, isn't temptation my failure to connect with God, separation by my own choosing, rather than communicating with God and living into who I am created to be.
The bottom line is relationships. Christ is all and in all, the great physician who has compassion on us and desires us to show compassion, patience and gentleness with others.
Evagrius writes, " Observe how the
Physician of souls here corrects our incensive power through acts of
compassion, purifies the intellect through prayer, and through fasting withers desire. By means of these virtues the new
Adam is formed, made again according to the image of his Creator - an Adam in
whom, thanks to dispassion, there is 'neither male nor female' and, thanks to
singleness of faith, there is 'neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all' (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3: 10:11)".[1]
[1] Ware. Kallistos, G.E.H.
Palmer and Philip Sherrard, trans., The
Philokalia, (Amazon, Kindle Edition, 2016), Kindle Locations 326-333,
Kindle.
And the journey continues:
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