Status Updates From Wisdom of the Desert Father...

Abba Arsenius realized that all the comforts that he had relied on, whether clothing, or perfumes, or rich foods, or other luxuries that he had in the world, had become obstacles to his loving God more deeply and hearing God's word more clearly. In the desert, he overcame these obstacles by deliberately giving them up, voluntarily sacrificing them, and even going to the other extreme to remind himself never...

The question for people in the generation after martyrdom was how to show heroic faithfulness to the Lord in a relatively peaceful, easy situation. They came to understand that there was another kind of battle to be fought, every bit as serious as the battle against the persecutor and, in many ways, more dangerous and harder to fight: the battle against the self.