In this time of rapid change, when there is a rupture in the world order, we long to find a continuous thread which will illuminate hope in the many situations of chaos and darkness emerging both locally and globally.
Our first response to this disorder is to seek a meaningful perspective. As people of hope, we desire to create a faith-based way of seeing, that brings a coherence to assist us simplify the growing complexity of life, in this first quarter of the 21st century.
Isaac Slater OCSO, in his recently published book, Do Not Judge Anyone (2025), offers us a way to live this time with love, compassion and purpose. He explores the ancient wisdom articulated by the contemplatives of our Christian tradition known as the “desert fathers and mothers”. These men and women lived their Gospel-centred lives in a radical way that illuminated the teachings of Jesus, especially in terms of their relationships with others.
Slater suggests that our tendency towards simplification and judgement is our constructed way to hold complexity at bay. He notes that in doing this, our first response to situations of conflict is frequently to moralise. This places a moral ideal on others without explicitly indicating how grace is the means for effecting a change of heart. Slater claims that moralism may be the besetting sin of the Western Church.
He proposes opening our hearts to the “the gratuity of grace” as a healing pathway to offset moralism and self-righteousness. Through grace we are empowered to embrace both justice and mercy. This enables attentive presence to the other which liberates us from being trapped in an introspective mindscape that is judgemental.
Healing such negativity disposes us to cultivate what Slater describes, as a non-dual heart space. This enables us to embrace our own complexity with simplicity and relate empathetically with others. While this non-judgemental process brings healing, Slater assures us it is not about the absence of conflict. Instead. it offers us a way to foster a stable presence within it.
We begin with prayer because it provides the trusted and intimate space for all our emotions to rise before God including anger, which needs to be “rocked, cradled and cared for” (p.75). Sourcing his core insights from the teachings of the Desert Fathers, Slater describes prayer as “the seed of gentleness” (p. 33), reflecting things as they are – like a mirror, – without judging.
Such prayer is grounded in the expansive nature of God’s infinite love. We are reminded that our sins and those of the entire world are no more than a handful of sand within the vast ocean of divine mercy and that, “we can never underestimate our need to soak in and savour, to marinate in divine mercy” (p. 17).
Held securely in God’s love we defer judgement to our Creator who allows the “wheat and weeds” to grow together.
Sr Patty Andrew OSU is the Vicar for Consecrated Life.
Do Not Judge Anyone: Desert Wisdom for a Polarized World, by Isaac Slater, Liturgical Press, 2025, pp160 – available on amazon.com.au
This article was originally published in the 2026 Lent & Easter | Autumn edition of the Catholic Outlook Magazine. You can read the digital version here or pick up a copy in your local parish.
