""monkish asceticism"
This is who we are, cyc. Asceticism in many ways defines us. It explains why my participation in the Divine Liturgy of +Basil the Great last evening was a delight for me. The West, especially the Protestant West, knows nothing of this. You have your ways and we have ours. This snip from a very holy monastic and "patriotis" of Kosta lays this out as well as I have ever seen it.
"..among our people there exists an ascetic spirit as created by Orthodoxy through the centuries. The Orthodox soul of our people leans towards the Holy Fathers and the Orthodox ascetics. Ascetic exertion, at the personal, family, and parish level, particularly of prayer and fasting, is the characteristic of Orthodoxy. Our people is a people of Christ, an Orthodox people, because -- as Christ did -- it sums up the Gospel in these two virtues: prayer and fasting. And it is a people convinced that all defilement, all foul thoughts, can be driven out of man by these alone [Matt. 17:21]. In its heart of hearts our people know Christ and Orthodoxy, they know just what it is that makes an Orthodox person Orthodox. Orthodoxy will always generate ascetic rebirth. She recognizes no other." +Justin Popovich
The views of the “Holy Fathers” are informative to Orthodoxy?
They being who, “Tertullian, John of Damascus, etc.?