Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 56

In the region of Samnium there was once an estate of the patrician Venantius, on which a tenant-farmer of his had a son named Honoratus, who from his boyhood years burned with love of the heavenly homeland through abstinence. And when he grew mighty in a great manner of life, and now restrained himself even from idle speech, and greatly subdued the flesh by abstinence, as I said before, on a certain day his parents made a banquet for their neighbours, at which meats were prepared for eating. When, out of love of abstinence, he refused to touch these for food, his parents began to mock him and to say: «Eat! Are we, forsooth, going to bring you a fish in these mountains?» For in that place fish were wont to be heard of, not seen.

But while Honoratus was being mocked with these words, suddenly at the banquet water for service ran short; and with a wooden pail, as is the custom there, a servant went to the spring. And as he was drawing water, a fish entered the pail. The servant, returning, poured out the fish with the water before the faces of those reclining at table — a fish that could have sufficed Honoratus for the food of a whole day. All marvelled, and that whole mockery so ceased. For they began to venerate in Honoratus the abstinence which before they had derided; and thus the fish from the mountain wiped away for the man of God the reproaches of mockery.

When he had grown in great virtues, he was granted his freedom by his aforesaid master, and in that place which is called Fundi he built a monastery, in which he became the father of nearly two hundred monks; and there, all around, his life gave examples of an excellent manner of life. For on a certain day, from that mountain which rises on high above his monastery, a mass of an enormous rock broke loose, which, coming down along the sheer side of the mountain, threatened the ruin of the whole cell and the destruction of all the brethren. When the holy man saw it coming from above, calling upon the name of Christ with repeated voice, at once stretching out his right hand he set against it the sign of the cross, and fixed it as it was falling on that very side of the mountain — as the religious man Laurence testifies.

And because there was no place to which it could adhere, it appears — so that even to this day, to those who behold the mountain, it seems to hang as though about to fall. PETER: We suppose that this so distinguished a man, in order that he might afterward become a master of disciples, first had a master? GREGORY: I have heard that this man was by no means the disciple of anyone; but the gift of the Holy Spirit is not confined by law. It is indeed the custom of right conduct that he who has not learned to be under authority should not dare to preside; nor should he command obedience to his subjects which he has not known to render to his superiors. Yet nevertheless there are some who are so taught inwardly by the mastership of the Spirit, that even if the discipline of human mastership be lacking to them outwardly, the guidance of the inward Master is not lacking.

Yet the liberty of their life is not to be drawn as an example by the weak, lest, while each one presumes himself to be likewise filled with the Holy Spirit, he should scorn to be the disciple of a man, and become a master of error. But the mind which is filled with the divine Spirit has its most evident signs: namely virtues and humility, which if both perfectly meet together in one mind, it is clear that they bear witness to the presence of the Holy Spirit. For so also John the Baptist is not read to have had a master; nor did Truth itself, which taught the apostles by bodily presence, gather him bodily among the disciples; but the one whom he taught inwardly, he had left outwardly, as it were, in his own liberty.

So too Moses, taught in the wilderness, learned from the angel a commandment (Exodus 3) which he did not come to know through man. But these things, as we have said before, are to be venerated by the weak, not imitated. PETER: What you say pleases me; but I ask that you tell me whether so great a Father left any disciple who was an imitator of himself.