Dadisho Qatraya

Dadisho Qatraya or Dadisho of Qatar was a 7th-century Nestorian monk and author of ascetic literature in Syriac.

Quotes

Treatise on Solitude and Prayer

Mingana, Alphonse (1934). Early Christian Mystics. Woodbrooke Studies. 7. W. Heffer & Sons Limited. 

• So far as a Brother who desires solitude is concerned, his aim and the advantages which he should strive to gain from his solitude are the following:

1. Weeping over his past sins and mourning over his daily imperfections.

2. Hardening himself against the temptations of the demons.

3. Knowledge of himself, that is to say, that he should make himself aware of his ungodly inclinations.

4. Continuous remembrance of God, and rejection of all other memories.

5. Struggling against passions and demons.

6. Purity of heart.

7. Peace of mind.

8. Pure prayer.

• pp. 85-86

• If you truly love the life of solitude, you should desire purity of heart more than anything else, and direct to it all your aim and your course. Enquire, learn, read and understand what is this purity of heart, and whence it is acquired, and which passions engender which passions, and by what labours and exertions a man is able to overcome them in the length of the time of his solitude.
  • p. 99

• Pure, undisturbed and quiet prayer is accomplished, performed, constituted and kept by four virtues, and is diminished, tarnished, destroyed and hindered by four passions.

The four virtues are: fasts, vigils, meekness and humility – two of which belong to the soul and two to the body.

As to the destroying passions, they are: gluttony, excessive sleep, anger and vainglory, as I said before.

The two heads of the solitaries and of the Illuminated, the blessed Mark and the blessed Evagrius, teach us clearly concerning the four virtues which constitute pure prayer, and through which the solitary overcomes the passions and the demons.

• p. 120