“Receive, beloved brethren, this most beneficial book with joy and zeal and read it diligently, for it is very useful to bishops and priests, rulers and judges, and especially to monks: silent and communal, novices, intermediate and perfect, especially the weak “who are in various temptations and sufferings and therefore need spiritual consolation,” with these words, its first publisher, St. Nicodemus the Svyatogorets, puts this book into the hands of the reader. And truly, everyone who listens to his advice finds great God-bearing men as interlocutors. Saint Barsanuphius lived in the 6th century, and for fifty years or more, not a single person, except the abbot, saw this ascetic, for he imprisoned himself in a small cell, as in a tomb, not eating any food other than bread and water. Another elder, the Monk John, went through the same silent life and was granted the same gifts of the Spirit, especially the gift of clairvoyance, which is why he was called a Prophet.