I have been an admirer of the Desert Fathers for about twenty years now. If you don't know about this famous yet most obscure group of people, then it's time that you did. Back at the very beginning of Christianity, before it had become the powerful, state-sanctioned faith that it emerged as in the late Roman Empire, groups of men and women retreated to the deserts of Asia Minor and Palestine and Northern Egypt, there to lead ascetic lives. Many lived as hermits while others formed lose associations, others still chose monasteries, such as Scetis. Life was hard but that was the point, because a life lived austerely was seen as making a pathway to God more accessible.

Anyway, one of my favourite stories from the Fathers confronts the idea of judgement head-on. I speak of human judgement of course, the way we are quick to find fault in our brother and swift to condemn our sister. It is tied in with knowledge of self, that we are the worst of sinners, which is what the ascetics in the desert thought.

'A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which brother Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it.

Then the priest sent someone to him, saying, "Come, for everyone is waiting for you".

So he got up and went. He took a sack, filled it with sand and cut a small hole at the bottom and carried it on his shoulders.

The others came out to meet him and said, "What is this, father?"

The Abba said to them, "My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another."

When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him.'


Ruins of Scetis in the Nitrian desert. Harsh, exacting, unfashionable, yet necessary.