Institutes & Conferences 1 part 42/44

Finally, if we truly wish to explore whether it is possible for human nature to possess sinlessness, from whom can we learn this more clearly than from those who have crucified their flesh with its vices and lusts, and to whom the world has been truly crucified? These men, though they have not only torn up all vices from their hearts by the roots, but even strive to shut out the very thoughts and memory of sins, nevertheless daily and faithfully confess that they cannot be free from the stain of sin for even a single hour.

Yet we ought not on that account to withdraw ourselves from the Lord's Communion, because we acknowledge ourselves to be sinners; but rather we should hasten to it the more eagerly for the healing of the soul and the purification of the spirit, yet with such humility of mind and faith that, judging ourselves unworthy of the reception of so great a grace, we may seek it as a remedy for our wounds. Otherwise not even the yearly Communion may worthily be presumed upon, as certain men do who, dwelling in monasteries, so measure the dignity and sanctification and merit of the heavenly sacraments that they reckon these ought to be received only by the holy and spotless, and not rather that they should make us holy and clean by our participation in them.

Such men assuredly fall into a greater presumption of arrogance than the one they think they are avoiding, for at the very time when they receive the sacraments they judge themselves worthy of the reception. But it is far more just that, with this humility of heart, whereby we believe and confess that we can never touch those most sacred mysteries as we deserve, we should presume to receive them every Lord's Day as a remedy for our sicknesses, than that, lifted up in heart by a vain persuasion, we should believe ourselves worthy of partaking of them even once a year.

Wherefore, that we may be able to understand these things and to hold them fruitfully, let us more attentively implore the mercy of the Lord that He may help us to accomplish them—things which are by no means learned, as the other human arts are, by some preceding reasoning of words, but rather by act and by preceding experience; and which again, unless they are frequently tested and polished by the conferences of spiritual men as much as they are carefully sifted by proofs and by daily experience, either grow dull through neglect or perish through idle forgetfulness. ON MORTIFICATION. Chapters. How we disclosed to Abbot Abraham the secrets of our thoughts. How the old man laid bare our errors. Of the quality of the places that ought to be sought by anchorites.

What kinds of occupations ought to be chosen by solitaries. That the anxiety of the heart is burdened rather than relieved by the wandering of the body. To what standard a monk ought to guard his thoughts. The question, why the neighborhood of kinsfolk was thought to be a hindrance to us, when it was no hindrance to those living in Egypt. The answer, that not all things suit all men. That those can be unafraid of the neighborhood of kinsfolk who have been able to emulate the mortification of Abbot Apollo. The question, whether it harms a monk if necessities are supplied to him by his kinsfolk. The answer, what holy Antony pronounced upon this matter. Of the usefulness of work and the harm of idleness. A fable composed about a barber's wage, for recognizing the delusions of the devil.

The question, whence the error of such thoughts crept in upon us. The answer, concerning the threefold motion of the soul. That the rational part of our soul is corrupted. That the weaker part of the soul first succumbs to diabolical temptations. The question, whether we should be drawn back to our homeland by a useful desire for greater silence. The answer, concerning the delusion of the devil, in that he promises the rest of a vaster solitude. How useful is relaxation at the coming of the brethren. How the evangelist John is said to have shown the usefulness of relaxation. The question, how that is to be understood which is said in the Gospel: 'My yoke is easy and my burden is light.' The answer, together with an explanation of the sentence. Why the Lord's yoke is felt to be bitter and His burden heavy.

What profit the incursion of temptations confers. In what manner a hundredfold is promised in this world to those who renounce perfectly. This twenty-fourth conference of Abbot Abraham is now brought to completion, by the favour of Christ, concluding the traditions and ordinances of all the elders; and this being finished by your prayers, we believe that we shall be released from the debts of all our promises, mystically corresponding in number to those twenty-four elders who in the holy Apocalypse are said to offer their crowns to the Lamb. If therefore these our twenty-four elders shall have been crowned with any glory for the merit of their teaching, with heads bowed low they shall offer it to the Lamb who was slain for the salvation of the world:

For He Himself, for the honour of His name, deigned to grant both to them so surpassing an understanding, and to us such utterance as we have, whereby so great a profundity is earned. And it is necessary that the merits of His gift be referred to the Author of all good things, to whom this the more is owed the more it is paid.

So then, to this Abraham we brought, in anxious confession, the assault of our thoughts, whereby we were daily urged by the ferments of our soul to return to our own province and to revisit our kinsfolk. For hence arose for us the greatest occasion of longings, that we remembered our parents to be endowed with such great religion and piety that we presumed they would by no means hinder our purpose; ever turning this over in our mind, that we should reap greater profit from their constant company, and that we should be occupied with no anxiety about bodily things, with no distractions of providing food, since they would abundantly and with joy supply all the furnishing of our need.

Moreover, we were even feeding our souls with the hope of empty joys, believing that we should reap the greatest fruit from the conversion of many, who were, as it were, to be guided to the way of salvation by our example and admonitions. And besides, there was painted before our eyes the very situation of those places in which our forefathers had their ancestral possessions, and the pleasant loveliness of those regions—how agreeably and fittingly it might be laid out with tracts of solitude, so that the secret woodland places could not only delight a monk, but even furnish the greatest abundance of sustenance.

When we had simply laid open all these things to the aforesaid old man, according to the faith of our conscience, and testified with copious tears that we could no longer endure the force of these assaults unless the grace of God should come to our aid through his healing, he, silent and long hesitating, and at the last groaning heavily, said: 'The weakness of your thoughts betrays that you have not yet renounced worldly desires nor mortified the former lusts. For as the wandering of your desires attests the sloth of your heart, so this pilgrimage and this absence from kinsfolk, which you ought rather to have undertaken in mind, you sustain only in the flesh.'

For all these things would already have been buried and utterly torn out of your hearts, if you had grasped either the reason of your very renunciation, or the principal cause of the solitude in which we abide. And therefore I perceive that you labour under that sickness of idleness which is thus noted in Proverbs: 'Every idle man is full of desires,' and again: 'Desires slay the sluggard.' For to us also there could be no lack of those advantages of carnal comforts which you have recounted, if we believed that they suited our purpose, or judged that from those pleasures of amenities such fruit could be conferred on us as is that which is gained from this squalor of place and this affliction of the body.

Nor are we so bereft of the solace of kinsfolk that there should be lacking those who would rejoice to sustain us from their own substance—did not that saying of the Saviour, coming to meet us, exclude whatever pertains to the nurturing of this flesh, wherein it is said: 'He who does not leave (or hate) father and mother and children and brothers, cannot be My disciple.' But if we were in every way destitute even of the aid of kinsfolk, still there could be no lack of the services of the powerful ones of this world, who with most ready generosity would rejoice to supply our needs with all thanksgiving. Sustained by their munificence, we should be free from the anxiety of procuring food—did not that prophetic curse vehemently deter us.

For 'cursed,' it says, 'is the man who puts his hope in man,' and: 'Do not trust in princes.' We might also, at least by placing our cells above the channel of the river Nile, have had water at our doors, so as not to be forced to carry it upon our necks from four miles away—did not the blessed Apostle, rendering us tireless for the endurance of this labour, continually hearten us with this word, saying: 'Each one shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.'

Nor are we ignorant that there are also in our own regions certain pleasant retreats, in which an abundance of fruit and the charm or fertility of gardens would relieve the necessity of our sustenance with the least bodily labour—did we not fear that reproach would be cast upon us which was directed in the Gospel against that rich man: 'Because you have received your consolation in your lifetime.' But, despising all those things, and having contemned them together with every pleasure of this world, we delight only in these dreary places, and prefer to all delights the fearsome desolation of this solitude, nor do we compare to this bitterness of the sands any riches of the most fertile soil whatsoever—not seeking the temporal gains of this body, but the eternal profits of the spirit.

For it is a small thing for a monk to have renounced once, that is, at the outset of his conversion to have despised present things, unless he continues daily to renounce them. For until the end of this life this must be said by us with the prophet: 'And the day of man I have not desired, Thou knowest.' Whence also the Lord says in the Gospel: 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.'

And therefore, for him who keeps a vigilant solicitude concerning the purity of the inner man, those places are to be sought which do not, by any fecundity of their fertility, entice his mind toward the distraction of cultivation, nor drive him from the fixed and immovable station of his cell and compel him to go forth to some open-air work, and so, as it were, with his thoughts poured out into the open, scatter through diverse things all the direction of his mind and, most surely, the most subtle gaze of that fixed purpose.

These things can by no means be either guarded against or perceived by anyone, however solicitous and vigilant, save by him who has continually shut up his body and his soul within the enclosure of his walls; so that thus a man, like an excellent fisherman procuring food for himself by the apostolic art, may in the most tranquil deep of his heart, intent and unmoving, catch the swimming shoals of thoughts, and as though gazing curiously into the deep from an overhanging rock, may with keen discernment judge which he ought to draw to himself with the saving hook, and which he should neglect and reject as bad and harmful fish. Persevering continually, then, in this guard, each one will effectively fulfil that which is quite plainly expressed through the prophet Habakkuk:

'I will stand upon my watch, and I will mount upon the rock, and I will keep watch to see what will be spoken in me, and what I shall answer to Him that reproves me.' And of how great toil and difficulty this is, is most manifestly proven by the experience of those who dwell in that desert of Calamus or Porphyrion.

For although they are divided from all cities and dwellings of men by a longer stretch of solitude than the desert of Scetis (indeed, penetrating the wastes of that most vast solitude by seven or eight stages, they scarcely reach the secret places of their cells), nevertheless, because there, being given over to agriculture, they are by no means confined within enclosures, when they come to these squalid places in which we live, or to those Scetic regions, they are so troubled by such ferments of thoughts, by such anxiety of soul, that, like untrained men who have never even lightly touched the exercises of solitude, they cannot endure the abiding in a cell and the silences of quiet, but, straightway shaken out of them, are driven forth like inexperienced novices.

For they have not learned to quell the motions of the inner man and to meet the tempests of their thoughts with unremitting solicitude and persevering attention—men who, sweating daily at open-air works, all the day long, beneath the airy void, flit about not only in flesh but even in mind, and pour out their thoughts everywhere, with bodily mobility, into the open. And therefore they neither feel the exceeding restlessness of their soul, nor can they restrain its slippery courses; and, not bearing the contrition of spirit, they reckon the very continuance of their silence intolerable to them, and, untiring at the laborious works of the field, they are conquered by leisure and grow weary at the length of their own quiet.

Nor is it any wonder if a man sitting in his cell, as though in a most confined enclosure with his thoughts gathered together, is suffocated by a multitude of anxieties, which, bursting forth from the prisons of his dwelling together with the man, straightway flit about through diverse things like unbridled horses. But while for the present they wander abroad from their stalls, as it were, some brief and sad solace is straightway seized; yet when, with the body returning to his own cell, again the whole throng of thoughts has run back as though to its own seat, the very habit of inveterate license rouses up sharper goads.

These men, then, who neither can nor know how to resist the promptings of their own wills, when they have been made anxious within the cell by acedia assailing their unwonted breast more violently, if they too often grant themselves the liberty of going forth by relaxing the law of strictness, will rouse up against themselves a fiercer plague by this—as they think—remedy; just as some believe they can quench the force of inner fevers by a draught of most icy water, when in fact it is agreed that thereby that fire is kindled rather than allayed, since that momentary relief is followed by a far graver affliction.

Wherefore the whole intention of the monk must ever be fixed upon one thing, and the risings and circlings of all his thoughts must be strenuously recalled to that same one thing, that is, to the remembrance of God; just as if one, wishing to close in a rounded vault on high, should continually draw round the line of that most exact centre, and, according to its most certain standard, should bind together with disciplined art all the evenness of the roundness of the structure.

But whoever should attempt to complete it without the guidance of that centre, however great his presumption of art or skill, it is impossible that he should preserve the equality of that circuit without error, or that he should detect by sight alone how much, by his erring, he has taken away from the beauty of true roundness—unless, ever returning to that pointer of truth, and by its arbitration correcting the inner and outer compass of his work, he should enclose so lofty and great a mass under the law of a single point.

So too our mind, unless, keeping the love of the Lord alone as an immovably fixed centre and turning it round through all the moments of our works and endeavours, it shall have—by the reliable compass, if I may so speak, of charity—either fitted or repelled the quality of all its thoughts, will by no means build with reliable art that structure of the spiritual edifice of which Paul is the architect, nor will it possess the beauty of that house which the blessed David, desiring to present it to the Lord in his heart, spoke of: 'Lord, I have loved the beauty of Thy house, and the place of the habitation of Thy glory'; but it will imprudently raise up in its heart a house unseemly and unworthy of the Holy Spirit and destined straightway to fall—not to be glorified by the lodging of the blessed Indweller, but mournfully to be crushed by the ruin of its own construction.

GERMANUS: This kind of work, which can be practised within the cell, is prescribed as a most useful and necessary institution. For not only by the example of your blessedness, founded upon the imitation of apostolic virtues, but also by the testimony of our own experience, the advantage of this thing has often been proven to us. But why the neighborhood of kinsfolk, which you yourselves have not too greatly rejected, ought to be so greatly shunned by us, is not sufficiently clear. For since we behold you, who walk blamelessly in every way of perfection, not only dwelling in your own regions, but see that some have not even withdrawn far from their villages, why should that which is not harmful to you be thought adverse to us? ABRAHAM: Sometimes we see that bad examples are taken from good things.

For if anyone should presume to do the same things, but not with the same disposition and purpose, or with unlike virtue, he will assuredly thence incur the snares of deception and of death, whence for others the fruit of eternal life is acquired.

This too that boy, strong of hand, would doubtless have suffered when matched in combat with that most warlike giant, if he had been clad in the manly and most mighty arms of Saul; and those arms, with which a more robust age had laid low countless throngs of enemies, could have brought undoubted ruin upon one so young, had he not, with prudent discernment, chosen kinds of weapons suited to his youth, and, against that most foul enemy, been armed not with the cuirass and shield with which he saw the others equipped, but with those weapons with which he himself was able to fight. Wherefore it befits each one to weigh the measure of his own strength.

For it befits each one diligently to weigh beforehand the measure of his own strength, and to lay hold of a discipline according to his own capacity rather than according to his own liking; because, although all disciplines are useful, yet all things cannot be fitting for all men. For not because anchoritism is good do we approve it as suitable for all; for by many it is felt to be not only unfruitful, but even destructive. Nor, because we deservedly profess the institution of cenobia or the care of the brethren to be holy and praiseworthy, do we on that account judge that it is to be sought by all. So too the fruit of the guest-house is most abundant, but it cannot be sought by all without detriment to patience.

Accordingly, first the institutions of your region and of this one must be weighed one against another; then the strengths of men, gathered by the continual practice either of virtues or of vices, must be weighed against each other in different scales. For it can happen that what to a man of one nation is arduous and impossible, an ingrained habit has in a manner turned into nature for others; just as certain nations, sundered by a vast diversity of climes, endure the great force of cold or the burning of the sun without any covering of the body—which surely others, who have not experienced that inclemency of the sky, however much strength they may possess, cannot bear.

So too you, who with the utmost effort of soul and body strive in this region at least to assail, as it were, the very nature of your own homeland in many respects, weigh diligently whether in those torpid regions—as report has it—and, as it were, bound fast by the frost of an exceeding faithlessness, you could sustain this, so to speak, nakedness. For upon our men the antiquity of holy converse has, in a manner, naturally implanted this fortitude of purpose; and if you perceive yourselves to be equal to their constancy and virtue, you likewise ought not to flee the neighborhood of your kinsfolk and brethren.

But that you may be able, by a fitting estimation, to measure the extent of your own strength against a sure standard of strictness, I will briefly relate to you the deed of a certain old man, that is, of Abbot Apollo; so that, if the inmost examination of your heart shall judge you to be not inferior to his purpose and virtue, you may without loss of your purpose and without peril to your profession presume upon dwelling in your homeland and upon the neighborhood of kinsfolk—being certain that the affection of kinship or the delight of places cannot overcome the strictness of this humility which not only your will, but even the necessity of pilgrimage, wrings from you in this province.

So then, when to this old man whom we have mentioned his own brother had come in the dead of night, imploring that, going forth for a little while from his monastery, he might be a help to him in extricating an ox which he tearfully complained was stuck fast in a marshy mire a little way off, because he could by no means pull it out alone, Abbot Apollo said to him as he persistently besought: 'Why did you not ask our younger brother, whom you had nearer than me as you passed by?' And when the man, thinking him to have forgotten the death of the brother long since buried, and, from the excessive continuance of his abstinence and solitude, to be as it were out of his mind, replied: 'How could I call from the tomb one who died fifteen years ago?' Abbot Apollo said:

'Are you then ignorant that I too, twenty years ago, died to this world, and can no longer confer upon you from the sepulchre of this cell any solaces that pertain to the state of the present life? Whom Christ suffers not to be relaxed even a little from the intent of the mortification once undertaken, so as to draw out your ox, so that He has not granted even the respite of the briefest moment for the burial of a father—which surely ought to have been performed far more quickly, more honourably, and more religiously.'

Search therefore now the secrets of your breast, and prudently conjecture whether you also can continually maintain such strictness of mind beside your kinsfolk; and when you shall have perceived yourselves to be like this old man in this mortification of soul, then at last know that the neighborhood of kinsfolk and brethren will likewise not be harmful to you—so that, namely, though they be settled close at hand, you may believe us to be as though dead, in such wise that you neither allow them to be cherished by your solaces, nor allow yourselves to be relaxed by their attentions. GERMANUS: On this point you have plainly now left no further room for doubt.

For we are certain that we could by no means practise, in their neighborhood, either the meanness of this present garb or these daily goings barefoot; nay, that not even by like labour should we there provide the things necessary for sustenance, as here too we are daily compelled to bring the very water for ourselves upon our necks from three miles away. For neither our own modesty nor theirs would at all suffer us to do these things in their presence. But what harm would it do to our purpose, if, while they supplied all things, we, being wholly freed from the anxiety of procuring food, gave our effort only to reading and to prayer, so that, with this labour by which we are now distracted removed, we might more intently apply ourselves to spiritual studies alone? ABRAHAM:

I will bring forth against this, not my own opinion to you, but that of the blessed Antony, by which he thus refuted the sluggishness of a certain brother growing torpid with this very lukewarmness of which you speak, so that he might also cut the knot of your proposition. For when a certain man, coming to the aforesaid old man, as I said, said that the anchoritic discipline was by no means to be admired, pronouncing it to be of greater virtue if anyone should practise among men those things which belong to perfection than if he were set in the desert, the blessed Antony asked where he himself dwelt.

And when he had said that he lived near his parents, and that, supported by their provision, he was set free from all care and anxiety over the day's labour and could boast that he devoted himself unceasingly to reading and prayer alone, with no distraction of spirit, blessed Antony asked again: 'Tell me, friend, whether you are saddened at their losses or misfortunes, and likewise rejoice together with them over their prosperity.' He confessed that he shared in both. To him the old man said: 'Know that in the age to come also you will be reckoned of the same lot as those with whom in this life you are stirred, in gain or in loss, in joy or in grief, as a partner.'

Not content with this judgement, blessed Antony went on to enter upon a wider field of discussion, saying: 'This manner of life and this most lukewarm state do not strike you with that loss alone of which I have spoken (though you yourself do not now perceive it, saying in a manner according to that parable of the Proverbs, "They struck me, but I did not grieve; and they mocked me, but I did not know it," or that which is said in the prophet:

"And strangers devoured his strength, and he himself knew it not") — namely that, changing your mind day by day according to the variety of chances, they unceasingly plunge you down to earthly things; but moreover that they defraud you of the fruit of your own hands and the just wage of your own toil, not permitting you, propped up by their provision, to prepare your daily food with your own hands according to the rule of the blessed Apostle, who — while promulgating his last precepts to the leaders of the church of the Ephesians — records that he too, occupied with the holy labours of gospel preaching, nevertheless furnished not only for himself but also for those who were bound to him by the needful services of his ministry, saying:

"You yourselves know that these hands have ministered to the things that I needed, and to those who were with me." Yet to show that he did this for the sake of setting a pattern for our benefit, he says elsewhere: "We were not idle among you, neither did we eat any man's bread for nothing, but in labour and toil, working night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you: not as though we had not power, but that we might give ourselves as a pattern to you, that you might imitate us."

And therefore, although we too did not lack our parents' support, nevertheless we preferred this nakedness above all riches, and chose to prepare our body's daily nourishment by our own sweat rather than to be sustained by our parents' secure provision, setting after this most laborious poverty that idle meditation of the Scriptures which you praise, and that unfruitful application to reading — which without doubt we would most gladly follow, if it had been shown to be more profitable either by the examples of apostolic authority or if it had been wholesomely defined by the institutions of the elders.'