الرب يسوع المسيح يبارك فيكم ويرافقكم في كل خطوات حياتكم ويبارك خدمتكم ويحفظكم ويبعد عنكم كل سوء وشر وشبه شر يأتيكم من الشيطان ويجعلكم نور واستينااأااااارة لجميع الأمم والخطأة وسلام ونور وبركة ومحبة الرب يسوع المسيح في العالم كله وبيوت الناس كلهم وقلوبهم. اذكرونا في صلاواتكم. الياس

فعلا في صلوات في المزامير جميله ، وتبقي عايز تكررها

الله يحفظك ويخليك موضوع كلش حلو تعلمنا لازم نصلي كثير لازم نلج حتى ربنا يسوع المسيح يعطينا ما نريد يحل مشاكلنا الله يبارك فيك ويساعدك وينور طريقك يارب ما اعرف شا اقول

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Egyptian monks were known for the commitment to unceasing prayer, but what did this really mean? This paper will explore forms of monastic prayer from historical, theological, and ascetic perspectives, challenging our assumptions about how early monastic men and women actually prayed and what their own experience of prayer may have been. Both textual and archeological evidence will be considered. Major issues will include the role of biblical texts in monastic prayer, tracing fault lines between different theological understandings of prayer, and establishing foundations for later development of prayer practice. What can we know of how Egyptian monks prayed? There are the usual kinds of evidence, textual and archaeological, as well as the enduring effect of Egyptian monastic prayer practice on later-and even non-monastic traditions, down to the present day. We can derive a basic pattern of prayer with a distinctive character. But before describing this pattern, we need to reckon with some of the features of Egyptian monasticism that made it both so unusual and so powerful in the later monastic imagination, and which contributed to its spectacular development in the centuries leading up to the establishment of the White Monastery and the transition to a typically cenobitic pattern for Egyptian monastic life. First there is the desert. This was not simply a topographical feature of the Egyptian monastic experience, but the backdrop against which the drama of classic monastic idealism was enacted. Much has been, and continues to be, written about the monastic conception of the desert, with varying degrees of romantic coloration. We know that most Egyptian ascetics did not in fact live in the deep desert,1 and as time passed even those in the more remote outposts benefited from the protection of companions, patronage, and income from cultivated lands in more hospitable regions.2 The Life of Antony is the classic depiction of the monastic "invasion" and occupation of the demons’ homeland.3 There, the geographic progression from village to remotest desert plays an essential role in the development of Antony’s monastic vocation. Largely because of this extraordinary work of monastic hagiography, the Christian monastic tradition has cherished the notion of desert, real or metaphorical, as a place of intense focus and struggle. The literary sources remind us that whatever we may think of the desert, monks didn’t rhapsodize about its savage beauty or roseate dawns. Their desert, encountered without the security of Land Cruisers and expedition outfitters, was truly fearful. Even in the earliest stages of monastic settlement, the small hermitages were typically surrounded by a low wall providing some protection against animals interested in crops or food stores. But these low walls also signified enclosure or cloister, the monastic commitment to remain in place, hunkered down against any force, animal or demonic, intent on dislodgment.4 It was a place where terror and death easily insinuated themselves into human imagination. When Evagrius Ponticus wrote about the obsessive "thought" of gluttony or avarice, he wrote not so much about pleasure or greed as about anxieties about illness and failing strength.5 When we think of Egyptian monasticism in its "Golden Age" of the fourth century, we must remember that the desert was more dangerous then, with predatory wildlife still abundant and the few native human inhabitants ill-disposed toward newcomers who took over water sources and introduced cultivation, on however limited a scale, to the nomads’ territory. The repeated and often murderous devastations of monastic settlements led in time to the abandonment of some sites or their transformation into fortress-like cenobia.6 It also becomes clear from reading Evagrius and others that the monastic "city" established in the desert was no Utopia. Anxieties about health and survival were exacerbated by the tension that arose between monks, as their preoccupations led them to perceive others as competitors for scarce resources. The real grind of monastic life seems not to have been the asceticism, which tends to capture our attention, but the continual effort to be patient and hospitable towards other people. Theirs was the challenge familiar to us from other accounts of human beings placed in deeply inhospitable surroundings. The struggle for kindness, patience, and charity becomes all the more intense when the stakes are so high. The greatest monastic writers continually remind us that true asceticism is of the heart, resisting the forces that would pull against desire for God and love of neighbor. These forces could be externally described as demons or internalized as logismoi, "thoughts." Later, Saint Benedict would prefer "self-will." However characterized, this adversarial mentality explains some of the particular emphases of Egyptian monastic prayer practice. The monk was a person under siege, and the desert was the terrain, real or imaginative, where the siege was laid. Both asceticism and prayer were responses to besiegement. Prayer in the Desert If the experience of monastic life was often of assault by thoughts or demons, this helps us to understand how the traditional Christian exhortation to "pray without ceasing" assumed its typical monastic form. Egyptian monastics developed a euchological practice that responded to both the ascetic and the mystical imperatives of their lives. The form was simple, consisting of the recitation of memorized biblical texts with periodic pauses for vocal and possibly silent prayer, accompanied by ritual gestures and changes of posture. This form was adaptable to both liturgical and individual use. The canonical prayer of the hours was celebrated by both anchorites and cenobites. These morning and night prayers consisted largely of psalmody, with intervals between the psalms for personal prayer. During times of vigil, work, or travel, recitation could range more widely over the Bible but with the same basic pattern of text and prayerful response. The vocabulary for monastic prayer reflected this structure. Recitation was typically called "meditation" (melete), while the pause for reflection and response received the label of "prayer" (euche). Thus when the classic textual sources speak of a certain monk’s practice of 50, 100, or more "prayers" in the course of a day, they mean 50, 100, or more units consisting of both recitation and prayer. Evagrius, for example, is claimed to have "done 100 prayers" each day, which one reader has estimated to mean that he would stop for "prayer" (in the narrower, technical sense) every ten minutes. The dynamics of Egyptian monastic prayer can be represented schematically in this manner: [ prelude: (reading/hearing→memorization→) ] practice: melete/ psalmody→ vocal prayer (→ wordless prayer)→ return to melete/ psalmody This form of monastic prayer is amply described in the sources, ranging from simple individual practice to elaborated liturgical varieties. A story from the Apophthegmata about Antony the Great depicts him requesting help from God on how to escape accidie and the cloud of besetting thoughts. He is sent an angelic visitor who offers an illustration of ideal monastic practice: the angel, who for pedagogical purposes takes on Antony’s own appearance, sits down to work. After a while he stands up to pray, then sits back down to his weaving. Later he rises again to pray, and then returns to work. "Do this," the visitor tells Antony, "and you will be saved." So he did, and so he was. This is the first of the Apopthegmata about Antony that one encounters in the standard Alphabetical Collection of Sayings, and because it is about Antony, foremost of monks, it comes first in the "alpha" section. It is a banner headline: the imperative to "do this" was directed to everyone undertaking the monastic life. The universal application of this ideal is evident in the cenobitic as well as anchoritic literature. Pachomian monks were expected to recite while working, on their way to and from church, when sounding the signal for the Synaxis, and even when distributing candies after supper. The clearest instruction on the practice comes from the Letters of Barsanuphius and John. Though written from Gaza, these early sixth century letters reflect the application of traditional Egyptian monastic teaching. One of the questions asked of John comes from a monk trying to make sense of Palladius’ reference to "doing 100 prayers." In his reply, John describes the practice in Scetis as consisting of "manual labor, meditation (melete), and occasional prayer."

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