The Conferences 20.1–21.4

As I am about to relate the precepts of that eminent and remarkable man, Abba Pinufius, on the end of repentance, I think I should be cutting off a large part of the material if, to spare the reader weariness, I passed over here in silence the praise of his humility, which I touched on briefly in the fourth book of the Institutes, the one entitled “On the training of those who renounce the world”; especially since many who do not know that little work may come upon this reading, and the whole authority of what is said would waver if the merit of the speaker were withheld. When he was abbot and presbyter, presiding over a huge coenobium not far from Panephysis, a city of Egypt, as was said there, and the whole province had so raised him up by the glory of his virtues and miracles that he seemed to himself already to have received the reward of his labors in the payment of human praise, he feared that the emptiness of popular favor, which he especially hated, would make void the fruit of his eternal reward. So he secretly fled his monastery and made his way to the innermost retreats of the monks of Tabennesi. There he chose not the solitude of the desert, nor the security of the solitary life, which even imperfect men who cannot bear the labor of obedience in the coenobia sometimes seek with proud presumption, but to be put under the yoke of a very famous coenobium. There, so as not to be betrayed by any sign of his habit, he dressed in secular clothes and, as is the custom there, lay weeping before the gates for many days. He threw himself at the knees of all, and after the long disdain of those who, to test his desire, said that in his extreme old age he was seeking the holiness of that purpose not sincerely but as if driven by want of bread, he at last obtained admission. There he was assigned as helper to a young brother who had charge of cultivating the garden. He not only carried out, to the admiration of all at such holy humility, everything this superior ordered or the care of the work entrusted to him required, but also did by stealthy labor at night certain necessary tasks that the others avoided because of their unpleasantness, so that at daybreak the whole community marveled at such useful work and did not know who had done it. When he had spent nearly three years there in this way, rejoicing in the labors of such humiliating subjection that he had longed for, it happened that a brother who knew him arrived from the parts of Egypt he had left. For a long time this brother hesitated and held back from a ready recognition because of the meanness of his clothes and his work; but after a very clear examination he threw himself at his knees, and first struck all the brothers with amazement, and then, when his name too was revealed, which the fame of his outstanding holiness had spread among them as well, with the grief of compunction that they had assigned a man of such merit and priesthood to such humiliating tasks. But after he had been brought back to his own monastery, weeping abundantly and blaming the grievous mishap of his betrayal on the devil’s envy, with an honorable guard of brothers around him, he stayed there only a short time. Again offended by the very deference paid to his honor and rank, he secretly boarded a ship and crossed to the province of Palestine in Syria. There he was received as a beginner and novice in the dwelling of the monastery where we were living, and was told by the abbot to stay in our cell. But not even there could his virtues and merits long remain hidden. For he was discovered through a similar betrayal and was called back to his monastery with great honor and praise.

So when, not long afterward, the desire for holy instruction drove us too to seek Egypt, we searched for him with the greatest affection and longing and were received by him with such grace and kindness that he honored us, as his former cell-mates, with lodging even in his own little cell, which he had built at the far end of his garden. There, when he had given before all the brothers in the synaxis to a certain brother who was taking on the rule of the monastery those very hard and lofty precepts which, as we said, I have gathered in the fourth book of the Institutes as briefly as I could, the heights of true renunciation seemed to us so incomprehensible and so wonderful that we believed our lowliness could by no means climb there. So, cast down by despair and not hiding even in our faces the inner bitterness of our thoughts, we ran back to the blessed old man with very anxious minds. When he at once asked the cause of so great sadness, Abba Germanus, groaning heavily, answered thus.

“The more splendid and lofty the discourse of a teaching unknown to us, which opened the steep road of the highest renunciation and, as if the mist had been removed from our eyes, showed its summit hidden in heaven, the greater the weight of despair that presses us down. For when we measure its immensity by the smallness of our strength and compare the great lowliness of our ignorance with the boundless height of the virtue shown us, we feel that our littleness not only cannot advance to it but can even fall away from what it is. For, crushed by the weight of excessive despair, we somehow slip from the lowest to still lower. One single help, then, can bring healing to our wounds: that we learn something about the end of repentance and above all about the sign of satisfaction, so that, certain of the forgiveness of our past offenses, we may be encouraged to climb even the heights of the perfection just described.”

Pinufius: “I am indeed greatly delighted by the abundant fruits of your humility, which I observed with no careless attention even when I was received long ago as a lodger in that cell of yours. And I greatly rejoice that you receive with such admiration what is taught by us, the least of all Christians, perhaps only with freedom of words, although, if I am not mistaken, you carry it out no less diligently than we speak it, and, as I remember, the labor of your practice almost matches the weight of what is said; yet you hide the merit of your virtue as though no breath of what you practice daily had reached you. But because this very thing is most worthy of the highest praise, that you declare, as though still untaught, that these practices of the saints are unknown to you, we shall briefly set out as best we can what you earnestly ask of us. For we must obey the command of our old friendship beyond our capacity and strength. Many, then, have published a great deal, not only in speech but also in writing, about the power of repentance to obtain pardon, and about its merit, showing how great is its usefulness, how great its power and how great its grace, so that, when God has been offended by past crimes and is already inflicting a most just punishment for such great crimes, it in some way, if one may say so, withstands him and, as it were, restrains the right hand of the avenger against his will. But I do not doubt that all this is so well known to you, whether by natural wisdom or by tireless study of the sacred writings, that the first planting of your conversion came from it. Finally, anxious not about the nature of repentance but about its end and the sign of satisfaction, you are inquiring with most shrewd questioning into what others have passed over.”

“So, to satisfy the desire of your question with all brevity and conciseness: the full and perfect definition of repentance is that we never again commit the sins for which we are doing penance or for which our conscience pricks us. And the sign of satisfaction and pardon is to have driven out of our hearts even the affection for them. For let each one know that he is not yet absolved of his former sins as long as, while he is engaged in satisfaction and groaning, the image either of the very things he did or of similar crimes plays before his eyes, and, I do not say the delight, but even the memory of them troubles the secret places of his mind. So the one who keeps vigil for satisfaction may know that he is absolved of his crimes and has received pardon for past offenses when he feels that his heart is by no means touched by the allurements of those same vices or by their imagination. Therefore a most truthful examiner of repentance and judge of pardon resides in our conscience, which, while we still dwell in this flesh and before the day of recognition and judgment, reveals the absolution of our guilt and shows the end of satisfaction and the grace of forgiveness. And to express the same thing more pointedly: only then are the past contagions of our vices to be believed forgiven us when the desires and passions of present pleasures have alike been driven out of our heart.”

Germanus: “And where will that so holy and saving compunction of humility come to us from, which is described thus in the person of a penitent: ‘I have made my sin known, and I have not covered my injustice. I said: I will declare my injustice against myself to the Lord’; so that we may be worthy to say effectively what follows too, ‘And you forgave the impiety of my heart’? Or how shall we be able, prostrate in prayer, to rouse ourselves to the tears of confession, by which we may be worthy to obtain pardon for our offenses, according to the word, ‘Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears,’ if we drive out of our hearts the memory of our sins, which on the contrary we are commanded to keep tenaciously, as the Lord says, ‘And I will not remember your iniquities; but you, remember’? For this reason, not only while working but also while praying, I strive deliberately to call my mind back to the remembrance of my sins, so that, more effectively bent to true humility and contrition of heart, I may dare to say with the prophet, ‘See my humility and my toil, and forgive all my sins.’”

Pinufius: “Your question, as was said above, was put not about the nature of repentance but about its end and the sign of satisfaction, and it has, I think, been answered fittingly and consistently. But what you said about remembering sins is useful enough and necessary, but for those still doing penance, so that with constant beating of the breast they may cry out, ‘For I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me,’ and also, ‘And I will think about my sin.’ While, then, we are doing penance and are still stung by the memory of vicious acts, the shower of tears that springs from confessing our faults must put out the fire of our conscience. But when, in someone fixed in this humility of heart and contrition of spirit and persevering in labor and groaning, the memory of these things has been lulled to sleep, and the thorn of conscience has been pulled out of the marrow of the soul by the grace of the merciful God, it is certain that he has reached the end of satisfaction and the merit of pardon and has been cleansed from the stain of the crimes he committed. Yet this forgetting is reached in no other way than by the blotting out of the former vices and affections and by a perfect and complete purity of heart. Without doubt none of those who, through sloth or contempt, have neglected to purge their vices will attain it, but only one who, continuing with sorrowful constancy in groans and sighs, has burned out every stain of former filth and has cried to the Lord with strength of soul and in deed, ‘I have made my offense known, and I have not covered my injustice,’ and, ‘My tears have been my bread day and night,’ so that he may deserve to hear in consequence, ‘Let your voice cease from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord.’ Likewise let this too be addressed to him by the voice of the Lord: ‘I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like a mist,’ and again, ‘I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities for my own sake, and I will no longer remember your sins.’ And so, freed from the cords of his sins by which each one is bound, he will sing to the Lord with all thanksgiving: ‘You have broken my bonds; to you I will offer the sacrifice of praise.’”

“For after that general grace of baptism and that most precious gift of martyrdom, which is gained by the washing of blood, there are many fruits of repentance by which one comes to the expiation of crimes. For eternal salvation is promised not only by the simple name of repentance, of which the blessed apostle Peter says, ‘Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out,’ and John the Baptist and the Lord himself, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near’; but the mass of sins is also buried by the disposition of love: ‘for love covers a multitude of sins.’ Likewise healing is given to our wounds by the fruit of almsgiving, because ‘as water puts out fire, so almsgiving puts out sin.’ So too the washing away of offenses is gained by the pouring out of tears: ‘for every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears.’ Then he adds, showing that they were not poured out in vain: ‘Depart from me, all you who work iniquity, for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping.’ Again, the washing away of crimes is granted through confessing them: ‘For I said: I will declare my injustice against myself to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart’; and again: ‘Tell your iniquities first, that you may be justified.’ Forgiveness of crimes committed is likewise obtained through affliction of heart and body: ‘For see,’ it says, ‘my humility and my toil, and forgive all my sins’; and above all through amendment of conduct: ‘Take away,’ it says, ‘the evil of your thoughts from my eyes. Cease to act perversely; learn to do good; seek justice, help the oppressed, judge for the orphan, defend the widow. And come, argue with me, says the Lord: and if your sins are like scarlet, they will be made white as snow; if they are red like crimson, they will be like clean wool.’ Sometimes too the pardon of offenses is obtained by the intercession of the saints: ‘For he who knows that his brother is sinning a sin not unto death, let him ask, and he will give him life, for one who sins not unto death’; and again: ‘Is any among you sick? Let him bring in the presbyters of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he is in sins, they will be forgiven him.’ Sometimes the stain of vices is burned away by the merit of mercy and faith, according to the word, ‘By mercy and faith sins are purged.’ Often it is through the conversion and salvation of those who are saved by our warnings and preaching, since ‘he who causes a sinner to be converted from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.’ Pardon for our own misdeeds is also reached through our forgiving and remitting: ‘For if you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your offenses.’ You see, then, how many ways to mercy the Savior’s clemency has opened, so that no one who desires salvation may be broken by despair when he sees himself invited to life by so many remedies. For if you plead that, because of the weakness of the flesh, you cannot abolish your sins by the affliction of fasting, and cannot say, ‘My knees are weakened through fasting, and my flesh is changed for want of oil,’ ‘For I ate ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,’ then redeem them by generous almsgiving. If you have nothing to share with the needy (although the constraint of want and poverty excludes no one from this work, since the widow’s two mites alone are preferred to the huge gifts of the rich, and the Lord promises to pay a reward for a cup of cold water), you can certainly be cleansed by amendment of conduct. But if you cannot attain the perfection of the virtues by extinguishing all vices, spend a devout care on the good of another’s salvation. And if you complain that you are not fit for this ministry, you can cover your sins by love. If some sloth of mind has made you weak in this too, at least, humbly and with a lowly disposition, implore remedies for your wounds by prayer and the intercession of the saints. Finally, who is there who cannot say in supplication, ‘I have made my sin known, and I have not covered my injustice,’ so that by this confession he may deserve to add, ‘And you forgave the impiety of my heart’? But if shame holds you back and you blush to reveal them before men, do not cease to confess them with constant supplication to him from whom they cannot be hidden, and to say to him, ‘I acknowledge my iniquity, and my sin is always before me; against you only have I sinned and done evil before you’; for he is wont to heal without the publication of any shame and to forgive sin without reproach. And beyond this so ready and certain help, the divine condescension has granted us yet another, still easier, and has entrusted the very help of the remedy to our own choice, so that we may count on the pardon of our crimes according to our own disposition, saying to him, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.’ Whoever, then, desires to come to the pardon of his crimes, let him be eager to fit himself with these instruments. Let the obstinacy of a hardened heart turn no one away from the saving remedy and from the fountain of such great goodness; for even if we do all these things, they would not suffice to expiate our crimes unless the goodness and clemency of the Lord blotted them out. When he sees the services of our devout effort offered with a suppliant mind, he follows our small and slight efforts with immense generosity, saying, ‘I am, I am he who blots out your iniquities for my own sake, and I will no longer remember your sins.’ Whoever, then, strives toward the state we have described will attain the grace of satisfaction by daily fasts and by the mortification of heart and body, because, as it is written, ‘Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.’ And not without reason; for ‘flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God.’ And so whoever will hold back from the shedding of this blood the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, will without doubt be struck by that curse of Jeremiah: ‘For cursed,’ he says, ‘is he who holds back his sword from blood.’ For this is the sword which, shedding for our health that blood of ours by which the matter of sins is given life, cuts away and cuts off whatever carnal or earthly growth it finds in the members of our soul, and makes us, dead to vices, live to God and flourish in spiritual virtues. And so he will begin to weep no longer from the memory of old wrongdoing but from hope of the joys to come; and, thinking not so much of past evils as of good things to come, he will pour out tears not from grief for sins but from eagerness for that eternal gladness, and, forgetting the things that are behind, that is, carnal vices, he will stretch forward to the things that are before, that is, spiritual gifts and virtues.”

“But as for what you said a little earlier, that you deliberately go over the memory of your past sins, this ought not to be done at all; rather, if it creeps in by force, let it be thrust out at once. For it draws the mind far back from the contemplation of purity, especially the mind of one who lives in solitude, entangling it in the filth of this world and choking it with the stench of vices. For while you recall what you committed according to the prince of this world through ignorance or wantonness, even if I grant that no delight creeps in while you are occupied with this thought, still the mere contagion of the old rottenness must corrupt the mind with a foul stench and shut out the spiritual fragrance of the virtues, that is, the sweetness of a good odor. When, then, the memory of past vices knocks at the mind, we must spring back from it as an honorable and serious man flees if he is accosted in public by the conversation or embraces of a shameless and wanton woman. Unless he quickly draws himself away from her touch and allows even the shortest delay of shameful talk, even if he rejects consent to the disgraceful pleasure, he will not escape the mark of infamy and reproach in the judgment of all who pass by. So we too, when we are led to such thoughts by a pestilent memory, must quickly depart from contemplating them and fulfil what Solomon commands: ‘But spring away,’ he says, ‘do not linger in her place, nor fix your eye on her,’ lest the angels, seeing us entangled in unclean and base thoughts, should be unable to say of us as they pass, ‘The blessing of the Lord be upon you.’ For it is impossible for the mind to dwell on good thoughts when the governing part of the heart has sunk down to base and earthly views. For that saying of Solomon is true: ‘When your eyes see a strange woman, then your mouth will speak perverse things, and you will lie as in the heart of the sea and like a pilot in a great storm. But you will say: They struck me, but I did not feel pain; they mocked me, but I did not know it.’ So, abandoning not only all base thoughts but also all earthly ones, the attention of our mind must always be raised to heavenly things, according to the saying of our Savior: ‘For where I am,’ he says, ‘there my servant also will be.’ For it often happens that, while some inexperienced person goes over his own falls or those of others with a feeling of pity, he himself is grazed by the consent to pleasure of a most subtle dart, and a beginning that arose under the appearance of piety ends in an obscene and harmful end. ‘For there are ways that seem right to men, but their end comes to the depth of hell.’”

“Therefore we must strive to rouse ourselves to praiseworthy compunction by longing for the virtues and by desire for the kingdom of heaven rather than by harmful memories of vices; for a man must be choked by the most pestilent stench of a sewer as long as he chooses to stand over it or stir up its filth.”

“Let us know, as we have often said, that we have made satisfaction for past sins only when the very movements and affections through which we committed what must be repented of have been cut off from our hearts. Yet let no one believe he can attain this unless he has first cut down, with all the fervor of his spirit, the very causes and occasions through which he fell into those crimes. For example, if he fell into sexual immorality or adultery through harmful familiarity with women, let him with the greatest haste avoid even the sight of them; or if he was inflamed by an abundance of wine and an excess of feasting, let him chastise with the greatest strictness the surfeit of enticing foods. Again, if, corrupted by the desire and love of money, he fell into perjury, theft, murder, or blasphemy, let him cut off the matter of avarice that lured him into his deception. If he is driven into the vice of anger by the passion of pride, let him tear out the tinder of arrogance itself by the highest virtue of humility. And so, in order that each sin may be extinguished, the cause and occasion through which or on account of which it was committed must first be cut off. For by this remedy of cures one comes without doubt to the forgetting of the crimes committed as well.”

“But let this definition of forgetting be established only for the capital crimes, which are also condemned by the law of Moses. Just as their affections are cast off or consumed by good living, so repentance for them also comes to an end. But for those small faults in which, as it is written, ‘the righteous man falls seven times and rises again,’ repentance will never be lacking. For every day, whether unwilling or willing, we often fall into them through ignorance, forgetfulness, thought, speech, surprise, necessity, or the frailty of the flesh and pollution in sleep. For these David too, praying to the Lord, begs purification and pardon, saying, ‘Who understands his offenses? Cleanse me from my hidden faults, and spare your servant from those of others’; and the apostle, ‘For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want, that I do’; and for these the same apostle cried out, lamenting, ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ For we slip into these so easily, as if by a law of nature, that however great the watchfulness and care with which they are guarded against, they cannot be entirely avoided. Of these one of the disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, declares with a sharp definition: ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and his word is not in us.’ So it will not greatly profit one who longs to reach the summit of perfection to have come to the end of repentance, that is, to refrain from what is unlawful, unless he also stretches himself always with unwearied course in those virtues by which one comes to the signs of satisfaction. For it will not be enough for anyone to have abstained from the foul filth of crimes which the Lord abhors, unless he also possesses, through purity of heart and the perfection of apostolic love, that good fragrance of the virtues in which the Lord delights.” Thus far Abba Pinufius discussed the sign of satisfaction and the end of repentance. Although he begged us with anxious affection to choose to stay in his coenobium, he let us go, since he could not keep us, drawn as we were by the fame of the desert of Scete.

Before we begin to unfold the words of this conference held with that eminent man Abba Theonas, I think it necessary to touch briefly on the beginning of his conversion, since from it both the merit and the grace of the man will be able to appear more clearly to the reader. When he was quite a young man, then, he was bound by the bond of marriage through the zeal and command of his parents. For, taking thought for his chastity with devout care and fearing the dangerous fall of a slippery age, they believed that the stirrings of youth should be forestalled by the lawful remedy of marriage. When he had spent five years with his wife, he came to Abba John, who at that time, chosen for the merit of his wonderful holiness, presided over the diaconia. For no one is raised to this rank by his own will or ambition, but only one whom the assembly of all the elders judges more excellent and more exalted than all, by the privilege of age and the testimony of his faith and virtues. When the aforesaid young man, I say, had come to this blessed John with devout zeal, bringing pious gifts, among the other landowners who vied in offering the old man tithes or first fruits of their crops from their property, the old man saw that they had flocked to him with many gifts and wished to repay their devotion in turn. He began, according to the apostle, to sow spiritual things among them whose carnal gifts he was reaping. So he began his word of exhortation thus.

“I am indeed delighted, my sons, by the devout generosity of your gifts, and I gratefully welcome the devotion of this offering, whose distribution has been entrusted to me, because you faithfully offer your first fruits and tithes, which will serve the needs of the poor, as a sacrifice of sweet savor to the Lord. You believe that by offering them the fullness of your crops and of all your property, from which you have set these aside for the Lord, will be richly blessed, and that, according to the faith of that command, you will be heaped with a manifold abundance of all good things even in this world: ‘Honor the Lord from your just labors, and offer him of the fruits of your righteousness, that your barns may be filled with abundance of wheat, and your presses overflow with wine.’ Know that by faithfully carrying out this devotion you have fulfilled the righteousness of the old law. Those who were then under it incurred guilt inescapably when they transgressed it, and when they fulfilled it could not reach the summit of perfection.”

“For by the Lord’s command tithes were consecrated to the use of the Levites, and offerings and first fruits to the priests. The measure of first fruits was that a fiftieth part of the crops or animals should be given for the service of the temple and the priests. The more lukewarm faithlessly reduced this measure and the more devout increased it, the former paying a sixtieth, the latter a fortieth part of their produce. For the righteous, for whom the law is not laid down, are shown not to be under the law in this, that they strive not only to fulfil the righteous requirements of the law but even to surpass them, and their devotion is greater than the law’s command, heaping up the observance of the precepts and adding voluntary gifts to what is owed.”

“Thus we read that Abraham went beyond the precepts of the law to come. When he had defeated the four kings, he would not agree to touch anything at all of the spoils of Sodom, which were rightly owed to him as the victor, even though the king himself whose spoils he had brought back humbly offered them; and he declared, calling the divine name to witness, ‘I stretch out my hand to the Lord most high, who made heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread of the woof to a shoe-latchet of all that is yours.’ Thus we know that David went beyond the precepts of the law. When Moses commanded that like for like be paid back to enemies, he not only did not do this but even embraced his persecutors with love, and, praying devoutly to the Lord for them, even wept for them mournfully and avenged them when they were killed. Thus too we prove that Elijah and Jeremiah were not under the law, since, though they could have used lawful marriage without blame, they chose rather to remain virgins. Thus we read that Elisha and other men of the same purpose surpassed the commands of Moses, men of whom the apostle speaks thus: ‘They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, in distress, afflicted, in want, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes of the earth.’ What shall I say of the sons of Jonadab the son of Rechab, who, as we read, answered the prophet Jeremiah when he offered them wine by the Lord’s command: ‘We do not drink wine, because Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying: You shall not drink wine, you and your sons for ever; and you shall not build a house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyards, nor have them; but you shall dwell in tents all your days’? For this they deserved to hear from the same prophet: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: There shall not fail a man of the stock of Jonadab the son of Rechab standing before me all the days.’ All these, not content with offering tithes of their possessions but rejecting the estates themselves, offered rather themselves and their souls to God, for which no exchange can be given by man, as the Lord testifies in the Gospel: ‘What exchange will a man give for his soul?’”