The Conferences 21.5–21.21

“So we must know that we, from whom the command of the law is no longer required, but to whom the word of the Gospel thunders daily, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me,’ when we offer tithes from our property to God, are still in some way held under the burden of the law and have not yet reached that height of the Gospel which rewards those who obey it not only with benefits in the present life but also with future rewards. For the law promised those who keep it not the rewards of the heavenly kingdom but the comforts of this life, saying, ‘He who does these things shall live in them.’ But the Lord says to his disciples, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ and, ‘Everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or land for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life.’ And rightly so. For it is not so praiseworthy to refrain from unlawful things as to refrain even from lawful ones, and not to use them out of reverence for him who permitted us to use them because of our weakness. So if even those who faithfully offer tithes of their produce and serve the older precepts of the Lord cannot yet climb the summit of the Gospel, you see most clearly how far from it those are who do not even do this. For how can they share in the grace of the Gospel who scorn to fulfil even the lighter precepts of the law? Their ease is shown by the commanding words of the lawgiver, which even set a curse before those who do not fulfil them: ‘For cursed,’ it says, ‘is he who does not continue in all that is written in the book of the law, to do them.’ Here, however, because of the height and excellence of the commands it is said, ‘He who can receive it, let him receive it.’ There the forceful compulsion of the lawgiver shows the smallness of the precepts: ‘For I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that if you do not keep the commandments of the Lord your God, you will perish from the face of the earth.’ Here the grandeur of the lofty commands is marked by the very manner of one who does not so much command as exhort: ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, do this or that.’ There Moses lays an inescapable burden even on the unwilling; here Paul meets only the willing and those hastening to perfection with counsel. For what cannot be grasped by everyone everywhere because of its wonderful height was not to be commanded generally, nor, so to speak, required of all as a rule; rather, all are invited to grace by counsel, so that those who are great may rightly be crowned with the perfection of the virtues, while those who are small and cannot fill up the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, although they seem to lie hidden, overshadowed by the brightness of the greater as by stars, yet, being strangers to the darkness of the curses that are in the law, may neither be given over to the calamities of present evils nor be struck with eternal punishment. Christ, then, does not bind anyone by the necessity of a command to those lofty heights of the virtues, but invites them by the power of free will and kindles them by the wholesomeness of counsel and the desire for perfection. For where there is a command, there is necessity, and consequently punishment. Those who keep the things to which they are compelled by the severity of the law laid down escape the punishment it threatened rather than obtain a reward or prizes.”

“So just as the word of the Gospel lifts the strong to lofty and exalted things, it does not allow the weak to sink to the depths, granting the fullness of blessedness to the perfect and giving pardon to those overcome by frailty. For the law placed those who fulfil its precepts in a kind of midpoint between the two merits, separating them as far from the condemnation of transgressors as from the glory of the perfect. How low and wretched that is, see even from the state of the present life and a comparison with it: in it a man is thought most wretched who strives and labors only so as not to be held guilty among honest men, and not also to be counted rich, honored, and glorious.”

“Therefore it lies in our power today whether we wish to stand under the grace of the Gospel or under the terror of the law; for each must be joined to one side or the other according to the character of his conduct. Either the grace of Christ receives those who go beyond the law, or the law keeps those who fall below it as its debtors and liable to it. For one who is guilty under the precepts of the law will never be able to attain the perfection of the Gospel, however vainly he boasts that he is a Christian and freed by the grace of the Lord. For not only is he to be thought still under the law who declines to fulfil what the law commands, but also he who is content to observe only what the law orders and by no means brings forth fruits worthy of the calling and grace of Christ, where it is not said, ‘You shall offer your tithes and first fruits to the Lord your God,’ but, ‘Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me’; where, because of the grandeur of perfection, not even the briefest space of an hour is granted to a disciple who asks it for his father’s burial, and the duty of human love is set aside by the power of divine love.”

When he had heard this, blessed Theonas, kindled with an unquenchable desire for the perfection of the Gospel, took the seed of the word into a fruitful heart and buried it, as it were, in the deep and tilled furrows of his breast. He was especially humbled and pricked to the heart because the old man had said that he had not only failed to reach the perfection of the Gospel but had scarcely fulfilled even the commands of the law itself. For though he had been accustomed to pay tithes of his crops to the diaconia every year, he lamented that he had never even heard of the rule of first fruits; and even if he had fulfilled it likewise, he humbly confessed that, according to the old man’s judgment, he would still be far from the perfection of the Gospel. So he went home sad, affected by that sorrow which works repentance leading to a firm salvation. No longer in doubt about his own will and decision, he turned all the anxiety and care of his mind to the salvation of his wife, and began to rouse her with similar exhortation to the desire with which he himself had been fired, and to urge her with tears day and night that they should serve God together in holiness and chastity. He said that conversion to a better life must by no means be delayed, since the vain hope of youthful age does not forestall the necessity of sudden death, which snatches away boys, adolescents, and young men with the same lot as old men.

When his wife, very hard, would not consent though he persisted constantly in such entreaties, and said that in the flower of her age she could not do without the comfort of a husband altogether, and that therefore, if she were deserted by him and committed some sin, it should rather be ascribed to him who had broken the covenant of marriage, he answered her. He had long urged the condition of human nature, so frail and uncertain that it was dangerous to be entangled any longer in carnal desires and works; and he added that it was not lawful for anyone to exile himself from the good to which he had learned he must cleave in every way, and that it was a greater danger to despise a goodness once known than not to love one unknown. So he would already be involved in the guilt of transgression if, having found such splendid and heavenly goods, he preferred earthly and sordid ones. The grandeur of perfection, he said, belongs to every age and each sex, and all the members of the church are invited to climb the height of lofty merits, as the apostle says, ‘So run that you may obtain’; nor should the ready and eager stand still because of the delays of the slow and sluggish, since it is more right that the idle be spurred on by those who run ahead than that those who hurry be held back by those who sit still. So he had determined and decreed to renounce the world and die to the world, so that he might live to God; and if he could not obtain the blessedness of passing into the fellowship of Christ together with his partner, he would rather be saved even with the loss of one member, and enter the kingdom of heaven as if maimed, than be condemned with his body whole. He added this too: ‘If Moses permits wives to be dismissed because of hardness of heart, why should Christ not allow it for the desire of chastity? Especially since the same Lord, among the other affections, those for fathers, mothers, and children, to whom not only the law but he himself had commanded all reverence to be shown, decrees that for his name and for the desire of perfection they must not simply be disregarded but even hated, and joins to them likewise the name of wives, saying: “And everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will possess eternal life.” So far does he allow nothing to be compared with the perfection he preaches that he commands even that bond of father and mother to be loosed, which according to the apostle holds first place among the commandments with a promise (“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise, “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth”), and to be disregarded for love of him. Clearly, then, just as the word of the Gospel condemns those who break the bonds of marriage without the crime of adultery intervening, so it promises even hundredfold rewards to those who have cast off the carnal yoke for the love of Christ and the desire of chastity. Therefore, if it can be that, accepting reason at last, you may be bent toward this part which I so greatly desire, namely that serving the Lord together we may escape the punishment of Gehenna, I do not reject the love of marriage; rather I embrace it with still greater affection. For I recognize and revere the helper assigned to me by the Lord’s decree, and I do not refuse to cleave to her in Christ by an unbroken covenant of love, nor do I separate from myself what the Lord joined to me by the law of the first creation, provided that you yourself are what the Creator wished you to be. But if you will not be a helper but a deceiver, and prefer to show yourself a support not to me but to the adversary, and think that the sacrament of marriage was granted for this, that, cheating yourself of the salvation offered to you, you may also draw me back from discipleship to the Savior, then I will manfully lay hold of that sentence uttered by the mouth of Abba John, or rather of Christ, so that no carnal affection can tear me from the spiritual good: “For he who does not hate,” he says, “father and mother and children and brothers and sisters and wife and lands, and his own soul besides, cannot be my disciple.”’ When the woman’s resolve was not bent by these and similar words and she remained in the same hardness of obstinacy, blessed Theonas said, ‘If I cannot draw you away from death, neither will you separate me from Christ; and it is safer for me to be divorced from a human being than from God.’ So, with the grace of God breathing on him, he at once set about carrying out his decision and did not allow the ardor of his desire to cool through any delay. For immediately, stripped of all worldly wealth, he flew to the monastery. There in a short time he shone with such splendor of holiness and humility that when John of blessed memory departed from this light to the Lord, and holy Elijah, a man no less than his predecessor, likewise died, Theonas was chosen third by the judgment of all and succeeded them in the administration of the diaconia.

Let no one think that we have composed this in order to encourage the dissolving of marriages. We not only do not condemn marriage at all, but, following the apostle’s sentence, we say, ‘Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.’ We have done it in order to set out faithfully to the reader the beginning of the conversion by which that great man was dedicated to God. I ask this first of the reader, with his good leave: whether this pleases him or displeases him, let him grant in any case that I am free from blame, and let him praise or blame this deed in the one who did it. For I have not put forward my own opinion on this matter but have given the history of what was done in a simple narrative; so it is fair that, just as I claim nothing for myself from the praise of those who approve this deed, so I should not be attacked by the ill will of those who disapprove of it. Let each, then, as we said, have his own judgment of it. But I advise him to restrain the verdict of his examination so as not to believe himself fairer or holier than the divine judgment, by which even the signs of apostolic powers were conferred on him, not to mention the judgment of such great fathers, by whom it is clear that his deed was not only by no means blamed but praised so highly that they preferred him to the greatest and most exalted men in the election to the diaconia. And I think that the judgment of so many spiritual men, given with God as its author, did not err, since so great a wonder of signs, as has been said above, also confirmed it.

But it is now time to follow the order of the discussion we promised. When Abba Theonas had visited us in our cell during the days of Pentecost, and the evening solemnity of prayers was over, we sat down for a little on the ground and began to ask him carefully why among them such scrupulous care was taken that no one, during the whole fifty days of Pentecost, should either bend his knees in prayer or presume to fast until the ninth hour. We inquired into this all the more carefully because we had by no means seen it kept with such care in the monasteries of Syria.

To this Abba Theonas began his discourse thus: “We ought indeed to yield to the authority of the fathers and the custom of our forebears, prolonged through so long a series of years down to our own time, even without understanding its reason, and to keep it, as it was handed down of old, with constant observance and reverence. But since you wish to know the causes and reason of this, hear briefly what we have learned was handed down by our elders concerning this practice. But before the authority of divine Scripture is brought forward, let us, if you like, say a few things about the nature and character of fasting itself, so that the authority of the Scriptures may follow and confirm our discussion. Divine wisdom, through Ecclesiastes, has marked out a proper time for everything, that is, for all things, whether prosperous or those thought adverse and sad, saying, ‘For all things there is a time, and a time for everything under heaven: a time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to destroy and a time to build; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast stones and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace and a time to be far from embracing; a time to acquire and a time to lose; a time to keep and a time to cast out; a time to tear and a time to sew; a time to keep silence and a time to speak; a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace’; and below, ‘For there is a time,’ he says, ‘for every matter and every deed.’ So he has defined none of these as good forever, but only when one of them is carried out at the right and fitting moment; so that these same things, which turn out well when done at the right time, are found useless and harmful if they are undertaken at an unsuitable or unfitting time. The exceptions are those things that are in themselves chiefly good or evil and can never be turned into their opposite, such as justice, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and the other virtues, or on the other hand the vices, whose definitions cannot at all fall to the other side or be changed. But whatever things can at times pass over to either effect, so as to be found either good or bad according to the character of those who use them, these are felt to be sometimes useful and sometimes harmful not absolutely according to their nature but according to the disposition of the doer and the fitness of the time.”

“So we must now ask what we ought to decide about the status of fasting: whether it too is good in the way we said justice, prudence, fortitude, and temperance are, which cannot at all pass over to the opposite side, or something intermediate, which may sometimes be of benefit when done and cannot condemn when omitted, and which it is sometimes blameworthy to have done and sometimes praiseworthy to have omitted. For if we count fasting within that definition of the virtues, so that abstinence from food is placed among the principal goods, then eating food will certainly be evil and sinful. For whatever is contrary to a principal good must without doubt be judged a principal evil. The authority of the holy Scriptures does not allow us to define it so. For if we fast with such a mind and purpose that we believe sin is contracted by partaking of food, we shall not only gain no fruit from our abstinence, but shall even, according to the apostle, contract the greatest guilt and the crime of sacrilege, abstaining from foods ‘which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful and those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving.’ For ‘to him who thinks something common, it is common.’ And so we read of no one condemned merely for taking food, unless perhaps something was joined to it or followed afterward for which he deserved to be condemned.”

“So that fasting is something intermediate is shown most clearly from this too: just as it justifies when kept, it does not condemn when broken, unless perhaps it is the transgression of a command, rather than the taking of food, that is punished. But there ought to be no time empty of a principal good, so that no one is allowed to be without it, since one who neglects it must fall into evil when it ceases. Nor again is any time granted to a principal evil, since what is always harmful can never fail to harm if it is admitted, or ever be changed into something praiseworthy. And so it is clear that those things are intermediate for which we see fixed conditions and times, and which sanctify when observed in this way but do not defile when omitted: for example, marriage, agriculture, riches, withdrawal into solitude, vigils, the reading and meditation of the sacred books, and fasting itself, with which our discourse began. The divine command and the authority of the holy Scriptures have not decreed that all these must be held and kept so unceasingly and constantly that it is wicked to interrupt them a little. For whatever is decreed as a command brings death if not fulfilled; but whatever is urged rather than ordered does good when done and does not punish when not done. And so our forebears told us to do all these things, or at least some of them, circumspectly and to observe them prudently according to cause, place, manner, and time; for it is clear that if any of them is done fittingly it is suitable and appropriate, if unfittingly, unsuitable and harmful. If someone, at the arrival of a brother, in whom he ought to refresh Christ with kindness and embrace him with a most welcome reception, wishes to keep the austerity of his fast, does he not incur the charge of unkindness rather than gain the praise or merit of religion? Or if, when the weakness and frailty of the flesh demands the restoring of its strength by taking food, someone will not agree to relax the rigor of abstinence, is he not to be thought a cruel murderer of his own body rather than one providing for his health? So too, when the time of a festival allows a fitting comfort of food and the refreshment of a necessary relaxation, if anyone insists on keeping the rigid observance of fasts without a break, he must be thought not so much devout as boorish and unreasonable. But fasts will likewise be found adverse to those who hunt human praise by fasting and gain a reputation for holiness by an empty display of pallor, whom the word of the Gospel declares to have received their reward in the present, and whose fast the Lord abhors through the prophet. Having first put in their mouth the objection, ‘Why have we fasted, and you did not look? Why have we humbled our souls, and you did not know?’ he at once added the reasons why they do not deserve to be heard: ‘Behold,’ he says, ‘in the days of your fast your own will is found, and you exact payment from all your debtors. Behold, you fast for lawsuits and quarrels, and you strike with the fist wickedly. Do not fast as you have until this day, so that your cry may be heard on high. Is such the fast that I have chosen, for a man to afflict his soul for a day? Is it to twist his head like a hoop and spread sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?’ Then he goes on, teaching how the self-restraint of one who fasts becomes acceptable, and declares plainly that fasting by itself alone can do no good unless it is followed by the conditions he goes on to add: ‘Is not this the fast that I have chosen?’ he says. ‘Loose the bonds of wickedness, undo the burdens that weigh down, let those who are broken go free, and break every yoke. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the needy and the wanderers into your house; when you see the naked, cover him, and do not despise your own flesh. Then your light will break forth like the morning, and your health will spring up more quickly, and your righteousness will go before your face, and the glory of the Lord will gather you. Then you will call, and the Lord will hear you; you will cry, and he will say: Here I am.’ You see, then, that fasting is by no means judged by the Lord a principal good, since it becomes good and well-pleasing to God not through itself but through other works; and again, from accompanying causes it is judged not only vain but even hateful, as the Lord says, ‘When they fast, I will not hear their prayers.’”

“For mercy, patience, and love, or the precepts of the virtues already mentioned, in which the principal good truly lies, are not to be kept for the sake of fasts, but rather fasts for the sake of them. We must labor so that those virtues which are truly good may be acquired by fasts, not so that those exercises of the virtues may aim at fasting as their end. The affliction of the flesh is useful for this reason, and the medicine of hunger must be applied to it for this reason: that through it we may be able to reach love, in which there is a good that is unchangeable and perpetual without any exception of time. For the disciplines of medicine, goldsmithing, or the other arts in this world are not practiced for the sake of the instruments belonging to their work; rather, the tools are prepared for the practice of the art. Just as these are useful to the skilled, so they are superfluous to those who do not know the discipline of the art itself; and just as they are of great help to those who are supported by their service in carrying out their work, so they can be of no help at all to those who do not know what they were made for and are content merely to possess them, since they place the sum of their usefulness only in keeping them, not in completing the work. That, then, is chiefly best for the sake of which intermediate things are done, while that chief good itself is done for no other reason than for its own goodness.”

“This good is distinguished from the other things we called intermediate in these ways: if it is good through itself and not through something else; if it is necessary for its own sake and not for the sake of something else; if it is good unchangeably and always, keeping its quality perpetually and never able to pass over to the opposite side; if its removal or cessation cannot fail to bring the greatest ruin; and if what is contrary to it is likewise a principal evil and can never pass over to the good side. These definitions, by which the nature of the principal goods is distinguished, cannot at all be ascribed to fasts. For they are neither good in themselves nor necessary for their own sake, since they are practiced wholesomely in order to acquire purity of heart and body, so that, the goads of the flesh being blunted, the peaceful mind may be reconciled to its Maker. Nor are they unchangeably and always good, since we are often not harmed by interrupting them; indeed, when kept at the wrong time they sometimes even turn to the ruin of the soul. Nor is what seems to be opposed to fasting, that is, the naturally pleasant taking of food, a principal evil; it cannot be defined as evil unless intemperance, luxury, or some other vices follow, ‘for what enters the mouth does not defile a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.’ So whoever does the principal good not for its own sake but for the sake of something else detracts from it and does not carry it out perfectly or without sin. For all things are to be done for its sake, but it alone is to be sought for its own sake.”

“Holding constantly to this definition of the nature of fasting, then, let us seek it with all the strength of our soul, yet in such a way that we know it is fitting for us only if in it the right ordering of times, its manner, and its measure are kept; and not so as to fix the end of our hope in it, but so that through it we may reach purity of heart and apostolic love. From this very fact, then, that fasting has not only special times fixed for practicing or relaxing it but also a manner and measure prescribed, it is clear that it is not a principal good but something intermediate. But the things that by the authority of a command are either enjoined as good or forbidden as harmful are never subject to exceptions of time, so that sometimes what is forbidden ought to be done or what is commanded omitted. For no limit has been set to justice, patience, sobriety, chastity, and love, nor again has liberty ever been permitted to injustice, impatience, rage, unchastity, envy, and pride.”

“Having set out these things about the nature of fasting, it seems we should now add the authority of the holy Scriptures, by which it may be proved more clearly that fasting neither should nor can be kept perpetually. In the Gospel, when the Pharisees were fasting together with the disciples of John the Baptist, while the apostles, as friends and guests of that heavenly Bridegroom, were not yet keeping the observance of fasts, John’s disciples, who believed they possessed the sum of righteousness through fasting (being followers of him who, as the outstanding preacher of repentance, so gave a pattern to all peoples by his example that he not only refused the various kinds of food supplied for human use but did not even know the common eating of bread itself), complained to the Lord, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’ Answering them, the Lord clearly showed that fasting is not fitting or necessary at all times, when either the festive character of the season or an occasion of love that arises allows the indulgence of refreshment: ‘Can the sons of the bridegroom mourn,’ he said, ‘as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.’ Although he spoke these words before the resurrection of his body, they properly point to the season of Pentecost, in which, after the resurrection, when the Lord ate with his disciples for forty days, the joy of his daily presence did not allow them to fast.”

Germanus: “Why, then, do we relax the rigor of abstinence at our midday meals during the whole of Pentecost, when Christ stayed with his disciples only forty days after the resurrection?”

Theonas: “Your question is not unfitting and deserves to learn the reason of the most complete truth. After the ascension of our Savior, which took place on the fortieth day after his resurrection, the apostles returned from the Mount of Olives, where he let himself be seen as he went to the Father, as the reading of the Acts of the Apostles also testifies, and entering Jerusalem they are said to have waited ten days for the coming of the Holy Spirit; when these were completed, they received him with joy on the fiftieth day. In this way the number of this festival was clearly fulfilled, which we read was also foreshadowed figuratively in the Old Testament, where, when seven weeks were completed, the bread of the first fruits was commanded to be offered to the Lord by the priests. This is proved to have been most truly offered to the Lord through the preaching of the apostles, who we read addressed the people on that day: the true bread of first fruits, which, brought forth by the teaching of a new doctrine, fed five thousand men with the gift of its food and consecrated to the Lord the first-fruit people of Christians from among the Jews. And so these ten days too are to be celebrated with the same solemnity and gladness as the preceding forty. The tradition of this festival, handed down to us by apostolic men, is to be kept in the same way. For this reason in these days the knees are not bent in prayer, because bending the knees is a kind of sign of repentance and mourning. So in all respects we keep in them the same solemnity as on the Lord’s day, on which our forebears handed down that neither should a fast be kept nor a knee be bent, out of reverence for the Lord’s resurrection.”

Germanus: “Can this flesh, enticed by the unaccustomed indulgences of so long a festival, fail to put out some thorny growth from that tinder of vices, even though it has been cut away? Or can the mind, burdened with food taken beyond its custom, fail to relax the rigor of its rule over its servant the body? Especially since in us a younger age can quickly drive the subject members to rebellion, if we take our usual food more abundantly or unaccustomed food more freely.”