Institutes & Conferences 1 part 44/44

But whoever, in truth renouncing this world, takes up upon himself the yoke of Christ and learns from him—being schooled by the daily exercises of injuries—that he is meek and humble of heart, will in all temptations remain ever unmoved, and all things will work together unto good for him. For the words of God, according to the prophet Obadiah, are good to him who walks uprightly; and again: For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but transgressors shall fall in them. Therefore the kindly grace of the Savior toward us has bestowed upon us, through the struggle of temptations, greater rewards of praise than if he had taken away from us all necessity of combat.

For it belongs to a loftier and more excellent virtue to remain ever unmoved though hemmed in by persecutions and hardships, and to persevere faithful and undaunted in reliance upon God's protection, and, girt against human assaults as with the arms of unconquered virtue, most gloriously to triumph over impatience, and in a manner to acquire virtue out of weakness—for virtue is made perfect in weakness. For behold, says the Lord, I have given you as a pillar of iron and a wall of brass over all the earth, to the kings of Judah and to its princes and priests and to all the people of the land. And they shall fight against you, and shall not prevail, for I am with you, to deliver you, says the Lord.

Therefore, according to the pure teaching of the Lord, the royal road is sweet and light, though it be felt as hard and rough. For those who serve piously and faithfully, when they have taken up the yoke of the Lord upon themselves and have learned from him that he is meek and humble of heart, already in a manner laying down the burden of earthly passions, will find—by the Lord's granting—not toil but rest for their souls, as he himself has testified through the prophet Jeremiah, saying: Stand upon the ways, and see, and ask concerning the ancient paths, which is the good way, and walk in it; and you shall find refreshment for your souls.

And for them the crooked shall forthwith be made straight, and the rough places into smooth ways; and when they taste, they shall see that the Lord is sweet; and hearing Christ proclaim in the Gospel, Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you, once they have laid down the weights of the vices, they will understand what follows: For my yoke is sweet and my burden is light. The way of the Lord has refreshment, then, if it be kept according to his own law. But it is we who procure for ourselves sorrows and torments by turbulent distractions, while we prefer to follow the crooked and perverse ways of this world, even at the greatest peril and difficulty.

But when in this way we have made the Lord's yoke heavy and hard for ourselves, with now a blasphemous spirit we lay the blame upon the hardness and harshness either of the yoke itself or of Christ who imposes it, according to that saying: The folly of a man corrupts his ways, but he blames God in his heart; and, according to the prophet Haggai, when we have said that the way of the Lord is not right, the Lord fittingly answers us: Is not my way right? Are not rather your ways crooked?

And in truth, if you are willing to compare the sweet-smelling flower of virginity and the most tender purity of chastity with the foul and stinking wallowings of lusts; the quiet and security of monks with the perils and hardships in which the men of this world are entangled; the rest of our poverty with the devouring anxieties and sleepless cares of the rich, in which, not without the utmost peril of life, they are consumed day and night—you will most easily prove the yoke of Christ to be most sweet and his burden most light. Accordingly, that recompense of rewards too, by which the Lord has promised a hundredfold in this life to those who renounce perfectly, saying:

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 in the present, and shall possess life everlasting—is rightly and most truly received in this same sense without any disturbance of faith. For many, taking occasion from this sentence, with gross understanding affirm that these things are to be restored to the saints in a carnal manner during that time of a thousand years; whereas assuredly they must confess that that age, which they say is to come after the resurrection, cannot be understood as the present one.

It is therefore far more credible and far more manifest that he who at Christ's persuasion has despised anything of worldly affections or goods receives, even in this life, a hundredfold more welcome love from the brethren and companions of his purpose, who are bound to him by a spiritual glue. For that love which is joined among parents and children and brothers, spouses or kinsfolk, whether social bond couples it or the tie of blood-relationship joins it, is plainly brief enough and fragile.

In fine, even good and holy sons, when they have grown up, are sometimes shut out from their parents' houses and substance; the fellowship also of the conjugal bond is sometimes broken, even when an honorable cause intervenes; a contentious division sunders the property of brothers. Monks alone retain the perpetual unity of their union, and possess all things in common without distinction, they who believe that all their own is the brethren's, and all the brethren's is their own. If, then, the grace of our love be conferred upon those affections by which carnal love couples men together, assuredly this love is a hundredfold sweeter and loftier. There is received, too, from conjugal continence a sweetness a hundredfold greater than that which was afforded to them mutually through the intermingling of the sexes.

In place of that gladness too which one had in the possession of a single field and house, he will enjoy a joy of riches a hundredfold greater, who, passing over into the adoption of the sons of God, will possess as his own all things that are the eternal Father's, and, in affection and virtue, in imitation of that true Son, will proclaim: All things that the Father has are mine; and now, no longer with that penal care of distraction and anxiety, but secure and glad, as amid his own, he will succeed everywhere, hearing daily proclaimed to himself by the Apostle: For all things are yours, whether the world, or things present, or things to come; and by Solomon: The whole world of riches belongs to the faithful man.

You have, then, this recompense of the hundredfold expressed in the greatness of the merit and in the distinction of a quality so incomparable. For if someone were to repay for a certain weight of bronze or iron or any baser metal the same weight, but of gold, would he not seem to have restored even more than a hundredfold? So, when for the contempt of pleasures and earthly affections a spiritual joy and the delight of most precious love is repaid, even though it be the same number, yet this is a hundredfold greater and more excellent. And that this may be rendered more evident by frequent repetition: formerly I possessed a wife in the wanton passion of desire; this same wife I now possess in the honor of sanctification and in the true love of Christ:

she is one woman, but the merit of love has grown a hundredfold. But if for the disturbance of anger and fury you weigh the perpetual gentleness of patience; for the anguish of anxiety and distraction, the quiet of security; for the fruitless and penal sadness of this world, the fruit of a salutary sadness; for the vanity of temporal gladness, the abundance of spiritual joy—you will clearly perceive a recompense a hundredfold in the exchange of these affections. And if the merits of the contrary virtues be compared with the brief and slippery pleasure of each vice, the multiplied delight will prove these to be a hundredfold better.

For the number of a hundred is transferred from the left to the right; and although in the reckoning of the fingers it seems to keep the same figure, yet it far surpasses in greatness of quantity. For it will come to pass that we who seemed to bear the form of a goat on the left, being transferred, may attain the merit of a sheep on the right. Now let us pass to the quantity of those things which, in return for the contempt of worldly advantages, Christ restores to us in this present world, especially according to the Gospel of Mark, which says thus:

There is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or mother, or children, or lands, for my sake and for the Gospel's sake, who shall not receive a hundred times as much now in this time—houses, and brothers, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions—and in the world to come life everlasting. For everyone who, out of love for Christ's name, has despised one father or mother or son, shall receive a hundredfold quantity of brothers and parents, passing over into the most sincere love of all who serve Christ; for one, that is, beginning to have so many fathers and brothers, bound to him by a more fervent and excellent affection.

He will also be enriched with a multiplied possession of houses and lands; for whoever, for the love of Christ, has cast off one house, will possess as his own the countless dwellings of the monasteries, succeeding, as by the right of his own house, in whatever part of the world he may be. For how does he not receive a hundredfold—and if it be lawful to add anything to the sentence of our Lord, more than a hundredfold—who, abandoning the untrustworthy and forced services of ten or twenty slaves, is supported by the voluntary obedience of so many free and noble men?

That this is so, you too have been able to prove by your own experience, who, having left your several fathers and mothers and homes, into whatever part of the world you have entered, acquire without any toil of anxiety countless fathers and mothers and brothers, houses too and lands and most faithful servants, who receive you as their own masters, embrace you, cherish you, and venerate you with services. But this ministry, I say, the saints will rightly and confidently enjoy who have first, by voluntary devotion, subjected themselves and all that is theirs to the service of the brotherhood. For, according to the sentence of the Lord, they will freely receive that which they themselves have rendered to others.

But whoever has not first, with sincere humility, rendered these things to his companions, how will he patiently allow them to be rendered to himself, since he feels himself burdened rather than cherished by their services, because he prefers to receive the brethren's service rather than to render it? Yet all these things he will receive not with slack security nor with idle enjoyment, but, according to the word of the Lord, with persecutions—that is, with the pressures of this world and the utmost anguish of sufferings; for, as that most wise man attests, he who is soft and without pain shall be in want. For the kingdom of heaven is seized not by the slothful, not by the slack, not by the delicate, not by the tender, but by the violent. Who, then, are these violent ones?

Surely those who inflict an illustrious violence not upon others but upon their own soul, who by a praiseworthy plundering, defrauding it of all pleasure in present things, are pronounced by the Lord's voice to be excellent plunderers, and by such rapine violently invade the kingdom of heaven. For the kingdom of heaven, according to the sentence of the Lord, suffers violence, and the violent bear it away. These indeed are the praiseworthy violent, who do violence to their own perdition. For man, as it is written, labors for himself in sorrows, and does violence to his own perdition.

Our perdition is the enjoyment of the present life, and, to speak more expressly, the carrying out of our desires and self-wills; and if anyone withdraws these from his soul and mortifies them, he assuredly does a glorious and profitable violence to his own perdition, denying to it, that is, its most pleasant self-wills, which the divine word through the prophet frequently reproaches, saying: For in the days of your fast your own will is found; and again: If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your own will on my holy day, and glorify him, while you do not follow your own ways, and your own will is not found, so that you speak a word. And to such a one, what great blessedness is promised he forthwith adds through the prophet:

Then, he says, you shall delight in the Lord, and I will lift you up above the heights of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. And therefore our Lord and Savior, that he might hand down to us a pattern for cutting off our own wills, said: I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and again: Not as I will, but as you will. This virtue those especially practice who, dwelling in cenobia, are governed by the command of a senior, who do nothing at all by their own judgment, but their will hangs upon the will of the abbot.

Finally, that the discourse of this discussion may now be brought to a close: do not, I beseech you, even in this do those who faithfully serve Christ most evidently obtain a hundredfold grace, in that for his name's sake they are honored by the highest rulers, and, although they themselves do not seek human glory, yet even amid the straits of persecutions they become venerable to all judges and powers—men whose lowliness might perhaps have been despicable even to persons of middling rank, whether for the obscurity of their birth or for their servile condition, had they remained in the worldly manner of life? But through the warfare of Christ, no one will dare to bring the reproach of low birth against nobility, no one to object the obscurity of one's lineage:

nay rather, by those very reproaches of the lowest condition, by which others are wont to be confounded and dishonored, the servants of Christ are the more gloriously ennobled. This we can more evidently prove in the case of abbot John, who dwells in that desert which lies near the town of Lyco. Born of most obscure ancestors, he became, for Christ's name's sake, so admirable to almost the whole human race, that even those very lords of present things—who, holding the helm of this world and its empire, are a terror even to all the powerful and to kings—venerate him as a lord, and, seeking his oracles from regions so far away, commit to his prayers and merits the summit of their empire, the stability of their welfare, and the outcomes of their wars.

Of such things the blessed Abraham discoursed concerning both the origin and the remedy of our deception, and in a manner laid bare to our very eyes the snares of those thoughts which the devil, their author, had insinuated, and kindled us to a desire for true mortification—by which we believe many will be inflamed, although all these things have been set forth in unpolished speech. For although the cooling ember of our eloquence has overlaid the most glowing sentiments of the greatest fathers, yet we think that the coldness of very many will be warmed—of those, that is, who, removing the ashes of words, shall have wished to rouse the vivacity of the meanings that lie hidden.

But to you, O holy brothers, I have not, puffed up by a spirit of presumption, sent forth this fire—which the Lord came to cast upon the earth and which he exceedingly desires to burn—as though I would kindle your most fervent purpose by the addition of this heat; but that you might have greater authority among your sons, if the precepts even of the greatest and most ancient fathers should confirm that which you yourselves teach, not by the dead sound of words, but by the living example. It remains that a spiritual breeze of your prayers may accompany me, hitherto tossed by a most perilous tempest, now to the safest harbor of silence.