'All are saved. I alone am lost.'

[Aidan Kimel]

I am trying to find a saying or story of the desert fathers where the ascetic exclaims something like "All are saved. I alone am lost (damned)." This isn't an exact quote and may not even be close to what I once read.

Does anyone know of anything like this?

Thank you.

[Seda S.]

Perhaps you mean the words of a tanner from Alexandria whom St Anthony the Great payed a visit to.

In the Old Paterik there is a story where St Anthony the Great hears the voice of the Lord, telling him that he hasn't yet reached the measure of a tanner who lives in Alexandria. St Anthony goes to Alexandria, finds that tanner and asks him, "Tell me how do you live, what kind of works do you do, because for you I have come here from the desert?" The tanner answers that he does not know any good thing he does. "Every morning when I go to work, I say, all the people of this town will enter the Kingdom of heaven for their good deeds and only I shall go to hell because of my sins. And when I go to bed, I say the same again in my heart". On hearing this, St Anthony blesses that man and says that really that tanner is greater than him.

I'm sorry, I cannot find this story on the Internet. Perhaps other members of this community will be able to do it, or you yourself may try to find this story in the Vitae Patrum or other similar collections of the words and stories of the Egyptian Desert Fathers.

[Michael Stickles]

You can find it online in the Google Books scan of True Men as We Need Them (http://books.google.com/books?id=UeMOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA458&lpg=PA458), as well as in an online booklet at Bishop Alexander's Orthodox Christian Booklets website, entitled The Poverty That Enriches: On the Virtue of Humility (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/humility_pride.htm#_Toc6691259) (the story is #5 under the heading Stories about pride). There's really not much more to the story in these accounts than what Seda has shared, though.

In Christ,
Mike

[Theophrastus]

There's also the phrase (http://www.philthompson.net/pages/about/silouan/hell.html) from Fr. Sophrony that may serve a similar purpose as "All are saved. I alone am lost":

"Keep thy mind in hell, and despair not." What does it mean to "keep thy mind in hell"? Can it be that we are to use the imagination to conjure up circumstances for ourselves similar to those figures in some primitive painting? In this instance, no. Father Silouan, like certain great Fathers - St. Anthony, St.Sisoe, St. Makarios, St. Pimen - during his lifetime actually descended into the darkness and torments of hell... They took refuge in it when passion - especially the most subtle of passions, pride - reared its head... Blessed Staretz Silouan said that many ascetics when they approached that state - which is vital if one would be cleansed of the passions - would fall into despair and be unable to continue. But the one who knows "how greatly the Lord loveth us" escapes the pernicious effect of total despair and knows how to stand prudently on the verge so that the hellish fire burns away his every passion and does not fall victim to despair. "And despair not." If the Staretz' s account is a simple one, the power and mystery of the matter will remain incomprehensible for anyone who has not known a similar experience of hellish torment, on the one hand, and the great gifts of grace, on the other.

-- Fr. Sophrony

[Paul Cowan]

You can find it online in the Google Books scan of True Men as We Need Them (http://books.google.com/books?id=UeMOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA458&lpg=PA458), as well as in an online booklet at Bishop Alexander's Orthodox Christian Booklets website, entitled The Poverty That Enriches: On the Virtue of Humility (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/humility_pride.htm#_Toc6691259) (the story is #5 under the heading Stories about pride). There's really not much more to the story in these accounts than what Seda has shared, though.

In Christ,
Mike

All hale the King. King Mike. The King of Googledom. I spent an hour last night trying to find something on this and could not.

[Aidan Kimel]

Thank you!

[Nina]

All hale the King. King Mike. The King of Googledom. I spent an hour last night trying to find something on this and could not.

:D :D :D Sure.