Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Fr. Steven Scherrer, ThD, a Roman Catholic priest, was ordained in 1972. He earned a doctorate in the New Testament from Harvard University and fell in love with the desert as a missionary among the nomadic Turkana people of Kenya. He lives a contemplative, monastic life in Ossining, New York.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Desert Living

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface..................................................................................ixIntroduction.............................................................................xiDesert Living............................................................................3Is Religious Life Dying in the United States Today?......................................6Religious Dress..........................................................................9Contemplative Living as the Context for Contemplative Praying............................12St. Bruno's Life of Religious Retirement.................................................15A Life of Religious Retirement...........................................................17Celibacy, An Undivided Love of God.......................................................26St. John of the Cross, Doctor of the Ascetical-Mystical Life.............................28A Monastic Reflection on Saint John of the Cross.........................................30The Importance of the Ascetical Dimension in Christian Spirituality......................39Apophatic Living as the Context for Apophatic Praying....................................42Healthy Fasting..........................................................................44St. Anthony's Life of Religious Retirement...............................................46Fasting in Christian and Religious Life..................................................48The Call to Perfection...................................................................50Forty Days in the Desert.................................................................52Specialists in Contemplation.............................................................54A Vocation Within a Vocation.............................................................56The Way of the Few.......................................................................58Do You Want to Find or Lose Your Life?...................................................63You Cannot Serve Two Masters.............................................................65Our Celibate Love of the Lord............................................................67Why Celibacy?............................................................................70Preparing in the Desert the Way of the Lord..............................................72The Humble Rejoice in the Lord...........................................................74Renouncing the World.....................................................................76Widows and the Anawim, the Poor of the Lord..............................................78A Heart Reserved for God Alone...........................................................80St. Benedict Renounces the World.........................................................82Signs of Faith...........................................................................84How to Contemplate The Glory of Christ...................................................86Sent to the World, but Not of the World..................................................88The Ascended Life........................................................................91Persecuted Because Not of This World.....................................................93The Rich Have Already Received Their Reward..............................................95A Life All of One Piece..................................................................97Glorying in the Cross....................................................................99The Monastic Life, the Ideal of St. Benedict.............................................101Strangers and Exiles on Earth............................................................103Preparing the Way in the Desert..........................................................105Evangelical Poverty......................................................................107The Poor in Spirit Rejoice in the Lord...................................................109Persecuted for Being Different...........................................................111Good News to the Poor....................................................................115John the Baptist's Desert Living.........................................................117Come Away To a Desert Place..............................................................119Communion with God in a Desert Place.....................................................121The Contemplative Silence of St. Joseph the Worker.......................................123The Simplicity and Poverty of St. Joseph.................................................125St. Bernard's Ascetical-Mystical Path....................................................127St. Bernard of Clairvaux and the Contemplation of God's Glory............................130The Nuptial Love of the Virgin Mary......................................................132The New Jerusalem........................................................................134A Kingdom of Light and Peace.............................................................136Appendix Official Church Teaching on Celibacy and Marriage...............................139Works Cited..............................................................................145

Chapter One

Born in 1945, I have long felt called to a monastic and even hermit life, and I have lived nearly fourteen years in various contemplative and eremitic (desert/ hermit) monasteries. I was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972, and of my thirty-seven years of priesthood, I have spent the last twenty-seven of them on this quest. I received a doctorate in New Testament (ThD) from Harvard University in 1979, and did missionary work among the nomadic Turkana people of Kenya's Northern Frontier District (Lodwar) for seven years. I fell in love with the desert at that time. I am now living a contemplative, monastic life in Ossining, New York. In Desert Life, I work out my understanding of the desert/hermit life.

My desert quest began twenty-seven years ago, in 1982, when I was thirty-seven years old, while teaching New Testament at the major seminary in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, when I read a biography of Charles de Foucauld, a French priest/hermit in the Sahara (died 1916). His contemplative, desert life utterly fascinated me. He lived among the nomadic Tuareg people, leading a life of prayer, fasting, renunciation of the world, and missionary zeal to spread the love of Christ among that people.

I decided then and there that this would henceforth be my life. God was transforming me at that time, and I began to make many radical changes in my life. I gave up meat and greatly simplified my diet and life in general, eliminating recreational trips and all things worldly in order to have an undivided heart in my love for God.

As you might well imagine, even the first steps of such a new way of life, as I was then, under God's guidance, beginning to develop it, were met with astonishment and dismay. Yet these beginnings led me to visit the Egyptian desert monasteries of Baramus and Macarius in Scetis, in the Wadi Natrun, and to work and live myself for seven years among the nomadic Turkana tribe in the desert of northern Kenya (Lodwar). Finally, I was led to an eremitic monastery in the United States, where I spent five years, and then to three cenobitic...