The Fathers went to the desert in the spirit of repentance and surrender to the Lord. The Kingdom of God was their ultimate aim, purity of heart their proximate one. All the way to heaven is heaven, said Catherine of Siena, much later. All the way - and so they read scripture constantly. They sang the praises of God in liturgy. And they celebrated the new covenant with bread and wine.
And what of W., who was expelled into my desert, the desert of my stupidity? Did he ask to repent? Did he want to surrender? He reads - if not scripture, then books nearly as worthy, the great works of theology, of the philosophy of religion. He writes in his own way to celebrate the idea of the Messiah. But all the way to hell is hell, and a desert without a promised land is just that: hell.
Solitude: he knows that. Fasting: in his own way, he has fasted (since I ate all the manna). Self-denial: what has he done except deny himself? The renunciation of ambition: it was taken from him, his ambition. I killed his ambition ... Ah, W. has all the virtues the Fathers admired ...