Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 5

For there are some who receive surpassing gifts of the virtues, and for the training of others are exalted with great endowments; who are pure with the zeal of chastity, strong with the firmness of abstinence, filled with the feasts of doctrine, humble with the long-suffering of patience, upright with the fortitude of authority, kind with the grace of piety, strict with the severity of justice. If such men, when called, refuse to take up the summit of governance, they for the most part deprive themselves of the very gifts which they received not for themselves alone, but also for others. And when they consider their own gain and not that of others, they deprive themselves of the goods which they desire to have as their own. Hence indeed the Truth says to His disciples: A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden;

neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a lampstand, that it may shine to all who are in the house (Matt. V, 15). Hence He says to Peter: Simon, son of John, do you love me? (John XXI, 16, 17.) And when he had at once answered that he loved Him, he heard: If you love me, feed my sheep. If, then, the care of feeding is the testimony of love, whoever, being mighty in virtues, refuses to feed the flock of God, is convicted of not loving the supreme Shepherd. Hence Paul says: If Christ died for all, then all are dead. And if He died for all, it remains that those who live should now live no longer to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again (2 Cor. V, 15). Hence Moses says (Deut.

XXV, 5) that the surviving brother should take the wife of a brother who has died without children, and beget children unto the name of the brother; and if he perhaps refuses to take her, the woman should spit in his face, and a kinsman should unshoe one foot of his, and call his dwelling the house of the unshod. For that deceased brother is He who, appearing after the glory of the resurrection, said: Go, tell my brethren (Matt. XXVIII, 10). He, as it were, died without children, because He has not yet completed the number of His elect. The surviving brother is commanded to obtain His wife, because it is surely fitting that the care of the holy Church be imposed upon him who is able well to govern her.

Into the face of him who is unwilling the woman spits, because whoever does not care to profit others out of the gifts which he has received, the holy Church, reproaching even his goods, casts as it were spittle into his face. From him the shoe is taken off one foot, that he may be called the house of the unshod. For it is written: The feet shod in the preparation of the Gospel of peace (Eph. VI, 15). If, then, we bear the care of our neighbor as our own, we fortify both feet with the shoe. But he who, considering his own usefulness, neglects that of his neighbors, loses as it were the shoe of one foot with disgrace.

And so there are some who, enriched, as we have said, with great endowments, while they burn with the pursuits of contemplation alone, shrink from serving the usefulness of their neighbors in preaching; they love the secret of quiet, they long for the retreat of speculation. Concerning whom, if they are strictly judged, they are without doubt guilty in proportion to how many they could have profited by coming forth to the public. For with what mind does he who would shine forth to profit his neighbors prefer his own retreat to the usefulness of others, when the only-begotten of the supreme Father Himself, that He might profit many, came forth from the bosom of the Father to our public?