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 current bout 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 shrewd oberver, 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 brethern than in discoursing about the more recondite aspects of the hesychast experience.
