The ascetic life

The ascetic tradition understands fasting, vigil and self-denial as asceticism in the original sense: training. Its object is the healing of the passions, the disordered movements that distort a person's relation to God and neighbour.

Cassian's first Conference states the governing distinction: purity of heart is the immediate goal, the kingdom of God is the end, and every practice is a means valuable exactly so far as it serves them. Discipline that produces contempt for others has defeated itself.

The Church's fasting rules are real and are kept by ordinary Christians, not only monks. They are also applied pastorally, with attention to health, circumstance and season. This site describes them and does not prescribe an individual rule; that belongs with a priest.

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• Anthony the Great

  The Egyptian ascetic whose withdrawal into the desert, as Athanasius told it, gave the monastic movement its pattern and its most influential book.

  Father or writer

• John Cassian

  A monk who learned the ascetic tradition in Egypt and transmitted it to the Latin West in two books that shaped monastic life for a thousand years.

  Father or writer

• John Climacus

  Abbot of the monastery on Sinai and author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, read aloud in Orthodox monasteries every Lent.

  Father or writer

• Isaac the Syrian

  A seventh-century ascetic writer of extraordinary tenderness, read throughout the Orthodox world — and a bishop of the Church of the East, which was not in communion with the Church that later received his writings.

  Father or writer

• Prayer, fasting, almsgiving and repentance

  The three disciplines Christ names together, understood as therapy rather than achievement.

  Lesson