Institutes & Conferences 1 part 36/44

that thy barns may be filled with abundance of wheat, and thy presses may overflow with wine.' Faithfully performing this devotion, know that you have fulfilled the righteousness of the ancient law, under which those then placed and transgressing it incurred guilt inevitably, and those fulfilling it could not arrive at the summit of perfection. For tithes indeed were by the commandment of the Lord assigned to the uses of the Levites, but the oblations and firstfruits were consecrated to the priests. But of the firstfruits this was the measure: that a fiftieth part either of crops or of animals should be furnished for the ministry of the temple and of the priests;

which measure the more lukewarm indeed unfaithfully diminished, but the more religious even increased, so that the former paid from a sixtieth part of their fruits, but the latter from a fortieth. For the just, for whom the law is not laid down, are so proved not to be under the law, that they strive not only to fulfil the righteous requirements of the law, but even to surpass them; and their devotion is greater than the legal command, which, heaping up the observance of the precepts, adds of its own will to what is due.

For thus we read that Abraham surpassed the precepts of the coming Law when, after he had overcome four kings, he refused to touch anything at all of the spoils of Sodom — spoils which were owed to him, and not undeservedly, as to a victor, and which the very king whose plunder he had recovered was humbly offering him — proclaiming with an oath sworn upon the divine Name:

I stretch out my hand to the Lord Most High, who made heaven and earth: I will not take of anything that is yours, from a thread of the woof even to a shoe-latchet. In like manner we recognize that David surpassed the precepts of the Law, for whereas Moses had commanded that retaliation be rendered to enemies, he not only did not do this, but even embraced his persecutors with love, and piously interceding to the Lord on their behalf he even wept mournfully and avenged those who had been slain. So too we perceive that Elijah and Jeremiah were not under the Law, for though they might have used lawful marriage without reproach, they chose nonetheless to remain virgins. Thus we read that Elisha and the rest of the men of the same resolve surpassed the Mosaic commandments — of whom the Apostle speaks thus:

They wandered about in sheepskins and in goatskins, being in want, distressed, afflicted — of whom the world was not worthy — wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and in the dens of the earth. What shall I say of the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab, who, when the prophet Jeremiah offered them wine at the Lord's command, answered thus, as we read: We drink no wine, because Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying: You shall drink no wine, neither you nor your sons for ever; and you shall build no house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyards, nor have any; but you shall dwell in tents all your days? Wherefore also they deserved to hear from the same prophet:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: There shall not be wanting a man of the stock of Jonadab the son of Rechab, standing in my presence all the days. These men, not content to offer the tithes of their possessions, but rejecting the very estates themselves, offered rather their own selves and their souls to God — for whom no exchange can be made by man, as the Lord attests in the Gospel: What exchange shall a man give for his soul? Wherefore we ought to know that of us the legal commandment is no longer demanded, but to us the evangelical word daily thunders:

If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. When we offer God tithes of our substance, we are still in a manner held down under the burden of the Law, and have not yet attained to that evangelical height which rewards those who obey it not only with the benefits of the present life, but also with the rewards to come. For the Law promised its doers, not the rewards of the heavenly kingdoms, but the solaces of this life, saying: He who does these things shall live in them. But the Lord says to his disciples: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and:

Everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life — and not undeservedly. For it is not so praiseworthy if we abstain from unlawful things as if we abstain even from lawful things, and refrain from using them out of reverence for him who permitted us to use them because of our weakness. And so, if even those who faithfully offer the tithes of their fruits and serve the more ancient precepts of the Lord cannot yet ascend to the evangelical summit, then those who do not even do these things — how far they are from it you most clearly perceive.

For how shall those be able to be partakers of evangelical grace who disdain to fulfil even the lighter precepts of the Law? The imperious words of the Lawgiver testify to the ease of these to such a degree that a curse is set forth even for those who do not fulfil them: for he says, Cursed is he who shall not abide in all things that are written in the book of the Law, to do them. But here, on account of the sublimity and excellence of the commandments, it is said: He who is able to receive it, let him receive it. There the violent compulsion of the lawgiver indicates the smallness of the precepts: for he says, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that if you do not keep the commandments of the Lord your God, you shall perish from off the face of the earth.

Here the magnificence of the sublime commandments is marked by the very condition, not so much of one who commands as of one who exhorts: If you would be perfect, go, do this or that. There Moses lays an inexcusable weight even upon the unwilling; here Paul meets only those who are willing and hastening toward perfection with counsel alone.

For that which, on account of its wondrous sublimity, cannot be grasped by all indiscriminately ought not to be enjoined generally, nor, so to speak, exacted canonically from all; but rather all are provoked to grace by counsel, so that those who are great may deservedly be crowned by the perfection of virtues, while those who are little and cannot fill up the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, though they may seem to lie hidden as if covered by the splendour of their greater ones as by stars, are yet strangers to the darkness of the curses which are in the Law, and are neither delivered over to the disasters of present evils nor smitten with eternal punishment.

Christ therefore does not constrain anyone to those lofty heights of the virtues by the necessity of a command, but invites him by the power of free will and kindles him by the wholesomeness of counsel and the desire of perfection. For where there is a command, there is necessity, and consequently punishment too. But those who keep these things, to which they are compelled by the severity of a prescribed law, rather escape the punishment which was threatened by it than obtain any reward or prizes. And so, just as the evangelical word raises up the strong to sublime and lofty things, so it does not suffer the weak to be plunged into the depths — bestowing indeed on the perfect the fullness of blessedness, but granting pardon to those overcome by frailty.

For the Law placed those who fulfil its precepts in a kind of middle ground, as it were, between the two merits, separating them as far from the condemnation of transgressors as from the glory of the perfect. And how lowly and how pitiable this is, perceive even from the state and comparison of the present life, in which it is reckoned most wretched if a man strives and labours only for this: that he be reckoned merely not guilty among honest men, and not also wealthy and honourable and glorious. Wherefore it lies today within our power whether we wish to stand under the grace of the Gospel or under the terror of the Law: for each one must needs be joined to whichever part according to the quality of his own deed.

For either the grace of Christ receives those who go beyond the Law, or else the Law surely retains the lesser as its debtors, bound and subject to itself. For one who is guilty of the legal precepts will by no means be able to attain evangelical perfection, however vainly he may boast himself a Christian and set free by the grace of the Lord. For not only is he to be believed still under the Law who refuses to fulfil what the Law commands, but also he who is content merely to observe what the Law enjoins and by no means shows fruits worthy of the calling and grace of Christ — where it is not said, You shall offer your tithes and firstfruits to the Lord your God, but: Go, sell all things.

That you have and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me — where, on account of the magnificence of perfection, not even the briefest space of an hour is granted to the disciple who asks it for the burial of his father, and the duty of human affection is outstripped by the power of divine love. When he had heard these things, blessed Theonas, kindled with an inextinguishable desire for evangelical perfection, buried the seed of the word conceived in his fruitful heart, as it were, in the deep and well-tilled furrows of his breast — humbled and pierced with compunction in this above all, that the elder had said that he had not only not attained evangelical perfection, but had scarcely even fulfilled the commandments of the Law itself.

For although he had been accustomed to pay each year the tithes of his crops to the diaconia, he lamented that he had never even so much as heard of the reckoning of the firstfruits; and even if he had fulfilled this in like manner, he humbly confessed that he still, according to the elder's judgment, fell far short of evangelical perfection. So he returned home sorrowful, affected by that sorrow which works repentance unto steadfast salvation; and being now no longer doubtful concerning his own will and resolve, he turned all the anxiety of his mind toward the salvation of his wife.

And he turned his care to it, and began to provoke her by a like exhortation to the desire with which he himself had been kindled, and to admonish her with tears by day and by night that they should serve God together in holiness and chastity; saying that the conversion to a better life must by no means be delayed, since the vain hope of an unripe age offers no protection against the necessity of a sudden death, seeing that it snatches away boys, adolescents, and young men by the same lot as the old.

And when his wife, hardened, would not lend her assent to such continual entreaties, and said that on account of the flower of her age she could by no means abstain entirely from marital consolation, and that therefore, if being deserted by him she committed any fault, it ought rather to be ascribed to him who had broken the bonds of marriage — to these things he, having long set forth the condition of human nature, how frail and uncertain it is, and how perilous to be longer entangled in carnal desires and works, added and maintained that it was not permitted to anyone to make himself an exile from that good to which he had learned he must by all means cleave, and that it was of greater peril to despise a goodness once known than not to love one unknown:

and that he was accordingly already involved even in the guilt of transgression, if, having found such glorious and heavenly goods, he preferred earthly and sordid things. He said that the magnificence of perfection pertains to every age and every sex, and that all the members of the Church are provoked to ascend to the height of sublime merits, the Apostle saying: So run that you may obtain; and that they ought not, on account of the delays of the slow and sluggish, to stand still though ready and eager, since it is more right that the idle be spurred on by those who run ahead than that those who hasten be held back by those who sit still.

He declared, accordingly, that it was fixed and decreed for him to renounce the world and to die to the world, that he might be able to live to God; and that if he could not obtain this blessedness, so as to pass over with his consort into the fellowship of Christ, he would rather be saved even with the loss of one member and enter the kingdom of heaven maimed, as it were, than be condemned with a whole body. And he added also these words, saying:

If Moses, for hardness of heart, permits wives to be put away, why should Christ not allow this for the desire of chastity — especially since the same Lord, among the other affections, that is, of fathers and mothers and children, to whom not only the Law but he himself had commanded that every reverence be shown, nevertheless decreed that, for his name's sake and the desire of perfection, they are not only simply to be despised but even to be held in hatred, and joined to them likewise the name of wives, saying: And everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life.

To such a degree, therefore, does he suffer nothing to be compared to the perfection which he proclaims, that he commands even that bond of father and mother to be dissolved — which, according to the Apostle, holds the first commandment in the promise (namely, Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment in the promise, that it may be well with you and that you may be long-lived upon the earth) — and that it be despised for love of him. Evidently, therefore, just as the evangelical word condemns those who, without the intervening crime of adultery, break asunder the bonds of marriage, so, for the love of Christ and the desire of chastity, it promises a hundredfold reward to those who have cast off the carnal yoke.

Wherefore, if it can be so, that you may at last, having accepted the reasoning, be inclined to this side which I most earnestly desire — namely, that serving the Lord we may together escape the punishment of Gehenna — I do not refuse conjugal love; nay rather, I embrace it with a still greater affection. For I acknowledge and revere you as my helper assigned to me by the Lord's sentence, and I do not refuse to cleave to you in an unbroken covenant of love in Christ, nor do I separate from myself what the Lord joined to me by the law of the first creation itself, provided that you yourself be that which the Creator willed you to be.

But if you are unwilling to be a helper but a deceiver, and choose to offer yourself as a support not to me but to the adversary, and on this account suppose the sacrament of marriage to have been granted to you so that, cheating yourself of this salvation which is being offered, you may moreover draw me back also from discipleship of the Saviour — then I will manfully lay hold of that sentence uttered by the mouth of Abba John, nay rather of Christ, so that no carnal affection may be able to tear me away from the spiritual good. For he says: Whoever does not hate father and mother and children and brothers and sisters and wife, and moreover his own soul also, cannot be my disciple.

When, therefore, the woman's purpose was not bent by these and suchlike words, and she remained in the same hardness of obstinacy, blessed Theonas said: If I cannot draw you back from death, neither shall you separate me from Christ; and it is safer for me to have a divorce with a human being than with God. And so, by the inspiring grace of God, he set himself instantly to carry out his resolve, nor did he suffer the ardour of his desire to grow lukewarm through any delay.

For at once, stripped of all worldly means, he flew to the monastery, where in a short time he shone with such splendour of holiness and humility that, when John of blessed memory departed from this light to the Lord, and holy Elias likewise passed away — a man who was no less than his predecessor — Theonas, chosen third by the judgment of all, succeeded them in the dispensation of the diaconia. But let no one suppose that we have woven this together to provoke divorces of marriages — we who not only by no means condemn nuptials, but even, following the apostolic sentence, say: Marriage is honourable in all and the bed undefiled — but rather that we might faithfully disclose to the reader the beginning of the conversion by which that so great man was consecrated to God.

From him I first ask this favour: that, whether it please him or displease him, granting me in every way to be free from calumny, he either praise or blame this deed in its own author. But I, who have not put forth my own opinion on this matter, but have set forth the history of the deed done in a simple narration, it is fair that, just as I claim for myself nothing of the praise of those who approve this deed, so I be not assailed by the ill-will of those who disapprove it. Let each one, therefore, as we have said, hold his own judgment concerning him:

but I admonish that he so temper the censure of his own examination that he does not believe himself more just or more holy than the divine judgment, by which the very signs of apostolic powers were conferred upon him — to say nothing of the sentence of so many fathers, by whom his deed was so far from being reproved that it is manifest it was even so highly commended that they preferred him to the greatest and most sublime men in the election to the diaconia. And I think that the judgment brought forth by so many spiritual men, God being its author, did not err — a judgment which so great an admiration of signs, as has already been said above, confirmed. But now it is time that we pursue the order of the promised discussion.

So then, when Abba Theonas had visited us in our cell during the days of Pentecost, and the evening solemnity of prayers had been completed, sitting on the ground a little while, we began to inquire more diligently why among them so great a strictness was observed that no one at all, throughout all the days of Pentecost, should either bend the knees in prayer or presume to fast until the ninth hour; and we scrutinized this the more diligently because we had by no means seen it kept with such caution in the monasteries of Syria. To this Abba Theonas made use of the following opening of his discourse.

It behoves us indeed to yield to the authority of the fathers and to the custom of our forebears, prolonged even to our own time through so long a series of years, even when we have not grasped its reason, and to guard it, as it was handed down of old, with continual observance and reverence. Nevertheless, since you wish to know the causes and the reason of this matter, receive briefly the things which we have learned, handed down by our elders concerning this institution. But before the authority of divine Scripture is brought forward, if it please you, let us say a few things concerning the nature and quality of fasting itself, so that the authority of the Scriptures may afterward confirm our discussion.

The divine Wisdom, through Ecclesiastes, has designated that there is a proper time for every matter — that is, for all things, whether prosperous or those that are thought adverse and sad — saying: To all things there is a time, and a time for every matter under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what has been planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to destroy and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to be far from embracing, a time to gain and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sew, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace; and further on he says: Because there is a time for every matter and for every work.

He determined, therefore, that none of these things is perpetually good, except when any of them has been fulfilled opportunely and fittingly, so that these very same things which, done now opportunely, turn out well, if presumed upon at an inopportune or incongruous time, are found useless and harmful — excepting only those things which of themselves are principally either good or evil and can never at any time be turned into their contrary: such as justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and the rest of the virtues, or on the other side the vices, whose definitions cannot at all fall into the other part or be changed.

But if certain things can sometimes pass over into either effect, so that according to the quality of those who use them they are found either good or bad, these are perceived to be sometimes useful, sometimes harmful, not absolutely according to their own nature, but according to the disposition of the one who performs them and the opportuneness of the time. Wherefore now it must be asked what we ought to decree concerning the status of fasts: whether fasting itself likewise is good in the same manner in which we said justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance are good, which cannot at all pass over into the contrary part; or whether it is something intermediate, which, when sometimes done, can profit, and when sometimes omitted, cannot condemn — and which it is sometimes reprehensible to have done, and sometimes praiseworthy to have omitted.

For if in that definition of the virtues we should also reckon fasting, so that abstinence from foods be placed among the principal goods, then assuredly the partaking of them will be evil and criminal. For whatever is contrary to a principal good must without doubt be reckoned a principal evil — which the authority of the holy Scriptures does not permit to be defined by us. For if we fast with such a sense and purpose as to believe that sin is contracted in the partaking of foods, not only shall we obtain no fruits for our abstinence, but we shall even, according to the Apostle, contract the greatest guilt and the crime of sacrilege, abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and by those who have known the truth.

For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving. For to him who esteems anything to be common, to him it is common. And therefore we read that no one was condemned for the mere partaking of food, unless perhaps something was joined to it or afterward followed, through which he deserved to be condemned. And so it is most plainly declared from this too that fasting is a middle thing, because just as it justifies when kept, so it does not condemn when broken — unless perhaps the transgression of a precept rather than the partaking of food be punished. But of a principal good no time ought to be void, so that it is not permitted to anyone to be without it, because the negligent must needs, by ceasing from it, rush into evil.

Nor again is any time conceded to a principal evil, because that which is always harmful, if it be admitted, can never fail to harm or ever be changed into a praiseworthy part. And accordingly these things, in which we see set qualities and times, and which when so observed sanctify but when omitted do not pollute, are manifestly middle things — as, for instance, marriage, agriculture, riches, the withdrawal of solitude, vigils, the reading of the sacred books and the meditation of them, and fasts themselves, from which the beginning of our discourse arose. All these things the divine command or the authority of the holy Scriptures has not decreed to be so incessantly held to nor so continually guarded that it be a wicked thing to have intermitted them a little.

For whatever is decreed imperatively inflicts death when unfulfilled; but whatever things are counselled rather than commanded, when done are profitable, when not done do not punish. And therefore our elders bade us to do either all these things, or at least certain of them, circumspectly according to the cause, the place, the manner, the time, and to observe them providently, because if any of these be practised fittingly, it is apt and suitable, but if unfittingly, it is agreed to be unbecoming and harmful. As if someone should wish, at the arrival of a brother — in whom he ought to refresh Christ with humanity and embrace him with a most gracious reception — to keep the austerity of a fast: does he not rather incur the crime of inhumanity than acquire praise or the merit of religion?

Or if, when the failing and weakness of the flesh demands the restoration of its strength by the partaking of food, someone does not consent to relax the rigour of abstinence, is he not to be esteemed rather a cruel murderer of his own body than a provider for its health? So too, when the season of a festival grants the fitting nourishment of foods and the refreshment of a necessary relaxation, if anyone should wish to retain unbroken the rigid observance of fasts, it must needs be that he be reckoned not so much religious as disordered and irrational.

But these things will nonetheless be found adverse also to those who hunt for human praise by fasts and acquire a reputation for holiness by a vain display of pallor — of whom the evangelical word declares that they have received their reward in the present; or whose fasting the Lord detests through the prophet. Against whose persons, when he had first set forth, as an objection made to himself: Why have we fasted, and you have not regarded; we have humbled our souls, and you have not known? — at once, adding, he disclosed the causes why they do not deserve to be heard: Behold, he says, in the days of your fasting your own will is found, and you exact all your debtors. Behold, you fast for strifes and contentions, and you strike with the fist impiously.

Fast not as you do to this day, so as to make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I have chosen, that a man should afflict his soul for a day? To bend his head about like a hoop, and to strew sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? Then he goes on, teaching how the self-restraint of one who fasts becomes acceptable, and clearly declares that fasting by itself cannot profit unless it has these following causes as consequences: Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen? Loose the bands of impiety, undo the bundles that oppress, let them that are broken go free, and break asunder every burden.

Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the wanderers into your house; when you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise your own flesh. Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your health shall spring forth speedily; and your justice shall go before your face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather you up. Then you shall call, and the Lord shall hear you; you shall cry, and he shall say: Behold, here I am. You see, therefore, that fasting is by no means judged by the Lord to be a principal good, seeing that it becomes good and well-pleasing to God not through itself but through other works; and again, from the causes that supervene, it is reckoned not only vain but even hateful, the Lord saying: When they fast, I will not hearken to their prayers.