Born in Romania around 365, John Cassian struggled with the problems of living the Christian life in a time when the world seemed to be falling apart. As a young man he traveled to a monastery in Bethlehem and later moved to Egypt, where he sought the tutelageof the great founders of the ascetic movement of the desert, such as Evagrius and Macarius.

At the heart of desert monasticism was the idea that the image of God in each person, tarnished by sin but not destroyed, yearns to and has the capacity to love God with the purity of heart with which God loves us. Their aim in desert solitude was to rid themselves of the anxieties and distractions that called their attention away from loving God.

Cassian was initiated into this tradition before political pressures arising from theological controversies forced him to leave Egypt in about 399. After a period in Constantinople, where he was ordained as a deacon, he moved to southern Gaul. In about 415, founded a house in Marseilles for monks, and later a house for nuns. Though Cassian’s goal, like that of his desert mentors, was the perfection of the individual soul, he insisted that no one should embark on a monastic vocation alone. One should enter a house where others are pursuing the same goal, live according to a time-tested rule, and thereby gain the guidance and companionship of the community.

Though Cassian remained committed to the desert ideal of individual perfection, his insistence on the necessity of Christian community and loving moderation was the basis for Benedictine monasticism. It was perhaps a paradox that only in community could the Christian soul “lose sight of earthly things in proportion to the inspiration of its purity so that…with the inner gaze of the soul it sees the glorified Jesus coming in the splendor of his majesty.”

Cassian died in Marseilles around the year 435.