Juliana from Caesarea of Cappadocia in whose house Origen
had found shelter for two years, and who was given one of
his books by Symmachus the expositor of the Jews; Melania
the Great who was of Spanish origin and had grown up in
Rome where her father held consular rank in the imperial
city; Melania the younger, a Roman noblewoman who
followed in the footsteps of her namesake; Olympias who
was, for sometime, the daughter-in-law of the sub-prefect of
Constantinople; and Candida, daughter of Trajan the
General.^15
E. 194. Everything substantial in human life must
grow and evolve; maturity comes with the years and is
always a process of mutation. Men learn by experience;
they test; they eliminate; and by that very process of testing
and eliminating, grow and attain higher levels. The upward
path is hard and rugged, and those who climb must inure
themselves to patient toiling.
The Egyptian Fathers who blazed the trail for
humanity by consecrating their lives to God, realised that
they could attain Christian Perfection only by daily striving.
And their mode of life evolved from utter solitude to
communal life.
The first few individuals who made the decision to
live the ascetic life, renounced the world and went into the
desert where each lived alone – completely unaware of
others. Independently, each found himself a natural cave in
which he spent his span of life in utter solitude and silence.
These few individuals endured unimagineable hardships such
as the hot glaring sun, the extreme cold, lacking the bare
necessities in a hostile arid desert, the wild beasts and the
marauding nomads – all these over and above total
abnegation of the human instincts, and the craving for
companionship. Yet amid all these hardships, a good