Dorotheos of Gaza
Discourses & Sayings

There is something extraordinary (and comforting) about any spiritual writer who can begin an instruction On Fear of the Punishment to Come with the candid admission that his currentbout with rheumatism of the feet was probably occasioned by too much convivial cheer in the guest-house refectory. But this is Dorotheos of Gaza. A shrewed observer, a master psychologist, an accomplished raconteur, Dorotheos is also a learned man, with a prodigious capacity for assimilating in an organized harmony the wisdom of his predecessors in the life of the spirit. But he is much more interested in humbly serving the brethren than in discoursing about the more recondite aspects of the hesychast experience.