Product Description: In the fourth century, the wildernesses of Egypt and Palestine were inhabited by a strange breed of spiritual nonconformists: the first Christian hermits. Thomas Merton's affection for these "Desert Fathers" shines in this much-loved treasury of their acts and words of wisdom...read more

Product Description: To read any one of these ancient meditations—to repeat it to yourself, to explore its implications and its relevance to your daily life, to savor it—is to begin the soul's ascent on the path of mystical knowledge. Collected here are three hundred short meditations by Christian contemplatives from the second to the fourteenth centuries...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: "As he was dying, Abba Benjamin taught his sons this: Do this, and you'll be saved: Rejoice always, pray constantly, and in all circumstances give thanks".Each Christian who seeks God through prayer is continuing a tradition that began with the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth and fifth century -- simple peasants whose spiritual progress was marked by inner peace, self-control, poverty, patience, humility, and hospitality...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)