On the Work of Monks 26–39

For there has happened to them what the same apostle says must be guarded against in undisciplined younger widows: "For at the same time they learn to be idle; and not only idle, but also busybodies and talkative, saying things they should not." He said this of bad women; what we grieve and lament also in bad men, who, against the very one in whose letters we read these things, idly and talkatively say things they should not. And those among them who have come to the holy warfare with the purpose of pleasing him who enlisted them, being so vigorous in bodily strength and sound in health that they can not only be instructed but also work, according to the apostle, are taken up by the idle and corrupt talk of these people, which through their inexperienced novitiate they cannot judge, and are changed by a pestilent contagion into the same fault: not only not imitating the obedience of the saints who work in quietness, and of other monasteries living under a most wholesome discipline according to the apostolic rule, but even insulting their betters, proclaiming laziness as the preserver of the gospel and accusing mercy as its betrayer. For one who takes thought for the good reputation of the servants of God works far more mercifully toward the souls of the weak than one who breaks bread for the hungry works toward the bodies of the needy. Would that these men who want to keep their hands free would keep their tongues free too! For they would not invite so many to imitate them if they set before them examples not only lazy but also silent.

But now they recite the gospel of Christ against the apostle of Christ. For so wonderful are the works of the lazy that they want to hinder by the gospel what the apostle commanded and did precisely so that the gospel itself would not be hindered. And yet, if we compel them to live by the very words of the gospel according to their understanding, they will be the first to try to persuade us that they are not to be understood as they understand them. For certainly they say they ought not to work because the birds of the sky neither sow nor reap, which the Lord gave us as a likeness so that we should not think about such necessities. Why then do they not attend to what follows? For it was not only said that they do not sow or reap, but it was added: "nor do they gather into storehouses." Now apothecae, or barns, can be called, word for word, repositories. Why then do these men want to have idle hands and full repositories? Why do they store away and keep what they take from the labors of others, from which to bring out something daily? Why, finally, do they grind and cook? For birds do not do this. Or if they find people whom they can persuade to do this work too, bringing them food prepared day by day, at least they bring water for themselves from springs, or draw it from cisterns or wells and store it: birds do not do this. But if this pleases them, let good believers and most devoted provincials of the eternal King also strive to serve his bravest soldiers even in these things, so that they are not forced even to fill their own water, if they have now surpassed by a new degree of righteousness even those who were then at Jerusalem. For when a famine was threatening, foretold by the prophets who were then, good believers sent grain from Greece to them, from which, I believe, they made bread for themselves, or at least had it made: which birds do not do. But if, as I had begun to say, these men have now passed even those by some degree of righteousness, and in all things that belong to getting through this life they act just as birds do, let them show us men serving birds as they want to be served themselves, except birds that are caught and shut up, which are not trusted lest they fly away and not return; and yet these would rather enjoy freedom and take from the fields as much as is enough than take what is set out and prepared by men.

Accordingly, these in turn will be surpassed by another, loftier degree of righteousness by those who so arrange themselves as to go out daily into the fields as if to pasture, pick what they find at the time, and return with their hunger allayed. But certainly, because of the guardians of the fields, how good it would be if the Lord deigned to bestow wings too, so that the servants of God found in other people's fields would not be seized as thieves but chased off like starlings! As it is, he will imitate a bird as far as he can whom the hunter cannot catch. But suppose all allow the servants of God to go out into their fields when they like and to depart from there safe and refreshed; as it was commanded the people of Israel by the law that no one should seize a thief in his fields unless he wanted to carry something away with him; for anyone who touched nothing but what he ate they were to let go free and unpunished. That is why, when the Lord's disciples plucked ears of grain, the Jews brought a charge about the sabbath rather than about theft. But what will be done about those seasons of the year when no food that can be eaten at once is found in the fields? Whoever tries to carry something home to prepare for himself by cooking will hear from the gospel, according to their understanding: "Put it down; for birds do not do this."

But let us grant this too: that throughout the whole year something can be found in the fields, from a tree or from plants or from any roots, that can be taken as food uncooked; or at least that so much exercise of the body is applied that things that need cooking do no harm even if taken raw, and that one can go out to forage even in any harshness of winter; and so it may come about that nothing is carried off to be prepared, nothing stored for tomorrow. Those will not be able to keep this who separate themselves from the sight of men for many days, and, giving access to no one, shut themselves in, living in great intentness of prayer. For these are accustomed to shut in with them food, very simple indeed and very cheap, but enough for those days in which they have determined to be seen by no one: which birds do not do. And the exercise of these men in so wonderful a continence, since they have the leisure to do these things and set themselves forth for imitation not with proud elation but with merciful holiness, I not only do not censure, but cannot praise as much as it deserves. What, though, shall we say of them, according to these men's understanding of the gospel words? Or perhaps the holier they are, the more unlike birds they are, because unless they store up food for themselves for many days, they will not be able to shut themselves in as they do? And certainly they hear with us: "Do not, then, be anxious about tomorrow."

Therefore, to put it briefly, let these men who, by a perverse understanding of the gospel, try to pervert such plain apostolic precepts either not be anxious about tomorrow, like the birds of the sky, or obey the apostle, like beloved sons; rather, let them do both, because both agree. For Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus, would not give counsel contrary to his Lord. For we say this openly to them: if you so understand the birds of the sky in the gospel that you are unwilling to provide food and covering by working with your own hands, then store up nothing for tomorrow either, just as the birds of the sky store up nothing. But if it can be not contrary to the gospel to store up something for tomorrow, where it is said, "Look at the birds of the sky, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses," then it can also be not contrary to the gospel, nor to the likeness of the birds of the sky, to get through this life of the flesh by the labor of bodily work.

For if they are pressed from the gospel to store up nothing for tomorrow, they answer most rightly: "Why then did the Lord himself have a purse, in which to store the money collected? Why was grain sent to the holy fathers so long before, when a famine threatened? Why did the apostles so provide necessities for the needs of the saints, lest they lack in the future, that most blessed Paul wrote to the Corinthians in his letter: 'Now concerning the collections for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of the week let each of you put aside at home, storing up whatever pleases him, so that collections may not be made when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you approve with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem. And if it is fitting that I go too, they will go with me.'" These and many other things they bring forward most abundantly and most truly. To whom we answer: "You see, then, that although the Lord said, 'Do not be anxious about tomorrow,' you are not forced by these words to reserve nothing for tomorrow. Why then do you say that you are forced by the same words to be idle? Why are the birds of the sky not an example to you for reserving nothing, and yet you want them to be an example for working at nothing?"

Someone will say: "What then does it profit a servant of God to leave the former activities he had in the world and turn to this spiritual life and warfare, if he must still carry on business like a workman?" As if it could easily be explained in words how much it profits, what the Lord said to the rich man seeking counsel for gaining eternal life, that he should, if he wished to be perfect, sell what he had, distribute it to the needs of the poor, and follow him! Or has anyone followed the Lord with so unencumbered a course as he who says, "I did not run in vain nor labor in vain"? Yet he both commanded and did these works. So great an authority ought to have sufficed for us who are taught and instructed, both for leaving former possessions and for working with our hands. But we too, helped by the Lord himself, can perhaps somehow come to know what it profits servants of God, even while working in this way, to have left their former business. For if someone turns to this life from being rich and is hindered by no bodily weakness, are we so lacking in the taste of Christ as not to understand how great a swelling of former pride is healed, when, the superfluities by which the mind was once ruinously puffed up having been cut away, the lowliness even of a workman is by no means refused for the modest things that remain naturally necessary for this life? But if he turns to this life from poverty, let him not think he is doing what he used to do, if, from the love of increasing his private property, however small, he has passed, seeking no longer his own things but those of Jesus Christ, to the love of a common life, to live in the society of those who have one soul and one heart in God, so that no one calls anything his own, but they have all things in common. For if the ancient leaders of this earthly commonwealth are usually praised in the most brilliant eloquence of their writers because they so put the common good of the whole people of their city before their private affairs that one of them, a triumphant general after Africa was subdued, did not have anything to give his daughter on her marriage, unless she were given a dowry from the public treasury by decree of the senate: in what spirit ought a citizen of that eternal city, the heavenly Jerusalem, to be in his commonwealth, if not so as to put in common with his brother that very thing which he works for with his own hands, and, if anything is lacking to him, to supply it from the common store, saying with him whose precept and example he has followed, "as having nothing and possessing all things"?

Therefore even those who have left or distributed wealth, whether great or of any kind, and have chosen with devout and wholesome humility to be numbered among Christ's poor, if they are so strong in body and free from church occupations (although, since they bring so great a proof of their mind and have contributed either a great deal or not a little from what they had to the needs of the same society, the common property itself and brotherly love owe them in return the sustaining of their life), nevertheless, if they too work with their hands, so as to take away the excuse from the lazy who come from a humbler and therefore more exercised life, they act much more mercifully than when they divided all their goods among the needy. If they are unwilling to do this, indeed, who would dare to compel them? Yet works must be found for them in the monastery, even if freer from bodily labor, but to be cared for by watchful administration, so that they too do not eat their bread, since it has now become common, for nothing. Nor need we consider in which monasteries, or in what place, anyone spent what he had on needy brothers. For all Christians form one commonwealth. And so whoever has spent necessities on Christians anywhere, wherever he himself also receives what is necessary for him, he receives from what is Christ's; because wherever he himself gave to such, who received it but Christ? But those who were getting through life by bodily labor outside this holy society, from whose number more come to the monasteries, because in the human race itself they are more numerous, if they are unwilling to work, neither let them eat. For the rich are not humbled to godliness in the Christian warfare so that the poor may be lifted up to pride. For it is by no means fitting that in that life where senators become laborers, workmen should become idle; and that where those who were lords of estates come, leaving their luxuries, peasants should be delicate.

"But the Lord says: Do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on." Rightly, since he had said above: "You cannot serve God and mammon." For one who preaches the gospel in order to have something to eat and something to wear thinks he is serving both God, because he preaches the gospel, and mammon, because he preaches for the sake of these necessities; which the Lord says cannot be done. And so one who preaches the gospel for these things is shown to be serving not God but mammon, even if God uses him, in a way he himself does not know, for the advancement of others. For to this sentence he adds, saying: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on"; not so that they should not provide these things, as far as necessity requires, from whatever source they honorably can, but so that they should not look to these things and do for their sake whatever they are commanded to do in preaching the gospel. For the intention for which something is done he calls the eye; hence a little above he was speaking so as to come down to this, and said: "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"; that is, your deeds will be such as your intention in doing them is. And in order to come to this, he had given commandment above about almsgiving, saying: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth destroy and where thieves dig through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not dig through and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Then he added, "The lamp of your body is your eye," so that those who give alms may not give them with the intention of either wishing to please men or seeking to be repaid on earth for what they do. Hence the apostle too, when he instructed Timothy that the rich should be admonished, said: "Let them give readily, let them share, let them store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life." Since, then, the Lord directed the eye of those who give alms toward the future life and the heavenly reward, so that their deeds themselves may be full of light when the eye is single (for to that final recompense applies what he says elsewhere: "Whoever receives you receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And whoever gives one of these least ones even a cup of cold water to drink in the name of a disciple, truly I tell you, his reward will not perish"), then, lest perhaps, when the eye of those who spend necessities on the needy, on prophets, on the righteous, and on the Lord's disciples had been corrected, the eye of those for whom this was done should be corrupted, so that they would want to serve as soldiers of Christ in order to receive these things, he says: "No one can serve two masters"; and a little after, "You cannot serve God and mammon"; and at once he joined to it: "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious for your life, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on."

And what follows about the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field he says for this purpose, that no one may think God does not care for the necessities of his servants, since his most wise providence reaches even to creating and governing these things. For it is not that he does not also feed and clothe those who work with their hands. But lest they twist the Christian warfare to the purpose of acquiring these things, the Lord forewarns his servants of this: that in that ministry which is owed to his sacrament we should think not of these things, but of his kingdom and righteousness; and all these things will be added to us, whether we work with our hands, or are hindered by weakness of body, or are so taken up by the occupation of the warfare itself that we can do nothing else. For it is not the case that, because God said, "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me," the apostle therefore ought not to have fled and been let down through the wall in a basket to escape the hands of his persecutor, but should rather have waited to be seized, so that God might deliver him as he did the three young men from the midst of the fire. Or for this reason the Lord ought not to have said, "If they persecute you in one city, flee to another," because he himself said, "Whatever you ask in my name will be given you." So, just as, if anyone put a question of this kind to Christ's disciples as they fled persecution, why they did not rather stand and, calling on God, be rescued by his wonders, as Daniel from the lions and Peter from his chains, they would answer that they ought not to tempt God, but that he would do such things, if he willed, when they themselves had nothing they could do; but when he had put flight in their power, even if they are freed through it, they are freed by none but him: so too, if anyone raises from the gospel the question of the birds of the sky, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into storehouses, and of the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, to servants of God who have the time and strength to get their living with their own hands, by the example and precept of the apostle, they will easily answer: "If we too, through some weakness or occupation, cannot work, he will feed and clothe us as he does the birds and the lilies, which do no work of this kind; but when we can, we ought not to tempt our God, because this very ability we have by his gift, and when we live by it, we live by his bounty who has bestowed the ability. And so we are not anxious about these necessities, because when we can do these things, he feeds and clothes us by whom men are fed and clothed; but when we cannot do them, the same one feeds and clothes us by whom the birds are fed and the lilies clothed, since we are worth more than they. Therefore in this warfare of ours we do not think about tomorrow either, because it is not for these temporal things, to which tomorrow belongs, but for those eternal things, where it is always today, that we have enlisted with him, so that, entangled in no worldly affairs, we may please him."

Since these things are so, allow me a little, holy brother (for the Lord gives me great confidence through you), to address those very sons and brothers of ours whom I know you are in labor with, together with us, with such love, until the apostolic discipline is formed in them. O servants of God, soldiers of Christ, do you so ignore the snares of the most cunning enemy, who, desiring in every way to cloud with his stenches your good reputation, so good an aroma of Christ, lest good souls say, "We will run after the fragrance of your ointments," and so escape his snares, has scattered everywhere so many hypocrites in the habit of monks, going round the provinces, sent nowhere, fixed nowhere, standing nowhere, settled nowhere? Some peddle limbs of martyrs, if indeed of martyrs; others enlarge their fringes and phylacteries; others lie that they have heard that their parents or kinsfolk are living in this or that region and that they are going to them. And all ask, all demand either the expenses of a profitable poverty or the price of a feigned holiness; while meanwhile, wherever they are caught in their evil deeds or become known in any way, under the general name of monks your way of life is blasphemed, so good, so holy, which in Christ's name we desire to spring up throughout all Africa, as through other lands. Are you not, then, inflamed with zeal for God? Does not your heart grow hot within you, and in your meditation a fire blaze up, so that you pursue their evil works with good works, so as to cut off from them the pretext for the shameful trafficking by which your reputation is harmed and a stumbling block is put before the weak? Have pity, then, and have compassion, and show men that you seek not an easy living in idleness, but the kingdom of God through the narrow and strait life of this profession. You have the same reason that the apostle had: to cut off the pretext from those who seek a pretext, so that those who are choked by their stenches may be refreshed by your good fragrance.

We do not bind heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, which we are unwilling to touch with a finger. Inquire and learn the labors of our occupations, and in some of us also the weaknesses of our bodies, and the custom now established in the churches we serve, which do not allow us to find time for those works to which we exhort you. For although we can say, "Who ever serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its fruit? Who tends a flock and does not get some of the milk of the flock?", yet I call the Lord Jesus, in whose name I say these things without fear, as witness upon my soul, that as far as my own convenience is concerned, I would much rather work at something with my hands each day at fixed hours, as is established in well-ordered monasteries, and have the other hours free for reading and praying or doing something with the divine writings, than endure the most turbulent perplexities of other people's cases about worldly affairs, either to be settled by judging or cut short by intervening. With these troubles the same apostle burdened us, not by his own choice, surely, but by that of him who spoke through him; yet we do not read that he himself endured them. For the travels of his apostleship were of another kind. Nor did he say, "If, then, you have worldly cases, bring them to us, or appoint us to judge," but, "Those who are of least account in the church, set these," he says. "I say this to your shame. Is there not among you anyone wise who can judge between his brother? But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?" So he wanted the wise believers and saints who were settled in places, not those who traveled here and there for the gospel, to be the examiners of such affairs. Hence it is never written of him that he at any time gave his time to such things, from which we cannot excuse ourselves, even if we are of least account, because he wanted even these to be set, if wise men were lacking, rather than that the affairs of Christians should be brought into the public court. Yet we undertake this labor not without the Lord's consolation, for the hope of eternal life, so that we may bear fruit with patience. For we are servants of his church, and especially of its weaker members, whatever members we may be in the same body. I pass over other countless church cares, which perhaps no one believes except one who has experienced them. So we do not bind heavy burdens and lay them on your shoulders, which we do not touch with a finger, since if we could do so while keeping the account of our office (he sees who tests our hearts), we would rather do these things that we exhort you to do than those we are forced to do. Certainly, for all, both you and us, laboring according to our rank and office, the way is narrow in labor and hardship; and yet for us rejoicing in hope his yoke is easy and his burden light, who has called us to rest, who first made the passage from the valley of weeping, where he himself was not without afflictions. If you are our brothers, if our sons, if we are your fellow servants, or rather your servants in Christ, hear what we admonish, acknowledge what we command, take what we dispense. But if we are Pharisees, binding heavy burdens and laying them on your shoulders, do what we say, even if you disapprove of what we do. But to us it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by any human day. With how true a love we care for you, let him see who has given what we may offer to his eyes to see. Finally, think what you will of us: the apostle Paul commands and beseeches you in the Lord that you work in quietness, that is, quietly and obediently ordered, and eat your own bread. Nor, I think, do you believe anything evil of him; and you have believed in him who speaks through him.

These things, my dearest brother Aurelius, venerable in the heart of Christ, I have not delayed to write on the work of monks, as far as he who commanded me through you to do it has granted that I could, taking care above all that good brothers who obey the apostolic precepts should not be called even betrayers of the gospel by the lazy and disobedient; so that those who do not work may at least not doubt that those who work are to be preferred to themselves. For the rest, who can bear that stubborn men who resist the most wholesome admonitions of the apostle should be not tolerated as weaker but even proclaimed as holier, so that monasteries founded on sounder teaching are corrupted by a double enticement, the dissolute license of leisure and the false name of holiness? Let our other brothers and sons, then, who have been accustomed to favor such people and to defend this presumption through ignorance, know that they above all need correction, so that those people may be corrected; not so that they grow weary of doing good. Certainly, in that they readily and eagerly supply necessities to the servants of God, we not only do not blame them but embrace them most sweetly; only let them not, by a perverse mercy, harm those people's future life more than they help their present one.

For the sin is less if "the sinner is not praised in the desires of his soul, and he who has done iniquity is not blessed." But what is more iniquitous than to want to be obeyed by inferiors and to be unwilling to obey superiors? The apostle, I mean, not us; so far as even to let their hair grow long, on which he did not want there to be any dispute at all, saying: "But if anyone wants to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. But this I command"; that is, that the cleverness of one arguing should not be sought, but the authority of one commanding attended to. For what is the point, I ask, of wearing long hair so openly against the apostle's precepts? Must one be so at leisure that not even barbers work? Or, because they say they imitate the birds of the gospel, are they afraid of being plucked, as it were, lest they be unable to fly? I hesitate to say more about this fault because of certain long-haired brothers, whom we revere for many things, indeed almost everything, apart from this. But the more we love them in Christ, the more anxiously we admonish them. For we do not fear that their humility will reject our admonition, since we too wish to be admonished by such people where we perhaps stumble or stray. This, then, we admonish such holy men: not to be moved by the foolish arguments of empty people, and not to imitate in this perversity those from whom they are far different in everything else. For those who carry about a hypocrisy for sale fear that a shorn holiness may be held cheaper than a long-haired one, so that, namely, one who sees them may think of those ancients of whom we read, Samuel and the others, who did not cut their hair. Nor do they consider what difference there is between that prophetic veil and this revelation of the gospel, of which the apostle says, "When you have passed over to Christ, the veil will be taken away." For what the veil set between the face of Moses and the sight of the people of Israel signifies, the hair of the saints also signified in those times. For the same apostle also says that hair is given for a veil; by his authority these men are pressed. For he says openly: "If a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him." "That very dishonor," they say, "we take on because of our sins," putting forward for this purpose the shade of a feigned humility, so as to display under it a pride for sale; as if the apostle taught pride when he says, "Every man who prays or prophesies with his head veiled dishonors his head," and, "A man ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God." So he who says "ought not" perhaps does not know how to teach humility! But if in the time of the gospel these men seek, for humility's sake, this dishonor which was a sacrament in the time of prophecy, let them cut their hair and veil their head with sackcloth. But then there will not be that saleable appearance, because Samson was veiled not by sackcloth but by his hair.