The Conferences 11.1–11.15

When we were living in a coenobium in Syria, after the first rudiments of the faith, and with some growth following, we had begun to long for a greater grace of perfection, we resolved at once to go to Egypt and, penetrating even the most remote desert of the Thebaid, to visit very many of the saints whose fame had spread everywhere, from a desire, if not to imitate them, at least to know them. So we came by sea to a town of Egypt called Thennesus. Its inhabitants are so surrounded on every side either by the sea or by salt lagoons that, since there is no land, they give themselves only to trade and gain their wealth and livelihood by commerce by ship; so much so that when they want to put up buildings there is no earth available unless it is brought by boat from far away.

When we arrived there, God, favoring our desires, brought about the arrival of the most blessed and eminent man, Bishop Archebius. He had been snatched from the company of the anchorites and given as bishop to the town of Panephysis, and he kept his purpose of solitude with such strictness all his life that he relaxed nothing of the course of his former humility and was not flattered by the honor added to him. For he did not testify that he had been called to that office as one fit for it, but lamented that he had been driven out of the discipline of the anchoritic life as unworthy, because, though he had stayed in it for thirty-seven years, he had by no means been able to reach the purity of so great a profession. When he had received us devoutly and most kindly in the said Thennesus, where the business of electing a bishop there had brought him, and learned of our desire to seek out the holy fathers even in the further parts of Egypt, he said: “Come, see meanwhile the old men who live not far from our monastery. Their age shines out in their bodies, now bent, and their holiness in their very appearance, so that even the sight of them alone can give great teaching to those who see them. From them you may learn, not so much by words as by the very example of a holy life, what I grieve that I have lost and, having lost it, can no longer hand on. But I believe my poverty will be somewhat relieved by this effort, if, when you are seeking that gospel pearl which I myself do not have, I at least provide where you may more readily buy it.”

So, taking a staff and a wallet, as is the custom there for all monks setting out on a journey, he himself led us as guide of the way to his own city, that is, Panephysis. Its lands, and indeed most of the neighboring region, once very rich (for, as it is said, everything for the royal table was supplied from it), had been overrun by the sea, which a sudden earthquake had driven out beyond its bounds; and so, almost all the villages having collapsed, it covered lands once fertile with salt marshes, so that people think that what is sung spiritually in the psalm, “He turned rivers into a desert, and springs of water into thirst, a fruitful land into saltness, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it,” was foretold literally of that region. In these places, then, many towns set on higher mounds, their inhabitants driven away, were in this way made into islands by that flood, and they offer the solitude the saints desire in their withdrawal. In them lived three elders, anchorites of great age: Chaeremon, Nesteros, and Joseph.

So blessed Archebius chose to take us first to Chaeremon, because he was both nearer to his monastery and older than the other two. For he had passed the hundredth year of his life, eager only in spirit, and his back had been so bent by length of years and constancy in prayer that, as if returned to earliest infancy, he went about with his hands let down and stretched out to the ground. Looking at both his wonderful face and his gait (for though all his limbs were now weakened and deadened, he had by no means lost the rigor of his former strictness), we humbly asked him for a word of teaching, declaring that the desire for spiritual instruction alone had been the reason for our coming. Sighing heavily he said: “What teaching can I give you, when the weakness of old age, as it has slackened my former rigor, has also taken away my confidence in speaking? For how should I presume to teach what I myself do not do, or instruct another in what I know I now practise either less or more coldly? For that reason I have not allowed any of the younger men to live with me up to this age, lest another’s strictness be relaxed by my example. For the authority of one who teaches will never be effective unless he fixes it in the hearer’s heart by the effect of his own practice.”

Pierced with no small confusion at this, we answered: “Although the hardness of this place, or the solitary life itself, which even robust youth can hardly endure, should be enough for all our instruction, and these teach us and pierce us quite abundantly even if you are silent, we nevertheless ask you to set aside your silence a little and kindly pour into us those things by which we may embrace the virtue we see in you, not so much by imitation as by admiration. For even if our lukewarmness, revealed to you, does not deserve to obtain what we ask, at least the labor of so long a journey should obtain it, by which we have hurried here from the rudiments of the coenobium at Bethlehem, out of desire for your instruction and love of our own progress.”

Then blessed Chaeremon said: “There are three things that make people refrain from vices: either the fear of hell or of present laws, or the hope and desire of the kingdom of heaven, or the disposition toward goodness itself and the love of the virtues. For we read that fear abhors the contagion of evil: “The fear of the Lord hates evil.” Hope too shuts out the assault of all vices: “For none who hope in him will offend.” Love also does not fear the fall of sins, since “love never fails,” and again: “Love covers a multitude of sins.” And therefore the blessed apostle, including the whole sum of salvation in the perfection of these three virtues, says: “Now there remain faith, hope, love, these three.” For it is faith that makes us avoid the contagion of vices through fear of the judgment to come and its punishments; hope that, calling our mind away from present things, despises all the pleasures of the body in expectation of heavenly rewards; love that, kindling us with ardor of mind to the love of Christ and the fruit of the spiritual virtues, makes us detest with complete hatred whatever is contrary to them. Although these three seem to tend to one end (for they urge us to abstain from unlawful things), yet they differ from one another by great degrees of excellence. For the two former belong properly to those people who, tending toward progress, have not yet acquired the disposition of the virtues; the third belongs especially to God and to those who have received into themselves the image and likeness of God. For he alone does what is good with no fear and no reward urging him, but solely from the disposition of goodness. For, as Solomon says, “The Lord has made all things for himself.” For by reason of his goodness he bestows all abundance of good things on worthy and unworthy alike, since he can neither be wearied by injuries nor moved in his feelings by the iniquities of men, remaining always perfect goodness and unchangeable nature.

“If anyone, then, is striving for perfection, from that first stage of fear, which we have called properly servile, of which it is said: “When you have done all things, say: We are unprofitable servants,” he will climb by a step of progress to the higher path of hope. This is compared no longer to a slave but to a hired servant, because it awaits the wages of recompense, and, as though secure about the pardon of sins and the fear of punishment, and conscious of its good works, although it seems to seek the reward promised, it has not yet been able to reach that disposition of the son who, trusting in his father’s generous indulgence, does not doubt that all that is his father’s is his own. To this even the prodigal, who had lost the name of son together with his father’s property, does not dare to aspire, saying: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” For after those husks of the swine, of which he was denied his fill, that is, the filthy food of the vices, when he came to himself and, pierced by saving fear, had now begun to shudder at the uncleanness of the swine and to dread the torments of dire hunger, he, having become as it were a slave, now thinking of wages, desires even the rank of a hired servant and says: “How many hired servants of my father have bread in abundance, and I perish here with hunger! I will return to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants.” But the father, running out to meet him, received this word of humble repentance with greater kindness than it had been uttered, and, not content to grant him the lesser things, passed over both stages without delay and restored him to the former dignity of sons. We too, then, must hasten, so that, climbing by the indissoluble grace of love to the third stage, that of the sons, who believe that all that is the father’s is theirs, we may deserve to receive the image and likeness of that heavenly Father and be able to cry out, in imitation of that true Son: “All that the Father has is mine.” This the blessed apostle also declares of us, saying: “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come: all are yours.” To this likeness the Savior’s commands also call us: “Be perfect,” he says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect.” For in those others the disposition toward goodness is sometimes interrupted, when the vigor of the soul, slackened by some lukewarmness or joy or delight, takes away for the moment either the fear of hell or the desire of future things. And there is indeed in them a certain stage of progress that teaches us, so that when we begin to avoid vices through fear of punishment or hope of rewards, we may be able to pass on to the stage of love; for, he says, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment, and he who fears is not perfect in love. Let us therefore love, because God first loved us.” So we shall not be able to climb to that true perfection in any other way than this: that as he first loved us for no other reason than our salvation, so we too love him for no other reason than for love of him alone. Therefore we must strive to climb with perfect ardor of mind from this fear to hope, and from hope to the love of God or the love of the virtues themselves, so that, passing over into the disposition toward goodness itself, we may hold unwaveringly, as far as is possible for human nature, to what is good.

“For there is a great difference between one who extinguishes the fires of the vices in himself through fear of hell or hope of future reward, and one who, from the disposition of divine love, shudders at wickedness and uncleanness themselves and possesses the good of purity only out of love and desire for chastity, who, no longer looking to the reward of a future promise but delighted with the consciousness of a present good, does everything not in view of punishments but in delight in the virtues. For this state can neither abuse an opportunity to sin when all human witnesses are removed, nor be violated by the hidden delights of thoughts, since, holding the disposition of virtue itself in its very marrow, it not only does not admit into the heart whatever is contrary to it, but even detests it with the greatest horror. For it is one thing for someone, delighted by a present good, to hate the vices and the contagions of the flesh, and another to restrain unlawful desires in view of future reward; and it is one thing to fear present loss and another to dread future punishment. Finally, it is far greater to be unwilling to leave the good for the sake of the good itself than not to consent to evil for fear of evil. For in the former the good is voluntary, but in the latter it is as though forced and violently wrung from one who is unwilling, either by fear of punishment or by desire of rewards. For he who abstains from the allurements of the vices by reason of fear will return again to what he loves once the barrier of fear is removed, and so he will not keep the stability of good continually, nor will he ever rest even from attack, since he will not possess a firm and lasting peace of chastity. For where there is the unrest of wars, the dangers of wounds cannot but occur. For anyone placed in battle, however much a warrior he is and however bravely he fights, often inflicting deadly wounds on his opponents, must sometimes be grazed by the enemy’s sword. But he who has overcome the assault of the vices and now enjoys the security of peace, and has passed over into the disposition of virtue itself, will keep the state of that good to which he now wholly belongs, since he believes nothing more damaging than the loss of inner chastity. For he judges nothing dearer or more precious than present purity, and for him either a harmful transgression of the virtues or the poisonous contagion of vice itself is a grievous punishment. To such a man, I say, neither will reverence for human presence add anything of uprightness, nor will solitude lessen it; but carrying everywhere and always with him his conscience as judge not only of his actions but also of his thoughts, he will strive to please it above all, knowing that he can neither get round it, nor deceive it, nor escape it.”

“If anyone, relying on God’s help and not on the labor of his own effort, deserves to possess this state, he will begin to pass from the servile condition, in which there is fear, and from the hireling’s desire of hope, in which what is sought is not so much the goodness of the giver as the reward of recompense, into the adoption of sons, where there is no longer fear, no longer desire, but that love which never fails continues for ever. Rebuking certain people about this fear and love, the Lord showed what suits which person: “A son honors his father, and a servant fears his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear?” For one who is a slave must fear, since “if, knowing his master’s will, he has done things worthy of stripes, he will be beaten with many.” Whoever, then, through this love has reached the image and likeness of God will now delight in the good for the pleasure of the good itself, and, possessing in a way a like disposition of patience and gentleness, will no longer be angry at any vices of sinners, but rather, grieving and suffering with their weaknesses, will beg pardon for them. Remembering that he himself was attacked by the goads of similar passions until he was saved by the Lord’s mercy, and that he was delivered from the assault of the flesh not by his own effort but by God’s protection, he will understand that not anger but mercy should be shown to those who go astray, singing to God that verse with all tranquillity of heart: “You have broken my bonds; to you I will offer the sacrifice of praise,” and: “Unless the Lord had helped me, my soul would soon have dwelt in hell.” And abiding in this humility of mind he will be able to fulfil that gospel command of perfection too: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and slander you.” And so we shall deserve to reach that reward which is added, by which we not only bear the image and likeness of God but are even called sons: “that you may be,” he says, “sons of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Blessed John, knowing that he had attained this disposition, says: “that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” For in what can weak and frail human nature be as he is, unless it always extends the calm love of its heart to good and evil, just and unjust, in imitation of God, and does good from the disposition of goodness itself, reaching that true adoption of the sons of God of which the same blessed apostle declares: “Everyone who is born of God does not commit sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God,” and again: “We know that everyone who is born of God does not sin, but his being born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him”? This must be understood as said not of every kind of sin but only of capital crimes. Whoever will not withdraw and cleanse himself from these, the same apostle in another place declares should not even be prayed for, saying: “If anyone knows that his brother is sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and He will give him life, for those who sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death; I do not say that one should ask for that.” But of those which are declared not to be unto death, from which even those who serve Christ faithfully cannot be free, however carefully they guard themselves, it is said: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” and again: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” For it is impossible for any of the saints not to fall into those small faults which are committed by word, by thought, by ignorance, by forgetfulness, by necessity, by the will, by surprise. Although these are different from the sin that is called unto death, they cannot be free from fault and blame.

“When, then, someone has attained this disposition of goodness and imitation of God that we have described, then, clothed with the heart of the Lord’s long-suffering, he will pray even for his persecutors, saying likewise: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” On the other hand, it is a clear sign of a soul not yet strained clean of the dregs of the vices not to grieve with a feeling of mercy at the crimes of others, but to keep the rigid censure of a judge. For how will he be able to obtain perfection of heart who does not have that by which the apostle indicated that the fullness of the law can be completed, saying: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfil the law of Christ,” and who does not possess that virtue of love which “is not provoked, is not puffed up, thinks no evil, bears all things, endures all things”? For “the righteous man has pity on the lives of his beasts, but the heart of the wicked is without mercy.” And therefore it is quite certain that a monk is subject to the same vices that he condemns in another with unmerciful and inhuman severity. For “a harsh king will fall into evils,” and “he who stops his ears so as not to hear the weak, he too will call, and there will be no one to hear him.”

Germanus: “You have discoursed powerfully and magnificently on the perfect love of God. Yet this troubles us: that while you exalted it with such praise, you said that the fear of God and the hope of eternal reward are imperfect, although the prophet seems to have thought quite otherwise of them, saying: “Fear the Lord, all you his saints, for there is no want to those who fear him,” and again confessing that he practised the keeping of God’s righteous ordinances in view of the reward, saying: “I have inclined my heart to do your righteous ordinances for ever, because of the reward.” And the apostle says: “By faith Moses, when he was grown, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of the Egyptians; for he looked to the reward.” How, then, are they to be thought imperfect, when blessed David boasts that he did the Lord’s righteous ordinances for the sake of the reward, and the lawgiver is said to have scorned adoption into royal dignity and to have preferred the harshest affliction to the treasures of the Egyptians, looking forward to future rewards?”

Chaeremon: “Divine Scripture calls the freedom of our will to different degrees of perfection according to the state and measure of each mind. For one uniform crown of perfection could not be set before all, since there is not one virtue, will, or fervor in all; and therefore the divine word has established, as it were, different ranks and different measures of perfection itself. The variety of the gospel beatitudes also shows plainly that this is so. For although those are called blessed whose is the kingdom of heaven, and blessed those who will possess the earth, and blessed those who will receive consolation, and blessed those who will obtain their fill, yet we believe there is a great difference between dwelling in the kingdom of heaven and possessing that earth, whatever it is, and between receiving consolation and the fullness and satisfaction of righteousness, and a great distance between those who will obtain mercy and those who will deserve to enjoy the most glorious vision of God. “For there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.” Although, then, in this way divine Scripture praises those who fear God and says: “Blessed are all who fear the Lord,” and thereby promises them full blessedness, yet again it says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment, and he who fears is not perfect in love.” And again, though it is glorious to serve God, and it is said: “Serve the Lord in fear,” and: “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant,” and: “Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing,” yet it is said to the apostles: “I no longer call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does; but I call you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you,” and again: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” You see, then, that the degrees of perfection are different, and that we are called by the Lord from high things to higher, so that one who has become blessed and perfect in the fear of God, walking, as it is written, “from strength to strength,” and from one perfection to another, that is, rising with eagerness of mind from fear to hope, may be invited again to a more blessed state, which is love; and that one who has been “a faithful and wise servant” may pass to the companionship of friendship and the adoption of sons. In this sense, then, our statement too is to be understood: not that we declare the thought of that eternal punishment, or of the most blessed reward promised to the saints, to be of no moment, but that, although these are useful and bring those who follow them to the beginnings of blessedness, love, in which there is fuller confidence and joy now lasting, takes them up from servile fear and hireling hope, transfers them to the love of God and the adoption of sons, and in a way makes the perfect more perfect. For “in my Father’s house,” says the Savior, “there are many mansions,” and although all the stars appear to be in the sky, yet there is a great difference between the brightness of the sun and of the moon and of the morning star and of the other stars. And therefore the blessed apostle, preferring love not only to fear and hope but also to all the gifts that are held great and wonderful, shows the way of love as more excellent beyond measure than all. For when, having completed the whole list of spiritual gifts, he wanted to describe the members of its virtue, he began thus: “And yet I show you a more excellent way beyond measure. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I could move mountains, and if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” You see, then, that nothing is found more precious, nothing more perfect, nothing more sublime, and, if I may so put it, nothing more lasting than love. “For whether there are prophecies, they will pass away; whether tongues, they will cease; whether knowledge, it will be destroyed. But love never fails,” and without it not only those most excellent kinds of gifts but even the glory of martyrdom itself is made void.

“Whoever, then, has been grounded in the perfection of this love must climb by a more excellent step to that more sublime fear of love, which is produced not by terror of punishment or desire of rewards but by the greatness of love. It is the fear with which a son reveres a most indulgent father, or a brother his brother, or a friend his friend, or a spouse a spouse, with anxious affection, dreading not his blows or reproaches but even the slightest offense against love, and in all things, not only deeds but also words, is always intent with anxious devotion lest the fervor of that love toward himself should cool in the least degree. One of the prophets expressed the magnificence of this fear elegantly, saying: “Wisdom and knowledge are the riches of salvation; the fear of the Lord is his treasure.” He could not express the dignity and merit of this fear more plainly than by saying that the riches of our salvation, which consist in the true wisdom and knowledge of God, cannot be kept except by the fear of the Lord. To this fear, then, not sinners but saints are invited by the words of the prophet, as the psalmist says: “Fear the Lord, all you his saints, for there is no want to those who fear him.” For it is certain that nothing is wanting to the perfection of one who fears the Lord with this fear. For of that penal fear the apostle John plainly says: “He who fears is not perfect in love, because fear has punishment.” There is therefore a great distance between this fear to which nothing is wanting, which is the treasure of wisdom and knowledge, and that imperfect fear which is called “the beginning of wisdom,” and which, containing punishment in itself, is driven out of the hearts of the perfect when the fullness of love comes upon them. “For there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” And indeed, if the beginning of wisdom lies in fear, what will be its perfection but in the love of Christ, which, containing in itself that fear of perfect love, is called no longer the beginning but the treasure of wisdom and knowledge? And therefore fear has a twofold degree. One is that of beginners, that is, of those who are still under the yoke and terror of slaves, of which it is said: “And a servant will fear his master,” and in the gospel: “I no longer call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does.” And therefore, he says, “the servant does not remain in the house for ever; the son remains for ever.” For he teaches us to pass from that penal fear to the fullest freedom of love and to the confidence of the friends and sons of God. Finally, the blessed apostle, who had long since passed beyond that servile degree of fear by the power of the Lord’s love, despises the lower things and declares that he has been enriched by the Lord with greater goods: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” Those, too, who were burning with perfect love for that heavenly Father, and whom divine adoption had already made sons out of slaves, he exhorts with these words: “For you have not received the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, in which we cry, Abba, Father.” Of this fear also the prophet speaks when he describes that sevenfold Spirit which, without doubt, descended upon the Lord’s man according to the dispensation of the incarnation. Having said: “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness,” he added last, as something special: “And the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him.” Here we must first note carefully that he did not say, “And the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall rest upon him,” as he had said of the former, but “the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him.” For so great is the abundance of its richness that, when once it has possessed someone by its power, it occupies not a part but the whole of his mind. And not without reason. For, clinging to that love which never fails, it not only fills but possesses the one it has taken hold of with a perpetual and inseparable continuity, not lessened by any delights of temporal joy or pleasures, as sometimes happens to the fear that is cast out. This, then, is the fear of perfection with which the Lord’s man, who had come not only to redeem the human race but also to give a pattern of perfection and examples of the virtues, is said to have been filled. For the true Son of God, “who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth,” could not have that servile fear of punishments.

Germanus: “Since the discourse has dealt with the perfection of love, we want also to ask somewhat more freely about the end of chastity. For we do not doubt that that most exalted height of love, by which, as has been discussed so far, one climbs to the image and likeness of God, cannot exist at all without the perfection of chastity. But we want to be taught whether its permanence can be obtained so fully that the titillation of lust never troubles the integrity of our heart, and whether we can be so far removed from this fleshly passion while living in the flesh that we are never burned by the heat of its incitements.”

Chaeremon: “It belongs to the highest blessedness and singular merit so to learn or teach continually this disposition by which we cleave to the Lord that, according to the psalmist’s saying, meditation on it takes up all the days and nights of our life, and sustains our mind, insatiably hungering and thirsting for righteousness, by continual rumination on this heavenly food. But we must also care for the beast of burden that is our body, according to the most kind providence of our Savior, “lest it faint on the way”; for “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” It must now be cared for by taking a little food, so that after its refreshment the attention of the mind may also be applied to investigating more carefully what you desire.”