Sojourners: Monastic Letters and Spiritual Teachings from the Desert

The secrets of the journey stipulate certain rules. We should always feel that we are sojourners, pilgrims seeking their eternal homeland. This feeling should not disappear from our heart, mind, or body for a single moment. We should cherish it both inwardly and outwardly, lest we inadvertently forget the state of our exile, an exile in which we feed on the inextinguishable love of God. For fire can be quenched with a little water, but love, if it really burns within one’s heart, nothing can quench it; — neither disdain, nor contempt, nor hostility, nor humiliation, nor indifference. If these negative feelings found a place in an enemy’s heart and death itself embodied in a hostile person, even this would not quench love!