Dr. Joel Elowsky, a professor of historical theology at Concordia Seminary, once read aloud a few lines from a fourth-century desert mother. “Nothing troubles the demon of lust more than disclosure of his pricks. Nothing pleases him more than the concealment of the temptation.” The words are sixteen centuries old, and they describe something any reader can check in an ordinary week: a temptation kept secret tends to grow stronger, and one spoken aloud to a trusted person tends to weaken. Elowsky draws the lesson himself. Hiding instead of confessing is “when the devil can do the most damage in your life.”
The woman behind that saying left no autobiography. Sister Laura Swan, a Benedictine nun in the Pacific Northwest who wrote The Forgotten Desert Mothers, names the best known of these women, Amma Sarah, Amma Syncletica, Amma Theodora and Amma Matrona, and is plain about the limit: “we actually don’t know anything about their life. It’s only their sayings that survived.” What did survive is a set of habits. The ammas carried prayer into their daily work. They brought temptation into the open. They gave away the first portion of their income before buying anything for themselves, and they received visitors as though each one were Christ. A person can learn and test every one of those habits.
The four weeks ahead move from knowing that these women existed to practicing what they practiced, with Scripture as the test at every step. In the first week you learn to sort the evidence, so you know what you are building on. In the second you carry Scripture into ordinary work. In the third you bring a hidden temptation into the light, privately and with care. In the fourth you give first and receive whoever comes, and then weigh two historians who disagree about how belief and practice fit together. Each week ends with a challenge. At the end you will draft a one-page rule of life and set it beside a note you write before you begin.