The story is told that someone once asked a wise man where he could be sure to find God. The wise man told his questioner to come along where he woul… - Eucherius of Lyon

How pleasant is the solitude of a remote place to those who thirst for God! How attractive for those who seek Christ are those solitary lands stretching in every direction under protecting nature. All things are silent there, and the joyful mind is spurred on by silence in its search for God, finding nourishment in ineffable ecstasies. No sound is heard in the desert save the voice of God. Only that sound that is sweeter than silence, the holy activity of a moderate and holy way of life, breaks into the state of quiet peace, while only the sound of the desert outpost interrupts the silence.

I would say that the desert deserves to be called a temple of our God without walls. Since it is clear that God dwells in silence, we must believe that he loves the solitary expanses of the desert. ... Although God is present everywhere, and regards the whole world as his domain, we may believe that his preferred place is the solitudes of heaven and of the desert.

Who can number adequately all the benefits of the desert and the advantages for virtue enjoyed by those who live there? Finding themselves placed in this world, they in a way go beyond this world. As the Apostle says, ‘They wander through desert places, in mountains and caves and in holes of the earth’. Quite correctly the Apostle says that the world is not worthy of such people, for they are alien to the confusion of human society; they are distant, quiet, silent, and free now both from sin and from inclination to sin.