{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02098849018280298, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003385240352064997, 'mean_word_length': 5.130705394190872, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton (review)

99 transgressing your love toward me” (Letter 776). They urged a man who considered leaving his wife to become a monk to surrender the matter to God, “for if she sins. . . the responsibility for the sin lies with you” (Letter 662). Other letters deal with an episcopal election in Gaza, a Samaritan rebellion, Justinian’s legislation against paganism, and the plague the ravaged the Mediterranean world in the midsixth century. Barsanuphius and John envisioned a community of monastic, clerical, and lay Christians mutually supporting one another. Lay people interacted frequently with the monastery, supporting it practically and being supported spiritually by the monks. Young monks and lay people turned to experienced fathers for spiritual direction. Anchorites in isolated cells shared in the prayer and work of the cenobitic community. Monks submitted to the judgment of orthodox bishops who sought spiritual guidance from monastic elders. And all Christians depended upon the prayers of saints, the redemption of Christ, and the grace of the heavenly father. One of the most famous disciples of Barsanuphius and John was Dorotheos of Gaza, whose writings are better known in the West than those of his mentors. Dorotheos served in the monastery at Tavatha in many capacities, including overseeing the guesthouse and infirmary. For eight years he served as the disciple who carried letters to and from John’s cell. Chryssavgis suggests that he may have had a hand in compiling the corpus of Barsanuphius and John’ letters and could even be responsible for collecting together the earlier Sayings of the Desert Fathers. While this remains a tempting hypothesis, it does indicate the organic connection between the flourishing monastic spirituality in sixth-century Gaza and the earliest development of eremitic monasticism in Egypt. The Old Men of Gaza are deeply versed in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and in scripture. Chryssavgis performs a valuable service in elucidating these ubiquitous references, revealing the intellectual and spiritual resources of monastic wisdom. But as he shows Barsanuphius and John’s connection to the broader monastic landscape, he carefully reveals them as individual fathers, responding to the concrete needs of specific disciples. The very particularity of the text makes it a valuable window into late antique Palestine, transcending the conventions of much monastic literature. As Chryssavgis notes, “Any translation will inevitably and almost naturally resonate with the vibrant conversational style of these occasional and personal letters of the Old Men” (I. 17). He is correct that this powerful translation draws readers into these ancient conversations about the human condition and divine mercy. But we are in his debt for making this large corpus of letters accessible to a much wider audience—such an accomplishment was not at all inevitable.