The Conferences 2.2–2.13

“I remember, then, that once, when I was still a boy, in the region of the Thebaid where the blessed Antony lived, elders came to him to inquire about perfection. The conference lasted from evening until dawn, and this question took up the greater part of the night. For they asked at great length what virtue or observance could keep a monk always unharmed by the snares and deceptions of the devil, or bring him by a right path and firm step to the summit of perfection. Each gave his opinion according to the capacity of his mind. Some placed it in zeal for fasts and vigils, because the mind, made lean by them and having attained purity of heart and body, would be more easily united to God. Others placed it in contempt of all things, because the mind, once completely stripped of them, would come to God more freely, with no snares holding it back any longer. Others judged anachoresis necessary, that is, withdrawal and the secrecy of the desert, where one could call upon God more intimately and cling to him more particularly. Some held that the duties of love, that is, of kindness, should be pursued, because to these the Lord in the Gospel promises the kingdom of heaven as if more especially, saying: ‘Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink,’ and the rest. And when in this way they decided that a surer access to God could be opened by different virtues, and the greater part of the night had been spent in this inquiry, the blessed Antony at last said: ‘All the things you have mentioned are necessary and useful to those who thirst for God and long to come to him. But the countless falls and experiences of many by no means allow us to give the principal grace to these. For we have often seen men who applied themselves most keenly to fasts or vigils, who lived wonderfully withdrawn in solitude, who pursued the loss of all possessions so far that they would not allow even one day's food or a single denarius to remain to them, and who fulfilled the duties of kindness with all devotion, suddenly so deceived that they could not bring the work they had taken up to a fitting end, and closed their highest fervor and praiseworthy way of life with a detestable end. Therefore we shall be able to recognize clearly what principally leads to God if we search out more carefully the cause of their ruin and deception. For though the works of the virtues mentioned abounded in them, discernment alone was lacking and did not allow them to last to the end. No other cause of their fall is found than that, having been too little instructed by the elders, they could by no means acquire the principle of discernment, which, avoiding both extremes, teaches the monk always to walk by the royal road. It does not allow him to be carried away on the right hand of the virtues, that is, to exceed the measure of just self-control through excess of fervor and foolish presumption; nor does it allow him, delighting in relaxation, to turn aside to the vices on the left, that is, to grow slack with the opposite lukewarmness of spirit under the pretext of governing the body. For this is the discernment which is called in the Gospel the eye and lamp of the body, according to the saying of the Savior: The lamp of your body is your eye; if your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. For it discerns all a person's thoughts and actions and sees and surveys everything that is to be done. If it is evil in a person, that is, not fortified by true judgment and knowledge, or deceived by some error or presumption, it makes our whole body dark, that is, it darkens the whole sight of our mind and our actions, wrapping them in the blindness of the vices and the darkness of disturbances. For, he says, if the light that is in you is darkness, how great will that darkness be! For no one doubts that when the judgment of our heart errs and is possessed by the night of ignorance, our thoughts and works too, which come from the deliberation of discernment, are entangled in the greater darkness of sins.’”

“Indeed, he who was the first to win the kingship of the people of Israel by the judgment of God, because he did not have this eye of discernment, was cast down even from the kingdom itself, as though his whole body were dark. Deceived by the darkness and error of this lamp, he judged his own sacrifices more acceptable to God than obedience to Samuel's command, and incurred offence from the very quarter from which he had hoped to win back the favor of the divine majesty. Ignorance of this discernment, I say, drove Ahab, king of Israel, after that most splendid triumph of victory which had been granted him by God's favor, to believe his own mercy better than the most severe execution of the divine command, and, as it seemed to him, a cruel order. Softened by this consideration, while he preferred to temper a bloody victory with clemency, he was made dark in his whole body because of his undiscerning mercy and condemned to irrevocable death.”

“This is the discernment which the apostle calls not only the lamp of the body but also the sun, according to the words: ‘Let not the sun go down upon your anger.’ It is also called the governance of our life, according to the words: ‘Those who have no governance fall like leaves.’ It is most rightly named counsel, without which we are not permitted by the authority of Scripture to do anything at all, so that we may not even take that spiritual wine which ‘gladdens the heart of man’ without its moderation, according to the words: ‘Do everything with counsel; drink wine with counsel’; and again: ‘Like a city whose walls are broken down and which is not surrounded, so is a man who does anything without counsel.’ How harmful its lack is to a monk, the example and figure of this testimony shows, comparing him to a city broken down and without walls. In it consist wisdom, understanding, and perception, without which neither can our inner house be built nor spiritual riches be gathered, according to the words: ‘By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is set up again; by perception the storerooms are filled with all precious and good riches.’ This, I say, is the solid food which can be taken only by the perfect and strong, according to the words: ‘But solid food is for the perfect, for those who by habit have their senses trained to the discernment of good and evil.’ So useful and necessary is it proved to be to us that it is even applied to the word of God and its powers, according to the words: ‘For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’ By these it is most plainly shown that no virtue can be perfectly completed or stand without the grace of discernment. And so it was determined by the verdict both of the blessed Antony and of all the others that it is discernment which leads the monk fearlessly to God with a firm step and keeps the aforesaid virtues continually unharmed; with it one can climb with less fatigue to the lofty heights of perfection, and without it many, even laboring very earnestly, could not reach the summit of perfection. For discernment is the mother, guardian, and governor of all the virtues.”

“And so that a recent example may also confirm, as we promised, this same definition declared of old by the holy Antony and the other fathers, recall what you lately saw done before your own eyes: the old man Hero, a very few days ago, cast down from the heights to the depths by the illusion of the devil. We remember that for fifty years he lived in this desert keeping the rigor of self-control with singular strictness, and pursued the secrecy of solitude with wonderful fervor beyond all who live here. How, then, and by what means was he mocked by the deceiver after such labors, and, falling into a most grievous collapse, struck all who live in this desert with mournful grief? Was it not because, possessing too little of the virtue of discernment, he chose to be ruled by his own decisions rather than to obey the counsels or conferences of the brothers and the institutions of the elders? For he always practised such unchanging abstinence in fasting with such rigor, and kept so constantly to the secrecy of solitude and his cell, that not even reverence for the day of Easter could ever persuade him to take part in the brothers' common meal. On that day, when all the brothers were kept in the church for the annual feast, he alone would not join them, lest by taking even a little of the pulse he should seem to have relaxed his purpose. Deceived by this presumption, he received an angel of Satan as an angel of light with the greatest reverence, and, obeying his commands with ready servility, threw himself headlong into a well so deep that the eye could not reach its bottom, not doubting the promise of his angel, who had assured him that because of the merit of his virtues and labors he could never again be subject to any danger. To prove the truth of this most clearly by the experience of his own safety, he threw himself, deluded, into the aforesaid well in the dead of night, meaning to prove the great merit of his virtue when he came out unharmed. When he had been drawn out, already almost lifeless, with great labor by the brothers, and was to end his life on the third day, what is worse, he remained so obstinate in his deception that not even the experience of his own death could persuade him that he had been deluded by the cunning of demons. Therefore, because of the merits of such great labors and the number of years he had persevered in the desert, those who grieved at his end were barely able, out of compassion and the greatest kindness, to obtain from Abba Paphnutius the presbyter that he should not be reckoned among the suicides and judged unworthy even of the memorial and offering for those at rest.”

“What shall I say of those two brothers who lived beyond that desert of the Thebaid where the blessed Antony once was? Moved by too little careful discernment, as they went through the vast expanse of the wilderness they resolved to take no food at all except what the Lord himself provided for them. When the Mazices saw them from afar wandering through the desert and already failing from hunger (this people is more savage and cruel than almost all wild nations, for it is not the desire of plunder, as with some peoples, but mere ferocity of mind that drives them to shed blood), and, contrary to their savage nature, came to meet them with bread, one of them, with the help of discernment, received it with joy and thanksgiving as held out to him by the Lord, reckoning that food was being supplied to him by God, and that it was not without God's doing that those who always delighted in human blood gave the means of life to men already failing and wasting away. But the other refused the food as offered to him by a man, and died of starvation. Though both began from a blameworthy conviction, one, with the help of discernment, corrected what he had rashly and incautiously conceived; the other, persisting in foolish presumption and wholly ignorant of discernment, brought on himself the death which the Lord wished to avert, not believing that it had come about by divine prompting that the fierce barbarians, forgetting their own savagery, had offered them bread instead of swords.”

“What shall I also relate of that man, whose name we do not wish to mention because he is still alive, who for a long time received a demon in the brightness of an angel, and, often deceived by his countless revelations, believed him to be a messenger of righteousness? For besides these, every night he provided light in his cell without the service of any lamp. At last he was commanded by the demon to offer to God his son, who lived with him in the monastery, so that by this sacrifice he might be made equal in merit to the patriarch Abraham. He was so led astray by this persuasion that he would have carried out the murder of his son in deed, had not the boy, seeing him unusually sharpening a knife and looking for cords with which he meant to bind him as if for sacrifice, taken fright at the omen of the coming crime and fled.”

“It would take long to go through the deception of that monk of Mesopotamia, too. In that province he kept a self-control that very few could imitate, which he practised for many years shut up alone in his cell; yet at last he was so deluded by diabolical revelations and dreams that, after such great labors and virtues, in which he had surpassed all the monks living there, he rolled in a miserable fall into Judaism and circumcision of the flesh. For the devil, wishing to entice him by the habit of visions into believing a future deception, had for a long time revealed things that were perfectly true, as though he were a messenger of truth. At last he showed him the Christian people, together with the leaders of our religion and faith, that is, the apostles and martyrs, dark and foul, wasted with every kind of emaciation and disfigured; and on the other hand the people of the Jews, with Moses, the patriarchs, and the prophets, dancing with the greatest joy and shining with the most brilliant light; and he urged him, if he wished to share in their merit and blessedness, to hasten to receive circumcision as well. None of these, surely, would have been so lamentably deluded if they had labored to attain the principle of this discernment. How harmful it is not to have the grace of discernment, then, the falls and experiences of many make clear.”

To this Germanus said: “It has been made abundantly clear, both by recent examples and by the definitions of the ancients, that discernment is in a way the source and root of all the virtues. We want to be taught, then, how it should be acquired, or how one can tell whether it is true and from God, or false and from the devil. So that, according to that Gospel parable you explained in the previous discussion, in which we are commanded to become approved money-changers, we may be able, looking closely at the image of the true king stamped on a coin, to detect what has not been struck in the lawful mint, and reject it, as you said yesterday using the common word, as a counterfeit, being instructed in that skill which you described quite fully and completely as proper to the spiritual and evangelical money-changer. For what will it profit us to have learned the merits of its power and grace if we do not know how it is to be sought or acquired?”

Then Moses said: “True discernment is acquired only by true humility. The first proof of this humility will be if everything, not only what is to be done but also what is thought, is kept for the examination of the elders, so that one trusts nothing to his own judgment but in everything accepts their decisions, and learns from their tradition what he ought to judge good or evil. This training will not only teach a young man to walk by the right path along the true way of discernment, but will also keep him unharmed by all the frauds and snares of the enemy. For no one can be deceived who lives not by his own judgment but by the example of the elders, nor will the cunning enemy be able to mock the ignorance of one who does not know how to hide, out of harmful shame, all the thoughts that arise in his heart, but either rejects or admits them by the mature examination of the elders. For as soon as an evil thought has been laid open, it withers; and before the judgment of discernment is even given, the foulest serpent, dragged out into the light by the power of confession as from a dark underground cave, and in a way exposed and disgraced, departs. For his harmful suggestions have dominion in us just as long as they are hidden in the heart. And so that you may grasp the force of this teaching more effectively, I will tell you what Abba Serapion did, which he used very often to set before the younger monks for their instruction.”

“‘When I was still a small boy,’ he said, ‘and lived with Abba Theonas, this habit had been forced on me by the assault of the enemy: after I had eaten at the ninth hour with the old man, I would secretly hide one paxamatium in my bosom every day, which I ate in the evening without his knowledge. Though I committed this theft without ceasing, through the connivance of my will and the lack of restraint of a desire once rooted, yet when my deceitful craving had been satisfied and I came back to myself, I was more tormented by the crime of the theft I had committed than I had enjoyed eating it. And while I was forced every day, not without pain of heart, to complete this most wearisome task, as though imposed on me by Pharaoh's taskmasters instead of bricks, and yet could not free myself from their most cruel tyranny, and was ashamed to reveal the secret theft to the old man, it happened by the will of God, who wished to rescue me from this yoke of captivity, that some brothers came to his cell for the sake of edification. When the meal was over and a spiritual conference had begun, the old man, answering their questions, spoke about the vice of gluttony and the dominion of hidden thoughts, and explained their nature and the most terrible power they have as long as they are hidden. I was pierced by the power of this conference and terrified by my accusing conscience, believing that these things had been said because the Lord had revealed the secrets of my breast to the old man. First I was moved to hidden groans; then, as the compunction of my heart grew, I burst into open sobs and tears, brought out from my bosom, the accomplice and receiver of my theft, the paxamatium which I had taken by my vicious habit to eat in secret, and, laying it in the midst, I prostrated myself on the ground and confessed, asking for pardon, how I ate one secretly every day; and with tears pouring out I begged them to ask the Lord for my release from this most cruel captivity. Then the old man said: “Take courage, my child. Your confession has set you free from this captivity even without my saying anything. For today you have triumphed over your victorious adversary, laying him low by your confession more powerfully than you had been cast down by him through your silence. By never refuting him, either by your own answer or another's, you had allowed him to rule over you until now, according to the saying of Solomon: Because sentence is not quickly passed against those who do evil, therefore the heart of the sons of men is filled within them to do evil. And therefore after this exposure of him that most wicked spirit will no longer be able to trouble you, nor will the foulest serpent henceforth claim a hiding place in you, since he has been dragged out of the darkness of your heart into the light by a saving confession.” The old man had not yet finished these words when, behold, a burning lamp came out of my bosom and filled the cell with such a sulphurous smell that the strength of the stench scarcely allowed us to remain there. Resuming his admonition, the old man said: “See, the Lord has visibly confirmed to you the truth of my words, so that you might see with your eyes the instigator of that passion driven out of your heart by your saving confession, and know, by his open expulsion, that the enemy, once exposed, will have no further place in you.” And so,’ he said, ‘according to the old man's words, the dominion of that diabolical tyranny was so extinguished in me and laid to rest for ever by the power of this confession that the enemy never again tried to bring even the memory of this craving to my mind, nor did I ever afterwards feel myself assailed by the prompting of that furtive desire.’ This meaning we also read beautifully figured in Ecclesiastes: ‘If the serpent bites without hissing, there is no advantage for the charmer.’ It signifies that the bite of a silent serpent is deadly; that is, if a diabolical suggestion or thought is not laid open by confession to some charmer, that is, to a spiritual man, who is accustomed to heal the wound at once with the charms of the Scriptures and draw the harmful poison of the serpent out of the heart, he cannot help the one who is in danger and about to perish. In this way, then, we shall most easily come to the knowledge of true discernment: following in the footsteps of the elders, let us not presume to do anything new or to decide anything by our own judgment, but walk in everything as either their tradition or the uprightness of their life has formed us. Anyone who is strengthened by this training will not only come to the perfect principle of discernment but will also remain most safe from all the snares of the enemy. For by no other vice does the devil drag a monk so headlong and lead him to death as when he persuades him to neglect the counsels of the elders and trust his own judgment and decision. For if all the arts and disciplines discovered by human ingenuity, which profit nothing more than the comforts of this temporal life, cannot be rightly grasped by anyone without a teacher's instruction, though they can be touched with the hand and seen with the eyes, how foolish it is to believe that this alone needs no teacher, which is invisible and hidden and seen only by the purest heart, and whose error brings not temporal loss, nor one easily repaired, but the perdition of the soul and everlasting death. For it involves a daily and nightly conflict not against visible adversaries but against invisible and pitiless enemies, and a spiritual struggle not against one or two but against countless troops; a fall in it is the more deadly than all others, the more hostile the enemy and the more hidden the combat. And therefore the footsteps of the elders must always be followed with the greatest care, and everything that arises in our hearts must be brought to them with the veil of shame removed.”

Germanus: “The occasion of the harmful shame by which we try to hide evil thoughts is created especially by this: we know that in the region of Syria someone who was believed to be a leading elder, when a brother revealed his thoughts to him in simple confession, was afterwards moved by a kind of indignation and severely reproached him for them. So it happens that while we keep them pressed down in ourselves and are ashamed to reveal them to the elders, we cannot obtain the remedies of healing.”

Moses: “Just as not all young men are equally fervent in spirit or trained in the best disciplines and habits, so not all old men can be found equally perfect or most approved. For the riches of old men are to be measured not by the grayness of their heads but by the diligence of their youth and the wages of past labors. ‘For what you have not gathered in your youth,’ it says, ‘how will you find in your old age?’ ‘For honorable old age is not that of long duration, nor is it reckoned by the number of years; but understanding is gray hair for a man, and a spotless life is ripe old age.’ Therefore we must not follow the footsteps, or accept the traditions and admonitions, of all old men whose heads are covered with gray hair and who are commended only by length of life, but of those whom we have found to have marked their life in youth in a praiseworthy and most approved way, and to have been trained not by their own presumption but by the traditions of the elders. For there are some, indeed, what is more lamentable, they are the greater number, who, growing old in the lukewarmness they took up from youth and in sloth, win authority for themselves not by maturity of character but by the number of their years. To them that reproach of the Lord through the prophet is quite properly directed: ‘Strangers have devoured his strength, and he did not know it; gray hairs too are spread upon him, and he did not know it.’ These, I say, have been brought forward as examples for the young not by uprightness of life or any praiseworthy and imitable strictness in this way of life, but by age alone. The most cunning enemy sets forth their gray hairs, with a prejudged authority, to deceive the young, and hastens with fraudulent subtlety to overthrow and deceive by their example even those who could have been spurred on to the way of perfection by their own or others' admonitions, leading them by their teachings and practices either into a new lukewarmness or into deadly despair. Wishing to give you an example of this, I will pass over the name of the person concerned, lest we too commit something like the fault of the man who published the faults a brother had revealed to him, and set out only what happened, which can give you necessary instruction. A young man, not one of the most slothful, went to an old man well known to us for the sake of his progress and healing, and simply confessed that he was troubled by fleshly incitements and the spirit of sexual immorality, believing he would find consolation for his struggles in the old man's prayer and remedies for the wounds inflicted on him. But the old man rebuked him with the bitterest words, declaring him wretched and unworthy, not fit to be counted by the name of monk, since he could be excited by such a vice and desire; and so wounded him, on the contrary, by his reproofs that he sent him out of his cell cast down in utter despair and prostrated by deadly sadness. While he, weighed down by such grief, was thinking deeply no longer about a remedy for his passion but about fulfilling the desire he had conceived, Abba Apollo, the most approved of the elders, met him. Guessing from his face and dejection the struggle and the violence of the assault which were silently turning in his heart, he asked the cause of such great disturbance. When the young man could not give any answer to the old man who spoke to him so gently, the old man, feeling more and more that he wished not without reason to hide in silence the cause of so great a sadness, which he could not even conceal in his face, began to ask him more earnestly the causes of his hidden grief. Pressed by this, he confessed that he was going to the village, since according to the verdict of that old man he could not be a monk, and could no longer restrain the goads of the flesh or find remedies for the assault, to take a wife, leave the monastery, and return to the world. The old man soothed him with gentle consolation, declaring that he himself was troubled every day by the same goads and heats of incitement, and that therefore he should not fall into despair at all, nor be surprised at the heat of the assault, which is overcome not so much by zealous effort as by the mercy and grace of the Lord. He asked him for a truce of just one day, and, having begged him to return to his cell, went with all haste to the monastery of the old man mentioned above. When he drew near to it, he stretched out his hands and poured out a prayer with tears, saying: ‘Lord, who alone are the merciful judge of hidden strength and human weakness and its secret physician, turn the assault of that young man onto this old man, so that he may learn, even in old age, to condescend to the weaknesses of those who struggle and to have compassion on the frailty of the young.’ When he had finished this prayer with a groan, he saw a foul Ethiopian standing opposite that man's cell and aiming fiery darts at it. The old man was at once wounded by them, came out of his cell, and ran here and there like one mad and drunk; going out and coming in, he could no longer stay in it, and hurriedly set off along the same road by which the young man had gone. Abba Apollo, seeing him driven about as if made mad by some furies, understood that the fiery dart of the devil which he had seen had been fixed in his heart and was working in him that confusion of mind and disturbance of the senses with unbearable heat. Going up to him he said: ‘Where are you hurrying, or what causes, making you forget the gravity of old age, disturb you so childishly and drive you to run about so restlessly?’ The old man, confused by the guilt of his conscience and his shameful agitation, believed that the burning of his breast had been found out and the secrets of his heart laid open to the old man, and did not dare give any answer to his question. ‘Go back to your cell,’ said Apollo, ‘and understand at last that you have until now been either unknown to the devil or despised by him, and not counted among those whose progress and efforts he is roused to fight and wrestle against every day, since after so long a series of years spent in this profession you could not, I will not say repel, but even put off for a single day one dart of his aimed at you. The Lord allowed you to be wounded by it so that at least in old age you might learn to have compassion on others' weaknesses and be taught by your own example and experience to condescend to the frailty of the young. For when you received a young man laboring under the devil's attack, you not only gave him no consolation, but even cast him down into ruinous despair and handed him over to the enemy's hands, to be devoured by him, as far as it lay with you, most lamentably. The enemy would certainly never have attacked him with so violent an assault, having disdained to attack you until now, unless, envying his future progress, he had hastened to forestall and anticipate with his fiery darts that virtue which he saw in his mind, understanding without doubt that he was the stronger, since he judged it worth his while to fight him with such violence. Learn, therefore, from your own example to have compassion on those who struggle, and never to terrify those in danger with ruinous despair or exasperate them with the harshest words, but rather to restore them with gentle and kind consolation; and, according to the command of the most wise Solomon, “Rescue those who are being led to death, and do not hesitate to redeem those who are being slain”; and by the example of our Savior, “not to break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax”; and to ask of the Lord that grace by which you too may confidently sing, in deed and in power: “The Lord has given me a learned tongue, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” For no one could withstand the snares of the enemy, or extinguish or restrain the fleshly heats that burn as with a natural fire, unless the grace of God either helped our weakness or protected and fortified it. And therefore, since the purpose of this saving dispensation has been accomplished, by which the Lord wished either to free that young man from harmful heats or to teach you about the violence of assault and the disposition of compassion, let us implore him with common prayers that he may order this scourge to be removed, which the Lord has deigned to inflict on you for your benefit (for “he makes sore and heals again; he strikes, and his hands have healed”; “he humbles and exalts, he kills and makes alive, he brings down to hell and brings back”), and that he may quench, with the abundant dew of his Spirit, the fiery darts of the devil which, at my request, he permitted to be inflicted on you.’ Although the Lord took this temptation away again, at a single prayer of the old man, as quickly as he had allowed it to come, he taught by clear experience not only that no one's faults, once revealed, should be reproached, but that the pain of one who struggles should not be despised even slightly. Therefore do not let the inexperience or levity of one old man, or of a few, whose gray hair the most cunning enemy misuses to deceive the young, frighten you away and shut you out from that saving way we have described and from the tradition of the elders. Rather, everything should be revealed to the elders without any covering of shame, and from them we should confidently receive either remedies for our wounds or examples of life and conduct. In them we shall find equal help and a like result if we try to undertake nothing at all by our own judgment and presumption.”