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between the 4th and 7th centuries the
desert of Palestine became home to a
large number of monks and
monasteries from these several great Eld
emerged including two in the 6th
Century St barcus nicknamed The Great
old man and St John The Prophet
nicknamed the other old man these two
Elders kept an ongoing correspondence
with the young monks of Palestine in
order to provide spiritual counsel and
guidance of these letters over 70
contained questions for one of their
most well-known disciples
Doros of Gaza written during his time as
a novice and then a young
monk through letters dorotheos asked how
to cut off one's own will fight against
the passions and avoid attachment to
material
possessions he gained great spiritual
wisdom by way of their response and also
through conversations with numerous
other holy Elders that he met including
Aba zosima us while traveling the
Palestinian
desert this wisdom along with the
experience gained thereafter bore much
spiritual fruit years later in the
sayings and writings of
Doros we know little of Thor's early
life he seems to have been well educated
and affluent perhaps coming from Antioch
in the late 5th
Century for reasons unknown Doros gave
away his possessions and journeyed to
the Palestinian desert to live the
monastic life in his early years he
displayed a great Zeal for reading and
the acquisition of
knowledge later upon entering the
monastery of ABA sidos in Gaza he
reasoned that if he displayed the same
Zeal for following Christ's Commandments
as he did with reading he would make
great progress
Doo's obedience in the monastery
included greeting visitors being a cell
attendant for St John the
prophet and later head of the
infirmary through these labors he
endured many
trials including mistreatment by some of
the other
Brethren yet he patiently and humbly
endured it all without complaint or
vengeance
through the councel of the great elders
and later from an experience gained
through a life of prayer watchfulness
and strict aesis Doros became an expert
on how to live the inner
life the knowledge of which he shared in
homilies and sayings with the younger
monks he later gathered these teachings
in a book called
discourses while discourses is primarily
for monastics it can also be of great
spiritual benefit for those of us living
in the
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world dorotheos writes with Clarity and
simplicity and yet conveys a great depth
of spiritual wisdom gained through
counsel and
experience he wrote about the importance
of humility of love for God and neighbor
the cutting off of One's Own will and
many other topics about the spiritual
life that apply to us
all here are but a few examples from his
writing an ABBA once said about what
brings a man to
humility the way to humility are bodily
labors done
intelligently considering oneself below
all others and ceaseless prayer to
God virtue or vice formed in the soul by
repeated actions when we carry out what
is good we generate for ourselves a
habit of
virtue that is we take up a state proper
to our
nature we return to a state of
health Vice is foreign to us something
unnatural a man with a single passion
set into a habit is destined to
punishment we must go on fighting and
praying to God night and day lest we
fall into
temptation as we have said if someone at
the beginning of agitation stops IT
blames himself when it is smoking and
sparking and repents before it reaches
excitement and rage he will be
peaceful if he does not become quiet
after the anger but remains troubled and
audacious he is as we have said like the
person who adds wood to the fire and it
gets progressively hotter until there is
a great
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Blaze those who want to be saved pay no
attention to the failings of their
neighbors but always look for their own
and so make
progress such was the man who who seeing
that his brother had sinned sighed and
said woe unto
me as he has sinned today so shall I sin
tomorrow this one will repent his sin
while I shall not have repented as I
ought much more spiritual wisdom can be
found in ABA D's discourses and his
other
works in all they gave us evidence that
he indeed practiced the Commandments
with the same Zeal he reasoned was
necessary when he first entered the
monastery of D's life later we only know
that after his Elders passed he moved
further into the desert to live the life
of a
Hermit however as often happens Seekers
of wisdom eventually found him he
started a new Monastery in Gaza of which
we know nothing else and sometime
thereafter he
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reposed