Sometimes
it is so difficult to remain awake and alert during our morning or
evening prayers. Is it because we are tired from work or school or is
there another dimension to the problem? St Cassian may have an
interesting insight to our common problem. Abba Cassian (360-435),
better known in the West as St. John Cassian who wrote “Institutes” and
“Conferences,” two of the best-known classics of monastic writing,
joined a monastery in Bethlehem as a young man and later left it with a
fellow monk, Germanos, to travel abroad to Egypt and Syria to study
monasticism. The books which resulted from these travels have made Abba
Cassian one of the best known writers on monastic spirituality in both
the eastern and western traditions of Christianity. The Church
commemorates St John Cassian on 29 February.
