On the Excellence of Monks 20–27

For by these things the passions are naturally anointed, and they make the wrestling laborious and toilsome for those who contend. For desire is not so strong without material as it is when the objects of desire lie close by, nor anger when the one who provokes it is not present; and pleasure rises up when the form [kindles] longing through sight. Their [movements] are weak and slack when imagination does not trouble them, [the mind] as it were keeping thought asleep and holding the reasoning to itself … and remaining. It is as when a pleasing sight holds the eye fixed by its allure, not letting it turn anywhere or allowing the will to shift to anything else, even if someone tried to drag it away, overcoming the efforts of one who strives to turn the eye aside. But for one troubled only by memories, release is easy and rising up very easy: by meditation and exercise in spiritual words and by intense prayer the mind withdraws from what does not please God and passes over to what is pursued according to God, delighting in these and forgetting the others. But to shut the eye completely to what is seen is impossible, as it is to close the hearing to voices, or to avoid their harm always by reasoning; for the injuries from every side are many and hard to guard against. One who walks into mud cannot help soiling his foot, and one who lives in a pestilential climate cannot help suffering what the surroundings inflict; so it is impossible for one who spends his time among worldly things not to take on some of the stains of the world, even if he does not perceive the harm, having grown used in time to what harms him.

For some, too, who taste poison a little at a time, are not harmed at first, because the quantity is not proportioned to the strength of the poison so as to kill; but as the constitution grows used to it by small additions, they later even make the destructive power of the food into nourishment, nature learning little by little over time to appropriate what harms. Who has not learned from divine Scripture the exactness of blessed David in all things? Who does not know by hearsay his achievements? How, boasting not from love of display but from love of others, so that others too might do what he had done, he recounts his own good deeds: sometimes he says, “I walked in my innocence”; sometimes, “If I repaid those who repaid me with evil”; sometimes, “Without lawlessness I ran and kept my course straight”; at other times, “There is no deceit in my tongue”; at other times, “I was well-pleasing in your truth.” The saint recounts more than these, and at last says, “Lord, my heart was not exalted, nor were my eyes lifted up.” Yet, because of the settled habit of the virtues he had practised, he neglected prayer a little and let his eye roam quite freely. By it he was drawn to the beauty of another man's wife, and he received the sight into his heart as a fiery arrow; it drove him, goaded, to adultery, and adultery forced him to dare murder and the unjust killing of a man. And the evil that began from a sight travelled through so many evils and finally drove him into such ruin. So sin, peeping out from a small cause, knows how to carry one down to the very last limit of perdition. For if, according to the wise author of Proverbs, “one must not be a companion of a [wrathful] man,” lest one surely share in his passion through the fellowship (since passion usually creeps unnoticed from those in its grip to the healthy), how is it not still more necessary and useful for those who wish to guard against imitating them to flee those who suffer from greater and more grievous diseases?

For company with such people produces this, and one does not know how life with them makes one like the wicked, and how those who do not wish to be such for the present become little by little the very thing they strive not to become. A woman's sandal ensnared Holofernes, a warlike man who was ravaging Judaea, in a mad love, and took him captive. For the history says that the sandal of Judith ravished the eye of Holofernes, and the seizure of his eye [led him] to death. For she, finding him subdued by passion, deceived him for a long time in various ways when he demanded the intercourse of marriage, until she found a suitable moment to behead the wretch, who neither obtained the woman he still desired and perished by a most pitiable death. These people too suffer many such things … which they do not know. For delight [deceives] them … a comely [body] often delights them, the material of wealth affects them likewise, and honor and grief; a fragrant vapor [stirs] the sense of smell, and the seasoning of dishes the taste, to longing by their quality. And where is such a battle useful for the foolish, who rashly consent to walk into dangers, and do not allow passions that could be quiet ever to rest, nor give them leave to rest while they exercise the mind for its profit?

For the mind, being by nature always in motion, when it is free of care for vain things, turns its care to profitable ones: it reckons up what is fitting and gives itself wholly to its own care, converses with God through prayer, [is nourished] with divine words in reading, considers the things of creation and glorifies the Creator for the variety of his workmanship; it sees the passions shrinking and its character set in order, marks its daily progress for the better, beholds its whole state steady and untroubled, and gives thanks for these continually to him who [gave] this grace and a life full of [joy] and gladness. And the one is not like him who does not even know what his own [state] is, and gives his reasoning no time for examining it, so as to know how the passions are moving and whether he is better disposed today than yesterday. These things need much leisure for understanding their movement and their daily course: how they creep in, lessening part by part, or again increasing, through zeal and through laziness, … intensified and relaxed, at rest and rising up; eating grass like oxen, or craving flesh; some tamed, others made wild and raging.

For just as venomous reptiles, resting through the winter season, stay motionless and do not show their harm because they are numbed by the cold, so the passions that lie idle because of distractions have not ceased but are [numbed] for the time being, and stir when they find license and leisure to show in the thoughts what they are made for, like wild beasts coming out of their holes in the warmth of the sun. For this reason it is told that one of those who watch their thoughts, who had lived in quiet for a long time in the desert and wanted to learn his daily progress by experience, picked up pebbles from the desert sand and kept them in his bosom. When his reasoning was moved to a good thought, he set one of the pebbles on his right; when to a shameful one, on his left; and he did this from dawn to evening, adding one pebble on this side or that as his thoughts prompted him. Then, when evening came, he counted the one heap and the other, and in this way learned how much progress toward the good, if any, he made each day; and the convenience of his leisure gave him time to do this. But for one [beset] by daily disturbances, which are more than the hours of the day and overcome the time by their number, when will any of the things so pursued ever be known? For the mind does not wish to have another care when something necessary is set before it for consideration, nor is it naturally able to, even if it wishes, to think of something else besides what it is anxious about, just as the eye looks at one thing and has no natural power to divide its sight among several.

How, then, is the one who lives perilously better than the one who lives safely, even if he is the same in other respects? For even if they seem to travel the same road of virtue, they do not travel it in the same way. The one, as in quiet, looks around at everything and knows its hard and easy places, and travels it without stumbling, avoiding rocks and turning away from cliffs; the other, as at night, in the darkness of distractions, falls into pits and is shattered on rocks, and, like a blind man, [stumbles] on every obstacle. For the praise of those who see his work weakens him; the glory of his achievements puffs him up to madness; the contempt of those who did not admire his virtue grieves him as though it were insensibility; and seeming to have something more than others in the good lifts him up to boasting. And he is necessarily sometimes puffed up and sometimes dejected, despondent and shrunk. But the solitary does not know these states, nor those who praise or [blame] him; he is alone with God alone, who [sees] his labor, knowing his own work, and [examining] himself for the most part … since it is possible for someone to become his own praiser at times, made light by childish and rash thinking, and to be harmed by himself in the very way he would have been harmed by others when admired.

“Those who call you blessed lead you astray” has been well said by divine Scripture of those who do good in the sight of others. But who will deceive by blessing into conceit the one who is not seen, who has deliberately fled such people, so that he may not lessen the wage from God by the praises of men; who, according to the Lord's exhortation, hides from the left hand every action of the right, so that it may see that the work has been done but know nothing of the display, he himself escaping his own notice with the half of himself that boasts? For this is how the left hand knows the work of the right: it is a vainglorious transmitter, publishing what the right hand hides, in the hunt for glory. For this reason the name-givers of old aptly named those who practise asceticism in cities doves, and those who live in deserts and trackless places turtle-doves: the former pursue virtue before spectators and defile it, willingly or unwillingly, robbed by the praises of the many, or often putting their virtue on show supposedly to benefit those who watch, which, even if it is not man-pleasing, has surely defiled it and proportionally empties the labor of its reward, like a real dove that broods and gives its chicks to people for slaughter; while the latter send on to God whole and unharmed all that they do, suffering no loss, like turtle-doves that release their young alive from the nest into the air. For such is what is done secretly to please God: it lives and is the unfailing possession of the one who labored for it; but what wants the eyes of people as witness is like a garment that both breeds the moth of vainglory and is eaten by it.

And suppose that one who [lives] wholly among people, or rather associates with them, does nothing [amiss], suffers none of the passions he must suffer, and endures no harm from those who are used to harming, as has been said (let the argument grant what the truth does not grant): still he surely sees the things done unlawfully by the powerful to the humbler, by wrongdoers to the wronged, by tyrants to their victims, by robbers to the robbed, and suffers with the sufferers. He is divided in his disposition between the one side and the other: indignant at the oppressors and pitying the oppressed, filled with anger and bent to mercy, provoked and wounded in his heart, and sometimes even blaming God for his long-suffering toward them. The prophet shows that he once suffered this, and shows those who suffer what he suffered, saying, “Why did you show me toils and troubles? For the ungodly overpowers the righteous, and you have made people like the fish of the sea,” as they swallow one another; he accuses God, with a fiery zeal but boldly, of treating this forbearance and permission as anarchy. And what necessity forces one who can do nothing, and sins besides, to be present at the evils of others? Even if it is nothing great, at least to be troubled by what others do wrong, when the mind ought to be at peace: in this way those in the crowd sin through others' sins, while those separated from the crowd do not; and those in the crowd lose the wages of their labors for the sake of human glory. For even if they say ten thousand times that they admire these no more than those who live in quiet because they are among the crowd, they plainly show that they are held by this bond, by the very fact that they choose to live in places that harm them, crying out against themselves with a piercing voice without any accuser. So too those separated from the people who would praise them testify clearly by their deeds that they [despise] the glory the many admire. For them fasting does not fall away, vigil is not lost, prayer and endurance are not plundered, nor is any other virtue robbed; for there is no praise present that can strip them of their labors. God alone sees them, who is present with them, anointing their eagerness for greater contests and rewards, giving them his help now, and after their departure from this life, eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.