Monastic Exercise (Ascetic Discourse) 4–18

… having got outside the tumults to embrace the monastic life, these alone made their own life an imprint of apostolic virtue. They preferred having nothing to having possessions, for the sake of freedom from distraction; they preferred food that was improvised to food that was elaborately seasoned, because of the uprisings of the passions, and met the body's need with whatever came to hand. They disregarded soft clothing and every conceit of human luxury beyond need, and used a plain and simple garment for the body's necessity, despising luxury; for they reckoned it unphilosophical to let go of concern for heavenly things and to busy the mind with things that lie on the ground and come to the beasts without any effort. They did not know the world, having got outside human passions; among them there was no one who took more and one who was cheated, no one who went to law and one who was taken to court.

For each had as an incorruptible judge his own conscience. It was not that one went hungry while another …, nor that one wasted away with hunger while another burst with surfeit; for the generosity of those who had more than enough filled up the want of those who lacked. And there was equality and equal right, since unevenness had been driven out by the willing condescension of the higher toward the lowlier. Or rather, even then there was no equality: for even then inequality was produced by the eagerness of those striving to be humbled more, as now it is produced by the madness of those contending to be glorified more. Envy had been banished, jealousy exiled, vainglory put to flight, pride destroyed, every cause of strife dissolved. Toward the grosser passions they were like dead and insensible men, not even in a dream receiving images of such things, because from the beginning they had turned well away from the very memory of them, having risen to such a settled state by daily training and endurance. In a word, they were lamps shining in darkness, and fixed stars lighting up the moonless night of life, and by their own calm they showed all people an easy shelter of harbors in which to escape the assaults of the passions.

… that exact way of life and heavenly conduct, like a portrait gradually worn down by the carelessness of those who copied it over the years, has come to the extreme of unlikeness and has altogether fallen away from its archetype. For once again those who had been crucified to the world, who had renounced life and denied being men, and who strove to pass over into the nature of the bodiless powers by the single way of dispassion, have slunk back to worldly business and shameful gains. They muddy the exactness of those who lived well before them, and cause those who could be glorified and renowned for their virtue to be blasphemed through their own [negligence]. And keeping hold of the plough-handle, the solemn habit, we have become unfit for the kingdom of heaven because we have turned back, and we cling with great zeal to things we ought to have forgotten. For the cheap and improvised life is no longer pursued among us, nor is stillness thought useful for being freed from old defilements; instead a crowd of affairs, bringing cares useless for the true goal, has been honored, and ambition for matter has defeated the saving exhortations. For whereas the Lord withdrew us altogether from care about earthly things and commanded us to seek only the kingdom of heaven, we, as if eager to travel the opposite road, have left the Master's commandments and that providential care of his, and have placed our hopes in our own hands. He said, “Look at the birds of the sky: they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.” And again, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they do not toil, nor …” And more: he forbade the bag and the purse and the staff, and commanded us to walk by his most truthful promise alone, which he gave when he sent the disciples out for the benefit of the rest of mankind, saying, “The worker is worthy of his food”; for he knew that promise to be a surer provision of what is needed than our own industry.

We, however, do not decline to acquire as much land as we can, and we buy flocks of sheep and ploughing oxen, sturdy and enviable for their size, and well-fed donkeys: so that the sheep may provide wool in plenty for the needs of our work; so that the oxen, serving the business of farming, may provide food for us and fodder for themselves and the other animals; and so that the beasts of burden, making up what the district lacks with goods brought from abroad, may enlarge for us, beyond our necessary food, a life of enjoyment. More than that, we choose the more profitable crafts, those that draw all our leisure into themselves rather than give us time for the remembrance of God; and so, it seems, we condemn either the weakness of our Protector or ourselves for our former profession. For even if we do not confess it in word, we are convicted by our deeds: we delight in the conduct of people in the world, since we practise the same things as they do, and perhaps wear ourselves out in bodily labors even more; so that now the many think godliness a means of gain, and that once untroubled and blessed life is pursued for nothing else than that, through a feigned godliness, they may escape toilsome services, and, having won license for enjoyment, may give their impulses free rein toward whatever they please, lording it with much shamelessness over those beneath them, and sometimes over those above them too, as though they thought the virtuous life an occasion for tyranny and not for humility and gentleness. That is why even those who ought to revere us regard us as a common rabble, and the motley crowd laughs at us, especially when we are carried along in the markets; for we have nothing that sets us apart from the rest, as we ought to have. We want to be recognized not by our way of life but by our habit, and while we refuse the labors that virtue requires, we crave madly the glory that goes with them, displaying a shadow of the truth that once was.

And today someone takes up this solemn habit without yet having washed off the stains of his soul or wiped from his mind the imprinted marks of his old sins; perhaps he still revels wantonly in their images; he has not yet trained his character toward what pleases God, nor does he know what the goal of philosophy according to God is. Yet already he has put on a lofty brow and thinks great things of himself, as though virtue had been achieved, on the strength of the habit alone; and he goes about carrying the tools of a craft he has never learned. He professes, by the habit that shows outwardly, a knowledge he has not tasted even with the tip of his lips … a reef instead of a harbor, a whitewashed tomb instead of a temple, a wolf instead of a sheep, found to the ruin of those taken in by appearances. For when such men run away from the monasteries because they cannot bear the exactness of the life, [they make for] the cities; and then, wrung by the necessity of the belly, they carry about the outward form of godliness as bait to deceive the many, putting up with doing anything that the body's need compels. For nothing is more compelling than natural necessity, which ingeniously devises means for those without means; and above all when practised idleness is added, then the pretext advances all the more cunningly. These men wait at the doors of the rich no less than parasites do. In the markets they run alongside them like slaves, pushing away those who come near, shoving aside those they meet, eager to clear the way for them; and they do this for the sake of a table, never having learned to punish the pleasure of dainty foods by going without, nor having been willing to carry on their belt the peg that Moses gave for digging when need required. For if they had used it, [they would know] that the throat is the limit of every pleasure in food, and that whatever comes to hand fills the body's want, [and they would avoid] the indecencies of untimely desire.

Because of this the name of God is blasphemed, the longed-for life has become loathsome, and the possession of those who truly live by virtue is reckoned a deceit … The cities are burdened, and the people in their houses are troubled by these men who wander about aimlessly, and they shrink at the very sight of them, seeing them stay at the doors to beg rather shamelessly; and many, having got themselves into houses and feigned piety for a little while, and having wrapped their reputation for villainy in the mask of hypocrisy, afterwards rob the householders and go off. So they bring about a disrepute spread over the whole monastic life. Thus those who were once teachers of self-control are now driven out of the cities like destroyers, and chased away as accursed no less than those with leprosy; and one would rather trust robbers and housebreakers than those who pursue the monastic life, reckoning open villainy easier to guard against than trustworthiness that lies in ambush. These men have not begun in godliness and do not know what the gain of stillness is; driven perhaps by some necessity, without discernment, into the solitary life, they regard the thing as an occasion for trade to provide their necessities. They would, I think, go about this more decently if they did not present themselves at everyone's doors. But they hold out the habit to shame people into larger gifts, and, wishing to pay the body its tribute, they bring not what is necessary but what the softness of the luxurious has invented through immoderate desires. It is hard to cure those who are so incurably sick.

For how could anyone [show] the value of health to those who have never been in health, but have been brought up from their swaddling clothes with a wasting disease, and who through habit think that the misfortune of their nature falls short in nothing of the natural state? Every word of correction is superfluous when the zeal of the hearers has inclined toward the worse and is set against what is truly said; and especially when the hope of gain feeds the desire, the passion stops the ear entirely to counsel, so that exhortations to self-control find no entry, since the mind is strained toward the longing for gain, even shameful gain. We, beloved, who out of desire for virtue, as we suppose, have renounced life and denied worldly desires and promised to follow Christ, why do we entangle ourselves again in the distractions of life, and build up badly what we had well [torn down] before? Why … of those who pursue the thing improperly …, inflaming the appetites of the weaker through our zeal for vain things, and why have we become, for the more simple, [teachers] of greed …

For we have been commanded by the Lord to heal those who easily slip, not to provoke them, and before [seeking our own good, which pleases ourselves], to look to our neighbor's benefit, so that we may not, by following our own undiscerning impulses, make many of the simpler stumble and become for them an occasion of ambition for earthly things. Why do we make so much of matter, which we were taught to despise, clinging to money and possessions and dividing our mind among many useless cares? Zeal for these draws us away from the more necessary attendance [on God] and makes us neglect the goods of the soul, and it leads into a great pit those who gape at the brilliant affairs of life and think enjoyment of wealth the highest good fortune, when they see those who profess to philosophize, and who boast that they are above pleasures, more eager for these things than they are themselves. Nothing leads to inexorable punishment so much as making many people imitators of one's own vices: for the destruction of the imitators becomes an increase of punishment for the one who taught them, and the condemnation of those who did not refuse the imitation as shameful is no small one for him, since he has become a teacher of vices. Those who used a sober judgment saw that such conduct was disgraceful, and fled it. Let no one, then, take offense at what is said; but let him either correct what is done amiss, to the shame of the name, through the indifference of the many, or let him give up the name as well. For if the aim is to philosophize, possessions are superfluous to philosophy, which professes estrangement even from the body itself for the sake of the soul's purity. But if acquiring, and enjoying the pleasures of life, is what some are eager for, why have they taken up philosophy in word and estrangement from it in deed, doing things foreign to their profession and clothing themselves in solemn titles …

Then do we not think it shameful to be reproached by those we consider our inferiors, whom we call “worldly,” for the Saviour's ordinances we have neglected, and to be taught the commandments of the Lord we have set aside by those who ought to be learning them from us? For when they say to us as we quarrel, “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all”; and again … about money …, “If anyone takes your tunic,” he says, “let him have your cloak as well,” what else are they doing but mocking and jeering at us for the contradiction between our works and our profession? For is it necessary to fight with someone who lays claim to possessions, and to do everything that the madness for them compels? One man has moved the boundary of your vineyard; another has let his beast loose on your land; another [has diverted] the water from your garden. Must one then rage, and become worse than madmen, dividing one's revenge among all of these, and nail to the law courts the mind that ought to be occupied with the contemplation of what truly is, and turn its contemplative power into practical cunning, so that we may prosper in an abundance of things of no use at all? Why do we lay claim to what belongs to others as if it were our own, making heavy fetters of matter for ourselves, and do not listen to the one who pities such people: “Woe,” says the prophet, “to him who gathers for himself what is not his own, and makes his yoke heavy and strong”? For if the pursuers are light, according to the one who says, “Our pursuers were lighter than the eagles of heaven,” while we load ourselves with worldly affairs, it is clear that, moving more sluggishly in the race, we shall easily be overtaken by the enemies whom Paul fled when he taught, saying, “Flee sexual immorality … and greed.” Even those who run lightly equipped toward the prize fall far short of overtaking it unless they are carried along with an intense rush, since the enemies who pursue them perhaps have swifter steps.

A great hindrance to those hastening toward virtue is attachment to worldly affairs, which often brings ruin to both soul and body. For what [killed] Naboth the Israelite? Was it not his enviable vineyard that became the cause of his death, by stirring his neighbor to envy against him? What made the two tribes remain outside the promise? Was it not the multitude of their cattle? And what [separated] Lot from Abraham? Was it not the great number of their flocks, which stirred up continual quarrels between the shepherds and in the end [parted] them from one another? If, then, [property] even [rouses] the envious to murder against those who own possessions, and [separates] those who possess from the more earnest, and [cuts] kinship apart, and turns friends into enemies, and has nothing in common with the life to come, and is of no great use even to the body, why do we leave the service of God and give ourselves wholly to vanity? It is not we who accomplish the things of our life; it is God who arranges them. Human effort that does not obtain God's help necessarily falls short of its end, while God's arrangement, even without human effort, provides good things in full. What [profit did] their own toil [bring] those … to whom God said, “You have sown much and brought in little, and I blew it away out of your houses”? And what necessary thing ever failed those who lived by virtue, though they [took no thought] at all about these things? Did not the Israelites go about in the desert for forty years without enjoying anything from farming, and yet lacked no food? The sea belched up quails for them, a strange food; the rock, which had no moisture, broke open and gave an abundant stream; and heaven brought down manna, an unaccustomed and foreign rain; and their clothes and sandals did not wear out all that time. What land did Elijah farm when he was fed …? Did not ravens bring him his food? When he came to Zarephath, did not a widow, herself in want of necessities, give him bread snatched from the mouths of her own children, so that it might be shown that virtue is to be honored even above nature? …

These things are indeed marvellous, yet they also hold to what is reasonable; for it is possible to live without eating when God wills. How else did Elijah [walk] a forty days' journey in the strength of one meal? How did Moses remain without tasting human food for eighty days, while he conversed with God on the mountain? For after forty days he came down, and, angered by the making of the calf, immediately broke the tablets, ran back up the mountain, spent as many days again there, and only then took the second tablets and came down to the people. What human reasoning can show the rationale of this wonder? How could the body's nature, which is always flowing away, be emptied to such a degree, with nothing replacing the strength that is breathed out each day? The Word resolves this difficulty when it says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out through the mouth of God.” Why then do we [drag] our heavenly citizenship down to earth, weighing it down with material miseries? Why do we, who were once nursed in scarlet, embrace [dung-heaps], as Jeremiah said in his Lamentations about certain people? For when we rest upon bright and fiery thoughts, we are nursed in scarlet; but when we abandon that state and are mixed up with earthly affairs, we embrace dung-heaps. Why do we withdraw our hope from God and [make] flesh [our arm], ascribing the Master's providence to our own hands? And what Job feared would be reckoned to him as a great sin, putting his hand to his mouth and kissing it, we are not afraid to do now. For it is the custom of many to kiss their hands, saying that they have their prosperity from them. The law hints at such people by a figure when it says, “Whatever goes on its hands is unclean, and whatever goes on its feet is unclean, and whatever goes … on four is always unclean.” He goes on his hands who leans on his hands and has all his hope in them; on four, he who trusts in the things of sense and always drags his ruling mind about in busyness with them; and on many feet, he who is surrounded by bodily things. That is why the wise author of the Proverbs wants the perfect man to have not even two feet but one, and that one rarely moving toward bodily affairs: “Rarely,” he says, “set your foot toward your friend, lest having had his fill of you he hate you.” For if someone troubles Christ about the needs of the body, he will be dear to him, since this is the purpose of such friends, as the Saviour says to his disciples, “You are my friends”; but if he does this too often, he becomes hateful.

What then will he suffer, and how will he not be abominable, who is always busy with these needs and never rises to the upright life, because he has no legs above his feet with which to leap from the ground? For just as the legs, by bending …, first take the whole weight of the body upon themselves, and then, having brought it a little closer to the ground, prepare it to spring all at once into the air, so the reason that discerns the things of nature, after first being lowered by the body's need, quickly sends the mind up light again to the things above, lifting with itself none of the earthly defilements. To have straight legs belongs to those who are wholly given to enjoyment and always lie below; it belongs also to the holy Powers, because they are entirely [free] of bodily things and do not even incline toward them. Indicating this, I think, the great Ezekiel said that their legs were straight and their feet winged, which shows the unbending steadiness of their will and the swiftness of that nature toward thoughts. For human beings it is enough to have legs that bend, serving sometimes the occupations of the body and sometimes the upward occupations of the soul: because of the soul's kinship with the Powers above, mostly to soar aloft with them; because of the body's tension, to give the earth as much attention as need compels. But always to creep about after the preparations of enjoyment is truly unclean, and unfitting for human beings who have been given a share of rational knowledge. For with careful precision [the law] did not simply call unclean the one who goes on four, but the one who goes on four always; for it gave those in the body time to come down for the body's need. Indeed Jonathan, fighting the Ammonite, walked on all fours and won, since he served only the necessity of nature; for one who fights against the serpent that crawls on its breast (for that is the meaning of the name) had to take on its likeness for a little while by going on four, and so, rising up again to his own posture, to overcome it with great ease.

And does not the story of [Ishbosheth] teach us … not to cling, weighed down, to … bodily things, nor to entrust our guard to sense? For he, though a king, was resting in his chamber and, it says, had entrusted the door to his own wife; and the men with Rechab came, found her cleaning wheat and dozing, slipped past her, went in, and killed Ishbosheth, finding him asleep as well. For everything sleeps, mind and soul and understanding and sense, when bodily things have the upper hand. That the doorkeeper had been cleaning wheat shows the understanding diligently occupied with bodily things, and practising their cleanness not in passing but with a certain zeal. That Scripture does not teach this as plain history is clear from this: how could a king have had a woman as doorkeeper, when he ought to have been guarded by a crowd of soldiers and to have kept about him all the pageantry of his rank? Or how could he have been so poor as to have the wheat cleaned by her? But often what is unreasonable is mixed into a story for the sake of the truth of what is signified. For each person's mind, like a king, lives somewhere within, having the understanding as doorkeeper of the senses; and when the understanding hands itself over to bodily things (and cleaning wheat is bodily), the plotters easily slip past and [kill] the mind. That is why the great [Abraham] does not trust a woman to guard the door, for he knows how easily sense is deceived, how by delight in the things of sense it entices the mind and persuades it to share in the pleasures with it, and the sharing would plainly be dangerous; instead he himself sits by it, keeping the entrance wide open to divine thoughts and shutting the door on worldly cares. What do we gain for life from our vain toil about these things? Is not “all a man's toil,” according to Ecclesiastes, “for his mouth”? And according to the Apostle, food and covering are enough to sustain our wretched flesh. Why then do we toil endlessly, chasing the wind, as Solomon says, hindering the soul by our zeal for earthly things from enjoying the divine goods, and pampering the flesh and warming it more than is good, so that it becomes our enemy, neighbor and foe, and the battle with it is not merely evenly matched, but … [the flesh] grieves the soul from a great surplus [of strength], armed against it, so that it does not even let the soul aspire to honors and crowns? What is the body's need, that on its pretext we stretch desire into senseless helplessness? It is surely bread and water. Do not the springs provide the stream in abundance, and is not bread easily obtained by those who have hands? We can provide for ourselves by such work as fills the body's need and distracts us little, or not at all. But does clothing give much worry? Not this either, if we look not to the softness that comes from habit but only to need. For what spider-web garments, what fine linen or purple or silk did the first man wear? Did not the Creator [make] his clothing from skins, and command him to be fed on grass? By so ordaining he set these as the limits of the body's need, and from far off checked the shamefulness that now [prevails] among men. I do not say that even now he who feeds the birds of the sky will not feed those who live well, and that he who put such glory about the lilies of the field will not clothe them; but it is not yet possible to persuade those who stand far from this faith. For who will not supply the necessities, without being begged, to the one who lives by virtue?

For if barbarous men, the Babylonians, who had taken Jerusalem by the law of war, respected the virtue of Jeremiah and gave him every bodily care in abundance, providing not only food but also the vessels with which those who are entertained are customarily served, how will his own people not revere a virtuous life, people whose reasoning has been more thoroughly cleansed than the barbarian's for the understanding of what is good, and who are emulators of virtue? For even if they have not been able to become practitioners of it through weakness of nature, still they honor virtue and admire those who practise it. Who persuaded the Shunammite to build a lodging for [Elisha], and to put there a table, a stool, a bed and a lamp? Was it not the man's virtue? And what put to shame that widow, when famine was laying waste the whole land, so that she preferred the service of the prophet to her own need? Surely, had she not respected Elijah's philosophy, she would not have taken the small comfort of life from herself and her children and given it up to him, choosing beforehand the death she pictured coming soon, out of her generosity to the stranger.

… [What made] them such was their nobility, their refusal to give way before labors, and their contempt for the affairs of life. For by practising frugality and advancing from needing little to needing, so to speak, nothing, they came to stand near the bodiless powers. Hence, though they were obscure and of no account in body, they became stronger than those who rule all things, speaking to those who wear the diadem with more freedom than these use toward their subjects. Trusting in what weapons, or in what power, did Elijah say to Ahab, “It is not I who trouble Israel, but you and your father's house”? How did Moses set himself against Pharaoh in contest, having no provision for his boldness but his virtue? How did Elisha, when the army of the two [kings] … of Israel and of Judah, say to [the king], “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand today, if I did not regard the face of Jehoshaphat, I would not have looked at you or seen you,” fearing neither the army that had been set in motion nor the anger of the king, which he was likely to vent at a time of war, his reasoning confused by anxiety into an irrational impulse? What can kingship do that is like what virtue does? What purple [divided] a river as Elijah's sheepskin did? What diadem [drove away] diseases as the handkerchiefs of the apostles did? A prophet, alone, rebuked a lawbreaking king who was surrounded by his whole army; and when the rebuke [kindled] his anger, the king stretched out his hand against the prophet, but he did not seize him, and he could not draw his hand back to himself, for it had withered. It was a contest between virtue and royal power, and the victory of virtue proved stronger. The prophet did not fight, and virtue routed the enemy; the champion did nothing, and faith did the work; the king's allies became judges of the contest, and the hand stood there bearing witness to the victory of virtue.