The Conferences 24.2–24.17

“The weakness of your thoughts shows that you have not yet renounced worldly desires, nor mortified your former longings. For as the wandering of your desires bears witness to the sloth of your heart, so you are enduring this exile and absence from your relatives only in the flesh, when you ought rather to have taken it up in the mind. For all these things would long since have been buried and wholly torn out of your hearts if you had grasped either the meaning of renunciation itself or the chief reason for the solitude in which we live. And so I perceive that you are suffering from that sickness of idleness which is marked thus in Proverbs: ‘Every idle man is full of desires,’ and again, ‘Desires kill the sluggard.’ For we too could have had these advantages of carnal comfort that you have mentioned, if we had believed they suited our purpose, or had judged that such fruit could come to us from those pleasant delights as is gained from the squalor of these places and the contrition of the body. Nor are we so bereft of the support of relatives that we lack those who would gladly sustain us from their property, if that sentence of the Savior did not meet us and exclude whatever belongs to the comfort of this flesh: ‘He who does not leave (or hate) father and mother and children and brothers cannot be my disciple.’ And even if we were wholly deprived of the protection of relatives, we could not lack the services of the powerful of this world, who would gladly supply our needs with most ready generosity and with every thanksgiving. Supported by their munificence, we would be free of the anxiety of providing food, if that prophetic curse did not strongly deter us: ‘For cursed,’ it says, ‘is the man who puts his hope in man,’ and, ‘Do not trust in princes.’ We could also have placed our cells at least on the bank of the river Nile and had water at our doors, instead of being forced to carry it on our necks from four miles away, did not the blessed apostle make us untiring in bearing this labor and continually encourage us with this saying: ‘Each will receive his own reward according to his labor.’ Nor are we unaware that there are also some pleasant retreats in our own regions, where an abundance of fruit and the charm or richness of gardens would supply the needs of our food with the least bodily labor, did we not fear that reproach addressed to the rich man in the Gospel being flung at us: ‘For you received your consolation in your life.’ But, despising all these things and scorning them together with all the pleasure of this world, we delight only in this squalor, and prefer the dreadful vastness of this solitude to all delights, and do not compare the riches of any fertile soil, however great, with the bitterness of these sands, pursuing not the temporal gains of this body but the eternal profits of the spirit. For it is too little for a monk to have renounced once, that is, to have despised present things at the beginning of his conversion, unless he persists in renouncing them daily. For to the very end of this life we must say with the prophet, ‘And I have not desired the day of man, you know.’ So the Lord too says in the Gospel, ‘If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’”

“And so one who keeps watchful care over the purity of the inner man must seek places which do not, by the fertility of their richness, tempt his mind to the distraction of cultivation, nor drive him from the fixed and unmoving station of his cell and compel him to go out to some open-air work, and so, his thoughts being poured out as it were into the open, scatter in different directions all the direction of his mind and that most subtle view of his goal. No one at all, however careful and watchful, can guard against these things or even see them, except one who keeps his body and soul continually shut within the enclosure of the walls. So, like an excellent fisherman providing his food by the apostolic art, intent and motionless he may catch the shoals of thoughts swimming in the most tranquil depth of his heart, and, as if looking carefully into the depths from a projecting rock, judge with shrewd discernment which he should draw to himself with the saving hook, and which he should neglect and reject as bad and harmful fish.”

“Persevering continually in this watch, each will effectively fulfil what is very clearly expressed through the prophet Habakkuk: ‘I will stand upon my watch and climb upon the rock, and I will look out to see what he will say in me, and what I shall answer to him who reproves me.’ How laborious and difficult this is, is most plainly proved by the experience of the mind of those who live in the desert of Calamus or Porphyrion. For although they are separated from all cities and human dwellings by a longer stretch of solitude than the desert of Scete (for, penetrating the wastes of a most vast solitude by seven or eight stages, they scarcely reach the secret places of their cells), yet, because there they give themselves to agriculture and are by no means kept within enclosures, when they come to these squalid places where we live, or to those of Scete, they are troubled by such surges of thoughts and such anxiety of mind that, like raw beginners who have never even lightly touched the exercises of solitude, they cannot bear living in a cell and the silences of quiet, and, at once thrown out of them, are driven away like the inexperienced and novices. For they have not learned to calm the movements of the inner man and to meet the storms of their thoughts with constant care and persevering attention, since, sweating every day at open-air work, they fly about all day in the empty air not only with the flesh but also with the mind, and pour out their thoughts everywhere into the open along with the movement of their bodies. And so they neither perceive the many-desiring vanity of their soul nor can restrain its slippery wanderings; and, unable to bear contrition of spirit, they think the constancy of their own silence unbearable, and, untiring in the laborious work of the fields, they are overcome by idleness and wearied by the length of their rest.”

“It is no wonder if one sitting in his cell, with his thoughts gathered as into a very narrow enclosure, is choked by a multitude of anxieties, which, bursting out with the man from the prison of his dwelling, at once fly about in all directions like unbridled horses. While for the present they wander from their stables, as it were, some brief and sad comfort is at once found; but when the body returns to its own cell and the whole troop of thoughts runs back again as to its own home, the very habit of long-standing license stirs up sharper goads. So those who cannot yet, or do not know how to, struggle against the instigations of their own wills, when they are distressed in their cells as acedia assails their unaccustomed breast more violently, if they grant themselves the liberty of going out more often, relaxing the law of strictness, will stir up against themselves by this supposed remedy a sharper plague; just as some believe they can quench the force of internal fevers by drinking very cold water, when in fact it is clear that the fire is kindled rather than calmed by this, since a much heavier affliction follows that momentary relief.”

“So every monk’s attention must always be fixed on one thing, and the rise and circuit of all his thoughts must be strenuously called back to that very thing, that is, to the remembrance of God. It is like one who wishes to close in on high the vault of a rounded apse: he continually draws around it the line from that most precise center and, by its most certain rule, brings together by his skill the whole evenness of the round structure. But whoever tries to complete it without the test of that midpoint, however great his presumption of art or talent, cannot possibly keep the evenness of its circuit without error, or discover by sight alone how much he has taken away by his error from the beauty of true roundness, unless he always runs back to that indicator of truth, and, correcting the inner and outer curve of his work by its judgment, encloses the mass of so great a height by the law of a single point. So too our mind, unless it moves about the love of the Lord alone, as a center fixed immovably, through all the moments of our works and undertakings, and, by the tested compass, so to speak, of love, either fits or rejects the quality of all our thoughts, will by no means build with tested skill that structure of the spiritual building of which Paul is the architect, nor possess the beauty of that house which blessed David longed to present to the Lord in his heart, saying, ‘Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place of the dwelling of your glory.’ Instead, it will foolishly raise in its heart a house unseemly and unworthy of the Holy Spirit and soon to fall, not to be glorified by the hospitality of the blessed Indweller, but to be crushed mournfully by the ruin of its own building.”

Germanus: “This kind of work that can be done within the cell is commanded by a very useful and necessary rule. For we have often learned its advantage not only from the example of your blessedness, grounded in the imitation of apostolic virtues, but also from the testimony of our own experience. But why the nearness of relatives, which you yourselves have not greatly rejected, should be so much avoided by us is not clear enough. For since we see that you, walking blamelessly in every way of perfection, not only live in your own regions but some of you have not even withdrawn far from your own villages, why should what does you no harm be thought harmful to us?”

Abraham: “Sometimes we see bad examples taken from good things. For if someone ventures to do the same things without the same disposition and purpose, or with unequal virtue, he will certainly fall into snares of deception and death from the very things by which others gain the fruit of eternal life. That boy strong of hand, matched in combat with that most warlike giant, would undoubtedly have suffered this if he had been clothed with Saul’s manly and very strong armor; and the arms with which a sturdier age had laid low countless troops of enemies could have brought certain destruction on the young man, had he not, with prudent discernment, chosen the kind of arms suited to his youth and armed himself against the most hideous enemy not with the breastplate and shield with which he saw the others equipped, but with those weapons with which he himself could fight. So each of us should first weigh carefully the measure of his strength and take up whatever discipline he chooses according to its capacity; for although all are useful, all cannot be suitable for all. For we do not approve anachoresis as suitable for everyone just because it is good; for many find it not only fruitless but even harmful. Nor, because we rightly declare the institution of the coenobia or the care of the brothers holy and praiseworthy, do we therefore think that everyone should seek it. So too the fruit of the guesthouse is very rich, but it cannot be sought by everyone without loss of patience. So, first, the practices of your region and of this one must be weighed against each other; then the strength of men, formed by the continual practice of virtues or vices, must be weighed in different scales. For it can happen that what is hard and impossible for a man of one nation, ingrained custom has somehow turned into nature for others: just as some nations, separated by the great difference of their regions, bear great cold or the heat of the sun without any covering of the body, which others, not experienced in that harshness of climate, cannot endure, however strong they are. So you too, who in this region, at any rate, try with the utmost effort of mind and body to fight against the nature, as it were, of your homeland in many things, consider carefully whether in those regions, sluggish, as is said, and bound as it were by the cold of great unbelief, you could sustain this, so to speak, nakedness. For the antiquity of holy life has instilled this strength of purpose in our people as if by nature; if you see that you are equal to their constancy and virtue, you need not flee the nearness of your relatives and brothers either.”

“So that you may measure the amount of your strength with a fitting estimate against a sure test of strictness, I will briefly tell you what a certain old man, Abba Apollo, did. If the inmost examination of your heart judges that you are not inferior to his purpose and virtue, you may venture to live in your homeland and near your relatives without loss to your purpose and danger to your profession, sure that neither the affection of kinship nor the delight of places can overcome the strictness of this humility, which in this province not only your will but also the necessity of living in a foreign land wrings from you. To this old man, then, his brother came in the dead of night, imploring him to come out of his monastery for a little while and help him pull out an ox which, he complained tearfully, was stuck in the mud of a marsh some way off, because he could by no means drag it out alone. Abba Apollo said to him as he persistently begged, ‘Why did you not ask our younger brother, whom you passed on your way and who was nearer to you than I?’ The man, thinking that he had forgotten the death of their brother, long since buried, and was as it were out of his mind from the excessive constancy of his self-restraint and solitude, answered, ‘How could I call from the tomb one who died fifteen years ago?’ Abba Apollo said, ‘Do you not know, then, that I too have been dead to this world for twenty years and can no longer give you from the tomb of this cell any comforts that belong to the state of the present life? Christ does not allow me to relax even a little from the purpose of mortification I have taken up in order to pull out your ox, when he did not grant even the briefest moment’s respite for the burial of a father, which would certainly have been a far quicker, more honorable, and more devout thing to do.’ So now search the secrets of your breast and judge prudently whether you too could keep such strictness of mind continually near your relatives. When you feel that you are like him in this mortification of soul, then at last know that the nearness of relatives and brothers will likewise be no harm to you: that is, that you believe yourselves as dead to them, though they live close by, so that you neither let them be cherished by your comforts nor let yourselves be relaxed by their services.”

Germanus: “On this you have left no further room for doubt. For we are sure that we could by no means practice near them either the meanness of our present dress or this daily going barefoot, nor would we provide what is needed for food there with similar labor, as here we are forced to carry even our water daily on our necks from three miles away. For neither our shame nor theirs would allow us to do these things before them at all. But what harm will it do our purpose if, with them supplying everything and ourselves wholly freed from all anxiety of providing food, we give ourselves only to reading and prayer, so that, with this labor by which we are now distracted removed, we may apply ourselves more intently to spiritual pursuits alone?”

Abraham: “I will set against this not my own opinion but that of blessed Antony, by which he refuted the sloth of a certain brother languishing in the lukewarmness you speak of, in such a way that he also cut the knot of your proposal. For when, as I said, someone came to that old man and said that the anchoritic discipline was not at all to be admired, declaring that it was of greater virtue if someone practiced the things of perfection among men rather than in the desert, blessed Antony asked where he himself lived. When he said that he lived near his relatives, and boasted that, freed by their provision from all the care and anxiety of daily work, he applied himself unceasingly to reading and prayer alone without any distraction of spirit, blessed Antony said again, ‘Tell me, my friend, whether you are saddened by their losses or misfortunes, and likewise rejoice at their prosperity.’ He admitted that he shared in both. The old man said to him, ‘Know that in the world to come too you will be reckoned with the lot of those with whom in this life you are shaken with joy or sorrow in sharing their gain or loss.’ Not content with this sentence, blessed Antony entered a still wider field of discussion, saying: ‘This way of life and this most lukewarm state strike you not only with the loss I have mentioned (although you do not feel it now, saying in a way, according to that parable of Proverbs, “They struck me, but I did not feel pain; and they mocked me, but I did not know it,” or what is said in the prophet, “And strangers devoured his strength, and he did not know it”), namely that, changing your mind daily with the variety of events, they plunge it unceasingly into earthly things; but also they cheat you of the fruit of your hands and the just reward of your own labor, not allowing you, propped up by their provision, to prepare your daily food with your own hands according to the rule of the blessed apostle. When he was delivering his last precepts to the leaders of the church of Ephesus, he recalled that, even while he was occupied with the holy pursuits of Gospel preaching, he had provided it not only for himself but also for those who were hindered by the necessary services of his ministry, saying, “You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my needs and to those who are with me.” And to show that he did this as a pattern for our benefit, he says elsewhere, “We were not idle among you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread for nothing, but in labor and toil we worked night and day, so as not to burden any of you; not because we did not have the right, but to give ourselves as a pattern to you, that you might imitate us.”’”

“‘And therefore, although we too did not lack the support of relatives, we preferred this poverty to all riches, and chose to prepare the daily food of the body by our own sweat rather than be propped up by the secure provision of relatives, setting below this most laborious poverty that idle meditation of the Scriptures and fruitless persistence in reading which you proclaim. We would without doubt most gladly follow it if apostolic authority had handed it down by its examples as more useful, or the practices of the elders had wholesomely defined it so. But know that you are struck by no lighter loss in this too than in the one we mentioned above: that, although you are of sound and strong body, you are supported by another’s alms, which rightly belong to the weak alone. For certainly the whole human race, except only that kind of monks who, according to the apostle’s command, live by the daily labors of their hands, waits for the agape of another’s mercy. Hence it is certain that not only those who boast that they are fed by the wealth of their relatives, or the labors of their servants, or the produce of their estates, but even the kings of this world are sustained by agape. This, finally, is the definition of our forebears, who decreed that whatever is spent on the necessity of daily food that has not been produced and gained by the work of our hands must be counted as agape, according to the apostle, who, wholly forbidding the idle the help of another’s generosity, says, “He who does not work, let him not eat.”’ With these words blessed Antony, speaking against a certain man, also taught us by the example of his teaching to avoid the most pernicious flatteries of relatives and the agape of all who supply what is needed for food, and further the charm of a pleasant dwelling; and to prefer to all the riches of this world sands rough with natural bitterness and regions scorched by salt floods and for that very reason subject to no man’s right and ownership; so that we may not only avoid crowds of men on the pretext of a trackless solitude, but also that the nature of a fertile soil may by no means tempt us to the distraction of any kind of cultivation, by which the mind, drawn away from that chief watch over the heart, would be made barren for spiritual pursuits.”

“As for your confidence that you can save others too, and your haste to see your homeland again in the hope of greater gain, hear on this too a story of Abba Macarius, most charmingly and aptly framed, which he offered to someone burning with similar desires as the medicine of a most timely narrative. ‘There was,’ he said, ‘in a certain city a very skilled barber who, shaving each man for three denarii and so earning a thin and cheap reward for his work, bought from that same amount what he needed for food each day, and, when every care of the body had been met, put a hundred denarii into his purse every day. But while he was steadily storing up this profit, he heard that in a certain far-off city men paid a barber a solidus each. When he learned this, he said, “How long shall I be content with this beggary, earning a pittance of three denarii with toil, when I could go there and gather riches from a huge profit in solidi?” So he at once took the tools of his trade, spent on travel everything he had collected and kept here over a long time, and with the greatest toil reached that most profitable city. There, on the very day he entered, he received from each man the reward for his work as he had learned, and in the evening, seeing that he had gained a great number of solidi, he went happily to the market to buy the food needed for his meal. When he began to buy it at a great price in solidi, he spent all the solidi he had earned on a very small meal and did not bring home the profit of even one denarius. When he saw that his earnings were used up each day in such a way that he could not only save nothing but could scarcely meet the very needs of daily sustenance, he reflected within himself and said, “I will go back to my city and seek again that very thin profit, from which, when every care of the body had been met, a daily surplus gave me what would grow into support for my old age. Although it seemed small and thin, it produced no small sum by constant increase. That profit in coppers was in fact more profitable to me than this imaginary profit in solidi, from which not only is there no surplus to be stored, but even the very need of daily food is scarcely met.”’ And so it is more right for us to pursue with unbroken constancy this very thin fruit of this solitude, which no worldly cares, no worldly distractions, no pride of vainglory and vanity gnaws away, and no anxieties of daily necessity diminish (‘for a little is better to the righteous than the great riches of sinners’), than to aim at those greater gains which, even if they are obtained by the most profitable conversion of many, will still be consumed by the necessity of worldly life and the daily diminutions of distractions. For, according to the sentence of Solomon, ‘better is one handful with rest than two handfuls with toil and presumption of spirit.’ All who are quite weak must be entangled in these illusions and losses: while they are still unsure of their own salvation and still need another’s teaching and training, they are driven by diabolical illusions to convert and rule others; and even if they could gain some profit from the conversion of some, they will squander whatever they have gained by their impatience and undisciplined conduct. For what the prophet Haggai describes will happen to them: ‘And he who gathers wages puts them into a bag with holes.’ For truly he stores his gains in a bag with holes who loses, through the intemperance of his heart and the daily distraction of his soul, whatever he seems to gain through the conversion of others. So it comes about that, while they believe they are gaining richer profits by teaching others, they are deprived even of their own correction. ‘For there are some who make themselves out rich though having nothing, and some who humble themselves in great riches,’ and, ‘Better is a man in obscurity who serves himself than one who gains honor for himself and lacks bread.’”

Germanus: “By these comparisons your discussion has shown us quite fittingly the errors of our illusions. We likewise long to know their causes and cures, and wish also to be taught where this deception came to us from. For no one doubts that no one can apply remedies to evil illnesses unless he has first declared the very origins of the diseases.”

Abraham: “There is one source and origin of all vices, but according to the character of the part, or, so to speak, the member of the soul that has been corrupted, it receives different names of passions and corruptions. This is sometimes proved by the example of bodily diseases too: though their cause is one, it is distinguished into different kinds of illness according to the character of the members affected. For when the force of a harmful humor has seized the citadel of the body, that is, the head, it produces the complaint of headache; when it has invaded the ears or eyes, it turns into an ear or eye disease; when it has spread to the joints and the extremities of the hands, the illness is called arthritis and chiragra; and when it has flowed down to the lowest part of the feet, it is called gout, its name changed. So the one and same origin of a harmful humor is distinguished by as many names as the parts of the members it has seized. In the same way, passing from visible to invisible things, let us believe that the force of each vice is in the parts and, so to speak, members of our soul. Since all the wisest define it as of threefold power, it must be that either its logikon, that is, the rational part, or its thymikon, that is, the irascible part, or its epithymētikon, that is, the concupiscible part, is corrupted by some assault. When, then, the force of a harmful passion has seized any of these faculties, the vice too is given a name according to its corruption. For if the plague of vices has infected its rational part, it will produce the vices of vainglory, conceit, envy, pride, presumption, contentiousness, and heresy. If it has wounded the irascible faculty, it will give birth to rage, impatience, dejection, acedia, faintheartedness, and cruelty. If it has corrupted the concupiscible part, it will generate gluttony, sexual immorality, covetousness, avarice, and harmful and earthly desires.”

“So if you wish to know the source and origin of this vice, know that the rational part of your mind and soul has been corrupted, from which the vices of presumption and vainglory usually sprout. So this member of the soul, so to speak, must first be healed by you through the judgment of right discernment and the virtue of humility. Because it is corrupted, while you believe that you have not only reached the heights of perfection but can even teach others, and judge yourselves sufficient and fit for the instruction of the rest, you are carried away through the pride of vainglory by the vanity of wandering which your confession revealed. You will be able to cut these off hereafter without difficulty if, grounded, as I said, in the humility of true discernment, you learn with contrition of mind how laborious and difficult it is for each of us to save his own soul, and recognize with the inmost disposition of your heart not only that you are far removed from that presumption of teaching, but that you still need the help of a teacher.”

“Apply, then, to this member or part of your soul, which we have said is especially wounded, the medicine of true humility; since in you, as far as appears, it is weaker than the other virtues of the soul, it must be the first to give way to the devil’s attack. It is as usually happens in human bodies when certain harms strike, arising either from added labor or from corruption of the air: those parts that are weaker are the first to yield and give way to these misfortunes, and when the disease has settled more particularly in them, it wastes the healthy parts of the body too with the same plague. So too the soul of each of us, as the pestilent breath of vices blows, must be tempted most by that passion in which its more tender and weaker part resists the strong thrusts of the enemy less bravely, and must run the danger of captivity in those places where careless watch opens an easier approach to betrayal. So Balaam concluded by sure reasoning that the people of God could be deceived, advising that deadly snares be laid for the children of Israel from the side where he knew them to be weak, not doubting that, when an abundance of women was offered, they would at once fall into the ruin of sexual immorality, because he knew that the concupiscible parts of their souls were corrupt. So the spiritual powers of wickedness test each of us with cunning malice, laying treacherous snares especially for those affections of the soul in which they perceive it to be sick. For example, when they see that the rational parts of our soul are corrupted, they try to deceive us in the way in which Scripture records King Ahab was deceived by those Syrians who said, ‘We know that the kings of Israel are merciful; so let us put sackcloth on our loins and ropes on our heads, and go out to the king of Israel and say to him: Your servant Benhadad says, Let my soul live, I pray.’ Moved not by true devotion but by the vain praise of mercy, he said, ‘If he is still alive, he is my brother.’ By this example they make us too, deceived by an error of that rational part, incur God’s displeasure from the very thing by which we believed we would gain a reward and receive the prize of devotion; and a like rebuke is spoken to us: ‘Because you let go out of your hand a man worthy of death, your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people.’ Or when the unclean spirit says, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets,’ he undoubtedly lays the snares of deception through the rational faculty, which he knew to lie open to deadly plots. The same spirit thought this of our Lord too; when he had tempted him in these three affections of the soul, in which he knew the whole human race is taken captive, he gained nothing by his so cunning snares. For he attacked the concupiscible part of his mind, saying, ‘Command that these stones become bread’; the irascible, when he tried to spur him to seek the power of the present age and the kingdoms of this world; the rational, when he said, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.’ His illusion gained nothing in these because he found nothing corrupted in him, according to the guess he had conceived by false opinion. So no part of his soul, when tempted by the enemy’s snares, gave consent. ‘For behold,’ he says, ‘the prince of this world comes, and he will find nothing in me.’”