'But know that from this too you are afflicted with no lighter loss than that of which we spoke above, because, though you are of sound and robust body, you are sustained by another's alms, which are justly assigned to the weak alone. For assuredly the whole race of men — save only that one kind of monks who, according to the Apostle's precept, live by the daily labours of their own hands — waits upon the charity of another's compassion. Whence it is certain that not only those who boast of feeding themselves from their parents' means, or their servants' labours, or the produce of their estates, but even the kings of this world themselves are sustained by charity.'
'Finally, this is the definition of our forefathers, who decreed that whatever is spent for the necessity of daily sustenance, and has not been effected and gained by the work of our own hands, must be reckoned as charity — according to the Apostle, who, utterly forbidding the idle any aid of another's bounty, says: "He that does not work, neither let him eat."'
With these words, which blessed Antony used against a certain man, he also instructed us by the examples of his teaching, that we should shun our parents' most pernicious flatteries and the charity of all who supply the necessities of life, and moreover the pleasantness of an agreeable dwelling; and that we should prefer above all the riches of this world the sands squalid with their natural bitterness, and the regions parched by a salt flooding, and subject on that very account to no man's right or dominion; so that we might not only avoid the crowds of men by the pretext of a pathless solitude, but also that the nature of a fertile soil might in no way entice us to the distraction of any kind of cultivation, whereby the mind, drawn away from that chief watch of the heart, is rendered barren for spiritual pursuits.
1:1707
Namquodaliosquoquesaluareuosposseconfiditisetspemaiorislucriadreuisendampatriamfestinatis, auditeetiamsuperhocquandamabbatisMaearifabulamiucundissimeatqueaptissimefiguratam, quametillecuidamsimilibusdesideriisaestuantimedicinaoportunissimaenarrationisingessit. erat, inquit, inciuitatequadamperitissimustonsor, quidenariisternisunumquemquedetondenstenuemuilemquemercedemsuioperisadquirendoexhaceademquantitatenecessariauictuicotidieconparabat, centumquedenariosexpletaomnicorporiscuramarsuppiosuodiebussingulisinferebat.
'Now as for the fact that you trust you can also save others, and in hope of greater gain hasten to revisit your homeland, hear also upon this a certain tale of Abbot Macarius, most delightfully and aptly framed as a figure, which he too pressed as the medicine of a most opportune narrative upon a certain man burning with like desires. There was,' he said, 'in a certain city a most skilled barber, who, shaving each customer for three denarii, and thereby earning a slight and mean reward for his work, procured out of this very sum his daily necessities of food, and put a hundred denarii into his purse each day when all his labour on bodies was complete.'
'But while he was unceasingly amassing this gain, he heard that in a certain far-off city individual men each paid the barber a whole solidus as his wage. When he had learned this, he said: "How long shall I be content with this beggary, to seek with toil a pittance of three denarii, when I could go there and, by the enormous profit of solidi, gather riches?" And so, at once taking up the instruments of his trade, and spending on the journey all that he had gathered and kept here over a long time, he came with the utmost labour to that most gainful city.'
'There, when on the very day he entered he had received from each man the wage of his work, according to what he had learned, seeing towards evening that he had gathered a great number of solidi, he made his way joyfully to the market to buy the food needful for his refreshment. And when he had begun to purchase it at the high price of solidi, all the solidi he had earned being spent on a very scanty meal, he brought home not even the profit of a single denarius.'
'And when he saw his earnings thus consumed day by day, so that he could not only save nothing but scarcely even meet the very necessity of his daily sustenance, reflecting within himself he said: "I will return to my own city and seek again that slenderest gain, out of which, after all my body's care was met, daily abundance was contributing something that could grow toward the support of old age. Though it seemed small and slight, yet it produced by continual increase no mean sum. For that traffic in coins was more profitable to me than this imaginary traffic in solidi, out of which not only does nothing overflow to be laid up, but scarcely even the very necessity of daily food is sustained."'
'And therefore it is more right for us to pursue with unbroken continuance this slenderest fruit of this solitude, which no worldly cares, no worldly distractions, no elation of vainglory and vanity may gnaw away, and no anxieties of the day's necessity may diminish (for "better is a little to the just, above the great riches of sinners") — than to strive after those greater gains which, even if they were won by the most profitable conversion of many, would nevertheless be consumed by the necessity of worldly intercourse and the daily losses of distractions. For it is better, according to the sentence of Solomon, one handful with rest, than two handfuls with labour and presumption of spirit.'
'In which delusions and losses all the exceedingly infirm must needs be entangled, who — while they are still doubtful even of their own salvation, and themselves still need another's teaching and instruction — are goaded by diabolical illusions to converting and governing others; and who, even if they could win some gain from the conversion of certain persons, by their own impatience and disordered ways would squander whatever they had acquired. For that will befall them which the prophet Haggai describes: "And he that gathers wages, puts them into a bag with holes." For truly he lays up his gain in a world full of holes, who whatever he seems to gain through the conversion of others, he scatters away by the intemperance of his heart and the daily distraction of his mind.'
'And so it comes about that, while they believe they are winning richer gains through the instruction of others, they are deprived even of their own amendment. For there are some who make themselves out to be rich, having nothing; and there are some who humble themselves amid much riches; and "better is a man serving himself in low estate, than one who wins dignity for himself and lacks bread." GERMANUS: Fittingly enough your discourse has, by these comparisons, made plain to us the errors of our delusions; whose causes and cures we likewise desire to know, and how this deception befell us we equally wish to be taught. For no one doubts that no one can at all apply remedies to grievous maladies except one who has first foretold the very origins of the diseases. ABRAHAM:
'Of all vices there is one fountain and beginning, but according to the quality of that part or, so to say, member of the soul which has been corrupted, it receives diverse names of passions and corruptions. This is sometimes proved even by the example of bodily diseases, of which, though there is a single cause, it is nevertheless distinguished into diverse kinds of illnesses according to the quality of the members that have been affected. For when the force of a noxious humour has besieged the citadel of the body, that is, the head, it begets the affliction of headache; but when it has invaded the ears or eyes, it turns into an aural or ophthalmic disease; when it has transferred itself to any of the joints and to the extremities of the hands, it is called gout of the joints or of the hands;
but when it has flowed down to the lowest parts of the feet, it is called by a changed name, podagra; and by as many names is one and the same origin of the noxious humour distinguished, as it has seized portions of the members. In the same way, passing from things visible to things invisible, let us believe that the force of each vice resides in the parts and, so to say, members of our soul. Since the very wisest define this to be of a threefold virtue, it must needs be that it is corrupted by some assault either of the λογικόν, that is, the rational, or the θυμικόν, that is, the irascible, or the ἐπιθυμητικόν, that is, the concupiscible. When therefore the force of a noxious passion has besieged any of these affections, from its corruption the vice too takes its name.
For if the plague of vices has infected its rational part, it will beget the vices of vainglory, elation, envy, pride, presumption, contention, heresy. If it has wounded the irascible sense, it will bring forth fury, impatience, sadness, accidie, faintheartedness, and cruelty. If it has corrupted the concupiscible portion, it will generate gluttony, fornication, avarice, covetousness, and noxious and earthly desires. And therefore, if you wish to recognise the fountain and origin of this vice of yours, you must know that the rational portion of your mind and soul has been corrupted, from which are wont to spring up the vices of presumption or vainglory.
Accordingly this first member, so to speak, of the soul must be healed by the judgement of right discretion and the virtue of humility; for while it is corrupted, believing that you have not only already reached the summit of perfection, but can even teach others, and judging yourselves sufficient and fit for the instruction of the rest, you are swept away through the elation of vainglory into that vanity of wanderings which your confession has laid bare.
These wanderings you will thereafter be able to cut off without difficulty, if — grounded, as I said, in the humility of true discretion — you learn, with contrition of your mind, how laborious and how difficult it is for each of us to save his own soul, and with the inmost affection of the heart acknowledge yourselves not only far removed from that presumption of teaching, but even still in need of the help of a teacher. Apply therefore to this member or part of your soul which we have said is specially wounded the medicine of true humility; which, since it is, as far as appears, weaker than the other virtues of the soul in you, must needs be the first to succumb to the diabolical assault.
Just as, when certain injuries assail — arising either from accruing labour or from corruption of the air — it is wont to happen even in human bodies that those parts which have been the weaker are the first to yield and succumb to these mishaps, and when the disease has settled more peculiarly in them, it corrupts with the same plague the sound parts of the body also; so too the soul of each of us, when the pestilential breath of vices blows upon it, must needs be assailed most of all by that passion in which its more tender and infirm portion does not so strongly resist the mighty assaults of the enemy, and to incur the peril of captivity from those parts in which incautious guarding unbars an easier approach to betrayal.
For thus Balaam concluded by sure reasoning that the people of God could be deceived, giving counsel that from that part in which he knew the children of Israel to be weak, ruinous snares should be stretched out for them, not doubting that they, when the abundance of women was offered, would forthwith fall through the ruin of fornication, because he knew the concupiscible parts of their soul to be corrupted. So then the spiritual powers of wickedness try each of us with crafty malice, laying insidious snares especially for those affections of the soul by which they have perceived it to be sick; so that, for example, when they have seen the rational parts of our soul to be vitiated, they contrive to deceive us in that order in which Scripture records king Ahab to have been deceived by those Syrians, who said:
"We know that the kings of Israel are merciful: let us therefore put sackcloth on our loins, and ropes on our heads, and go out to the king of Israel, and we will say to him: Your servant Benhadad says, Let my soul live, I pray." Moved by which words, not by true piety but by the empty praise of mercy, he said: "If he is yet alive, he is my brother." And by this example they make us too, deceived by an error of that rational part, incur God's offence from that very source whence we believed we should obtain a reward and receive the prizes of piety; and to us too a like rebuke may be said: "Because you have let go out of your hand a man worthy of death, your soul shall be for his soul, and your people for his people." Or when the unclean spirit says:
"I will go out, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets" — assuredly through the rational affection, which it knew to be open to deadly ambushes, it stretched out the snares of deception. This same spirit, having supposed as much even concerning our Lord, when it had tempted him in those three affections of the soul by which it knew the whole race of men to be taken captive, gained nothing by its so crafty ambushes. For it assailed the concupiscible part of his mind, saying: "Say that these stones be made bread"; the irascible, when it tried to incite him to seek the power of the present age and the kingdoms of this world; the rational, when it said: "If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down."
In which its deception profited it nothing, because it found nothing to have been corrupted in him according to its conjecture, which it had conceived by false supposition. Whence no part of his soul, assailed by the enemy's ambushes, consented. For "behold," he says, "the prince of this world comes, and in me he will find nothing." GERMANUS: Among the other kinds of our delusions and errors which — as your blessedness has perceived with the keen gaze of the mind — had inflamed us to a longing for our homeland by the empty promise of spiritual advantages, this too has arisen as a very great cause: that sometimes, frequented by the brethren, we can in no way cling to that continual seclusion and long-lasting silence according to our desire.
Through which the course and measure of our daily continence — which for the chastening of the body we desire to keep unbroken and perpetual — must needs be cut short when several brethren come upon us. Which we believe would without doubt in no way happen in our own province, in which it is possible to find either none, or at least very few, men of this profession. ABRAHAM: It is the mark of an irrational and inconsiderate strictness, or rather of the utmost lukewarmness, not to be frequented at all by men. For he who walks with steps too slow in this way which he has undertaken, and lives according to the old man, it is right that to him should come not, I will not say any of the saints, but not even any of men.
But you, if you are aflame with the true and perfect love of our Lord, and follow after God, who is indeed charity, with the full fervour of the spirit, to whatever inaccessible places you flee, they must needs be frequented by men; and the nearer the ardour of divine love has made you to God, the greater the multitude of holy brethren will flock to you. For according to the sentence of the Lord, a city cannot be hid, set upon a mountain, because "those who love me," says the Lord, "I will glorify; but those who despise me shall be ignoble."
Yet you ought to know that this is the subtlest cunning of the devil, this most hidden pit, into which he casts headlong all who are wretched and unwary: that, while he promises them greater things, he steals away the necessary gains of the daily fruit, persuading namely that more secret and vast solitudes ought to be sought, and painting these in their heart as planted with wondrous pleasantnesses. He even feigns certain unknown places, which nowhere at all exist, as if known and prepared and already given over to our power and to be possessed without any difficulty.
He lies too that the men of that region are tractable and compliant to the way of salvation, so that, while he promises there richer fruits of the soul, he may fraudulently snatch away present gains. For when each one, separated by this vain hope from the fellowship of the elders, and destitute of all those things which he had vainly painted for himself in his heart, rises as it were from a deepest slumber, awakened he will find nothing of those things which he had dreamed.
And so the devil, having entangled him in the greater necessities of this life and in inextricable snares, will never permit him even to breathe again toward those things which he had promised himself; and bound not now by those rare and spiritual visitations of the brethren which he had before avoided, but by daily incursions of worldly folk, he will never suffer him to return even to a moderate quiet and discipline of the anchoretic life. That interval too of relaxation and human kindness, most welcome, which sometimes is wont to intervene at the coming of the brethren, though it may seem to you burdensome and to be shunned, yet how useful and wholesome it is both for our body and our spirit, attend patiently to a few words.
It often happens — I will not say to novices and the infirm, but even to the most experienced and perfect — that unless the direction and discipline of their mind be softened by certain relaxations of alternation, it falls either into lukewarmness of spirit or certainly into a pernicious state of the body. And therefore, by the prudent and perfect, when even frequent visitation of the brethren intervenes, it must be not only patiently borne but even gladly embraced: first, because it makes us always more eagerly desire the secrets of solitude (for while it is believed to hold back our course, in a manner it preserves it untiring and continuous;
which, if it were at times held back by no obstacle, could not with unwearied swiftness contend all the way to the end); secondly, because it grants the necessity of refreshing our poor little body with the fruit of human kindness, conferring on us greater gains, with a most delightful relaxation of the body, than are those which were to be acquired through the fatigue of abstinence. On this matter I will briefly relate a most apt comparison, made known by an old narrative. It is told that the most blessed John, when he was gently stroking a partridge with his hands, suddenly caught sight of a certain philosopher coming to him in the guise of a hunter. He, marvelling that a man of such reputation and fame should lower himself to such small and lowly amusements, said: "Are you that John,
whose distinguished and most celebrated fame drew me too with the greatest desire to know you? Why then do you occupy yourself with such lowly amusements?" To whom blessed John said: "What is it that you carry in your hand?" And he: "A bow," he said. "And why," he said, "do you not carry it everywhere always bent?" To whom he replied: "It is not fitting, lest by the continual bending the strength of its stiffness be slackened and grow soft and perish; and when it is needful that stronger arrows be aimed at some beast, the stiffness being now lost through the excess of continual straining, a more violent shot cannot be sent forth."
"Nor let this so small and brief relaxation of our spirit offend you, O young man," said blessed John, "which, unless it at times relieve and relax the stiffness of its own straining by some remission, slackening under an unremitting vigour, could not, when necessity demands, comply with the strength of the spirit." GERMANUS: Since you have bestowed on us the remedies for all our delusions, and the diabolical ambushes by which we were shaken have, by your teaching, with the Lord's granting, been uncovered to us, we pray that this too may likewise be explained to us, which is said in the Gospel: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." For it seems sufficiently contrary to that prophetic sentence in which it is said:
"For the words of your lips I have kept hard ways" — since indeed the Apostle also says: "All who wish to live godly in Christ suffer persecutions." But whatever is hard and full of persecutions can be neither light nor sweet. ABRAHAM:
We shall prove by the easy evidence of experience itself that the sentence of our Lord and Saviour is most true, if we have entered upon the way of perfection lawfully and according to the will of Christ, and, mortifying all our desires and cutting off our noxious wills, have not only allowed nothing of this world's substance to remain to us — through which, whenever it pleases, the enemy will find power to lay us waste and tear us apart — but have felt that we are not even our own masters, fulfilling in truth that apostolic saying: "I live, yet now not I, but Christ lives in me."
For what can be grievous, what hard, to him who has taken up the yoke of Christ with his whole mind, who, grounded in true humility and ever looking to the Lord's passions, rejoices in all the injuries inflicted upon him, saying: "For which cause I take pleasure in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ: for when I am weak, then am I powerful"?
By the loss of what family estate, I say, will he be tormented, who, glorious in perfect nakedness, has voluntarily for Christ's sake spurned all the pomps of this world, and generally reckons all its concupiscences as dung, that he may win Christ, by the continual meditation of that gospel precept despising and shutting out the fever of all losses? For "what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Over the deprivation of what thing will he grieve, who knows that all which can be taken away by others is not his own, proclaiming with unconquered virtue that saying: "We brought nothing into this world: without doubt neither can we take anything away"?
But by the necessity of what want shall his fortitude be overcome, who has not learned to have a wallet on the way, nor money in his belt, but glories with the Apostle "in many fastings, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness"? What labour, or what elder's precept so arduous, will be able to disturb the tranquillity of his breast, who — having no will of his own — meets all that is commanded him not only patiently but even gladly, and, after the example of our Saviour, seeks not his own but the Father's will to do, himself also saying to his Father: "Nevertheless not as I will, but as you will"?
By what injuries too, by what persecution shall he be terrified — nay, what torment can there be that is not even joyful to him — who in all stripes ever exults with the apostles and desires to be counted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Christ? But that, on the contrary, the yoke of Christ should seem to us neither light nor sweet, is more justly to be ascribed to our own contumacy, who — cast down by diffidence and unbelief — fight with foolish perversity against His command, nay rather His counsel, who says: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell (or give away) all that you have, and come, follow me" — retaining, that is, the materials of earthly means.
Since the devil holds our soul bound fast with the knots of these things, what remains but that, whenever he wishes to separate us from spiritual joys, he should sadden us by their diminishment and privation, working this by cunning wiles, so that, once the sweetness of that yoke and the lightness of that burden have been made heavy for us through the perversity of vicious desire, he may entangle us in the very chains of that wealth and substance which we reserve for ourselves as rest and solace, and torment us ever with the scourges of worldly cares, carving out of our very selves the means by which we are torn apart? For each one is bound fast by the cords of his own sins, hearing through the prophet:
Behold, all you who kindle a fire, girt about with flames, walk in the light of your fire and in the flames which you have kindled. For by these things indeed, as Solomon testifies, each one is punished by the very things through which he has sinned. For the pleasures we enjoy become a torment to us, and the delights and indulgences of this flesh are turned back, like executioners, upon their own author; for it must needs be that he who is propped up by his former means and riches can receive neither the entire humility of heart nor the full mortification of harmful pleasures.
But when a man is supported by these instruments of virtue, all the straits of the present life and every loss that the enemy can inflict are borne not only most patiently but even most joyfully; whereas, when these are banished, so pernicious a pride springs up that even for the slightest insult we are wounded by the deadly strokes of impatience, and it is said to us through the prophet Jeremiah: And now what have you to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the troubled water? And what have you to do in the way of the Assyrians, to drink the water of the river? Your own wickedness shall reprove you, and your apostasy shall rebuke you. Know and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and that my fear is not with you, says the Lord.
That the wondrous sweetness of the Lord's yoke should be felt as bitter, what is this but that the bitterness of our apostasy corrupts it? That the so joyful lightness of the divine burden should grow heavy, what is this but that we despise, with stubborn presumption, him by whom it was sustained—since Scripture plainly testifies to this very thing, saying: For if they had walked in the straight paths, they would surely have found the paths of justice smooth?
It is we, I say, it is manifestly we who make rough with the crooked and hard rocks of our desires the straight and smooth paths of the Lord; we who, most senselessly forsaking the royal road—paved with apostolic and prophetic stones and made level by the footsteps of all the saints and of the Lord himself—pursue whatever is trackless and thorny, and, blinded by the enticements of present delights, creep along the dark and obstructed byways among the brambles of the vices, with torn legs and that wedding garment rent apart—not only to be pierced by the sharpest points of the briars, but also to be laid low by the strokes of the venomous serpents and scorpions lurking there. For thorns and snares are in the crooked ways, but he who fears the Lord shall keep himself from them.
Of such the Lord speaks elsewhere too through the prophet: My people, he says, has forgotten me, pouring out libations in vain, and stumbling in their ways, in the paths of the world, so as to walk in them upon an untrodden road. For the ways of those who do nothing are, according to the sentence of Solomon, strewn with thorns, but those of the strong are well worn. And thus, straying from the royal road, they will not be able to reach that mother-city to which our course ought ever to be undeviatingly directed. This too Ecclesiastes expressed clearly enough, saying: The labor of fools shall afflict those who have not known how to go into the city—that is, into that heavenly Jerusalem which is the mother of us all.