Keeping Your Heart

A brother asked an old man saying : ‘What thing is there so good that I may do it and find life ?’

And the old man said to him : ‘God alone knows what is good. And yet, I have heard that one of the Fathers asked a question of the great Abba Nistero, who was a friend to the Abba Antony. And this man said : ‘What good work shall I do ? And the Abba Antony answered : All works are not equal. The scripture says that Abraham was hospitable, and God was with him; and that Elias loved quiet, and God was with him; and that David was humble, and God was with him. So, what path you find your soul longs after in the following of God, do that, and keep your heart.”

The Egyptian Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks who lived mainly in the Scetes desert of Egypt beginning around the Third Century CE. The Apophthegmata Patrum is a collection of the wisdom of some of the early desert monks and nuns, in print as Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The most well known was Anthony the Great, who moved to the desert in 270–271 CE and became known as both the father and founder of desert monasticism.