That I offer some poor discourse to your fraternity—your holy father entreating me and in a manner bidding me with charity—I do not do this out of any presumption, but out of true and entire charity. And although, God being propitious, you are so perfect that you have very little need of our admonition, yet at the bidding of charity, which knows not how to fear, we presume—even in that which we know you fulfil excellently—to suggest and admonish with true humility and perfect charity, though not without shame. For, since we know ourselves to be not even fit disciples, we seem to be rousing masters to holy work. Since we are lukewarm, we are constrained to admonish the fervent. Since we are sinners, we reprove the just. Since we are unskilled, we instruct the learned.
Since we are wearied by the daily waves in the deep of this world, we utter words of preaching to those who have already happily arrived at the harbour.
Yet nevertheless, brethren, because ships, when the waves of the deep have been overcome and vanquished, often labour even in the safest harbour and, unless there be great caution, are all but sunk, we admonish with the utmost humility and vast reverence: that, since Christ has delivered you from all capital crimes as from perilous waves, being now established in the harbour of quiet blessedness, you may with all vigilance—Christ helping—hasten continually to bail out the small negligences and tiny sins, which flow into the soul just as, through the ship's tiniest cracks, drops gather together in the bilge.
For just as a ship, after it has escaped the waves of the deep, if it be not bailed out in the harbour, is filled and sunk by the tiniest drops: so too the monk, when the tempests of the world and the crimes of this present age, as perilous waves, have been vanquished and overcome, when he has come to the harbour of the monastery, if he neglect to bail out from the bilge of his soul the creeping, small, and daily sins, incurs the peril of shipwreck in the very harbour. But someone says, How can the soul be bailed out? Assuredly by praying, fasting, keeping vigil, by showing true charity, true humility, and true obedience.
Attend, brethren, I beseech you: just as a ship is bailed with a bucket, so the soul is delivered from all evils by the Lord's Prayer, if it say—and say truly: Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors (Matt. VI). For whoever shall have clemently pardoned all who sin against him, there shall remain no trace of any sin, no stain upon his soul. Attend, brethren, consider diligently what I have said: whoever shall pardon one who sins against himself—for he did not say that you ought to pardon one who sins against the Lord (or against God); but that you ought to grant pardon to one who sins against you. Which is worse, sometimes we pardon one who has sinned against us either late or with difficulty.
But him who has offended against the Lord (or sinned against God) we quickly pardon. Yet if we would act justly, him who has sinned against the Lord we ought by no means to pardon without the most severe strictness, lest, while pardon is remitted to him through undiscerning mercy, an example of perdition be set before others. Let each one therefore show himself clement in his own cause. For the Lord said: If you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will forgive you your sins (Matt. VI and XVIII). But when anyone presumes to commit a sin against the Lord (against God), he ought to bear the discipline of the monastery. And this ought to be done with a good and pious spirit, that through spiritual chastisement he may so be corrected in this present age, that he perish not in the world to come.
For every sin that is not corrected in this world shall be punished in the world to come. For thus the divine Scripture records concerning a son or a servant: You, it says, shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell (Prov. XXIII). And therefore, as I suggested above, let us beware not only of capital crimes, but let us also daily spit out, as it were poisons of the devil, our wicked negligences. For there are some who, after the profession of religion, because they seem to have gone out of the world, are loosed by an excessive security; and there is fulfilled in them that sentence of the Lord which says: Would that you were hot or cold; but now, because you are lukewarm, I will begin to vomit you out of my mouth (Apoc. III). What is it that He said, Would that you were hot or cold?
This is to say: It had been better for you either to have remained cold in the world, or to be fervent in the monastery. But now, because you have both withdrawn from the world, and yet through negligence have refused to lay hold of spiritual fervour, being made lukewarm, you are vomited out of the Lord's mouth, scarcely to be received again. And therefore, dearly beloved brethren, with God's help attend diligently to the sentence of divine Scripture which says: With all watchfulness keep your heart (Prov. IV). For just as one ought to rejoice over him who, coming to the monastery, has willed to show himself meek and humble in gentleness, obedience, and patience:
so too, on the contrary, he is to be mourned who seems to have gone out of the world only in body, yet is known either to have remained faithlessly in the world in heart, or to have returned unhappily; and who offers pride for humility, wrath for patience, contempt for obedience; and for the medicine of charity pours out the venom of malice. To such men befits that true and much-to-be-feared sentence of blessed Peter: It had been better, he says, for them not to have known the way of justice, than after knowing it to turn back (2 Pet. II). And again: The dog returned to his own vomit, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
But not even of such men are we to despair, brethren, for God is mighty, through your prayers, to kindle a spark of compunction, and to consume every pleasure of the world, like the thorns and briars of wickedness, with a wholesome fire—that fire, assuredly, of which the Lord said: I came to send fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled (Luke XII)? Pray therefore, most beloved brethren, not only that God may deign to grant us perseverance in ourselves, but also that He may command those who are negligent to be lifted up from the pit, and to be plucked from the snares.
For if, through your praying and giving counsel in charity, whoever are lukewarm and negligent shall be amended, the Lord will deign to repay you a doubled reward, both for your own salvation and for their correction. For neither ought those who are good to exalt themselves as though upon their own merits, nor ought those who are negligent to despair of God's mercy; but let the former guard God's gifts with humility, and let the latter with great compunction flee more swiftly to the remedies of penance or correction. For he who is good, if he begin to grow proud, is quickly humbled; and he who is proud, if he humble himself, is lifted up through God's mercy.
Only let him not suffer himself to be pressed any longer beneath the most cruel yoke of the devil, nor, persisting in sins through excessive and perilous dissimulation, to grow hardened any further; but let him flee so swiftly that he leave in himself no trace of sin. Best of all is a poultice or clasp applied while the wounds are still warm; for if the resolve of rising again be swift toward the heavenly Physician, no trace of the fallen state can remain, since beneath the hand of the almighty Physician both the disease quickly perishes and the sick man is swiftly healed. Again and again I beg and admonish you, brethren, that you strive continually to show obedience, humility, and charity not only to your elders and equals, but even to your juniors:
for whatever goods a servant of God may strive to have, he shall unhappily lose them all, if in him there be not humility and charity. Do not murmur, for it is written (1 Cor. X) that those who murmured perished by serpents. Do not detract from your brethren, for it is written: He who detracts from his brother shall be rooted out (Prov. XIII, cf. Ps. C). Do not keep wrath in your heart, for it is written: The wrath of man works not the justice of God. Do not hold one another in hatred, because of that which is written: He who hates his brother is a murderer (1 John III). But there is no need that we should teach your holy charity any longer with words, since we both know and rejoice that you fulfil it in works, unto the glory of Christ.
This alone we especially ask: that you who have been deemed worthy to be placed in a place of quiet and tranquillity may pray the more abundantly to the Lord on our behalf, whom the storms and countless waves of this present world afflict; so that if to us, because we do not deserve it, glory is not granted, at least through your prayers pardon for our sins may be bestowed, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom is honour and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.