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Meditations of the Desert Fathers

The soul that desires God to surrender Himself to it entirely
must surrender itself entirely to Him
without keeping anything for itself.
- St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love

The early Christian monks left behind them a vast body of esoteric writings that are a rich and profound source of mystical teaching. The sayings of these wise spiritual masters, who inhabited the desert floors from the first century AD and long before Christianity became a state religion, emerged from the dedication of their lives to the search for God and their study of the sacred writings of the prophets who preceded them. Their wisdom has been central to the meditations and teachings in the monasteries of the Eastern Christian world since they first recorded their divine revelations and insights based on their own mystical experience of God.

In these writings, each single sentence is meant to be taken as a day's meditation, to first be learned by the heart and then repeated in every spare moment of quiet. These sacred texts reflect the intimate, sacred state of non-separation with God that is at the heart of all Creation.

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Sometimes the soul is set on fire
with the love of God
with a force that moves unerringly, but invisibly,
so that even the body is, as it were,
swept along into the abyss of that unspeakable love.
We can experience the force of that holy grace
when we are most vigilant, or even,
as I have spoken of on other occasions,
in the way that sleep starts to affect us.
But when you feel this movement,
know for certain ~
and it is a point of utmost importance ~
that is is the motion of the Holy Spirit of God within us.

- Diadochos of Photike (5thC),
Philokalia I:243-44
Diadochos lived in the 5th century of the Christian era as bishop of Photike in Epirus, northern Greece. He is one the first writers to speak of the short repeated invocations of the divine name in the Jesus Prayer.

It is more important to remember God
than it is to remember to breathe.

~ Gregory of Nazianzus
Gregory was known as "the Theologian" in
Byzantine Christianity of the 4th century and was the most educated Christian leader of his generation.

The greatest necessity of all is to control and curb our tongue. The mover of the tongue is the heart: what fills the heart is poured out through the tongue, and when feeling is poured out through the tongue it becomes strengthened and rooted in the heart....

-from Unseen Warfare
Diadochos lived in the 5th century of the Christian era as bishop of Photike in Epirus, northern Greece. He is one the first writers to speak of the short repeated invocations of the divine name in the Jesus Prayer.

Faith is the beginning of love.
Mystical knowlege of God
is the perfection of love.

~ Evagrios of Pontus (4thC)
Evagrios (ca. 346-399) was a native of the Black Sea town of Ibora in Pontus. Initially a Chrstian thinker in Constantinople, he later became a monk in Egypt, one of the most well-known of all the monastic teachers.

If you really wish to achieve spiritual stillness
and to guard your heart successfully,
then let the prayer
"Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me"
become one with your breathing,
and in a few days you will see
how it can all be achieved.

~ Hesychios (6thC)
Hesychios is believed to have been a leader of a Sinai monastery in the 6th-7th century.

There is no radiance greater than the light of the spirit's initiation;
no wisdom on earth possesses comparable power.
It cannot be measured on the scales against pearls or precious gems;
no priceless thing can be compared to it;
nothing approaches its inner beauty;
all other beautiful things fail in comparison.
It is more desirable than anything on the earth,
and its beauty can even lead the world
captive in desire,
seducing angels and humans alike.

~ Narsai of Edessa (5thC)
Narsai (Narses) was one of the most important east Syrian teachers of the fifth century. It is believed he was head of the church at Edessa.

In the illuminative stage,
the spiritual intellect is purified by divine fire;
a psychic opening of the eyes of the heart occurs,
and the Logos is born in us,
who brings mystical discernments of the highest order....
The one who reaches this state
by the intellect's mystical intuition
rides like Elijah in a chariot of fire.

~ Niketas Stethatos (11thC), Philokalia
Niketas was a monk at the famous Studium monastery at Constantinople in the 11th century and wrote of the teachings of Symeon the New Theologian, a mystic.