Monastic Exercise (Ascetic Discourse)

Contents

Chapters 1–3 and the opening of chapter 4 are missing from the scan used here; they will be added from another copy of PG 79.

Reading pages: 4–18 · 19–35 · 36–52 · 53–71 · 72–75

1. 4The first monks, free of possessions, luxury and lawsuits, made their life an imprint of the apostles' virtue.
2. 5Among the first monks conscience was judge, goods were shared, and the only rivalry was in humility.
3. 6Nilus laments that monks have turned back to business and gain, against Christ's command not to be anxious and to trust the Father.
4. 7Monks now acquire land, livestock and profitable trades, use the habit as a pretext, and are rightly despised.
5. 8Untrained men take the monastic habit for show, flee the monasteries, and live as parasites of the rich in the cities.
6. 9Wandering false monks bring the whole monastic life into disrepute and are trusted less than thieves.
7. 10Correction is useless to those who love gain; monks who renounced the world should not entangle themselves in it again.
8. 11Monks must not scandalize the simple by love of possessions; let them either amend or give up the monastic name.
9. 12Monks are rebuked by lay people for quarrelling over property, which weighs them down in the race against their spiritual enemies.
10. 13Love of property ruined Naboth and divided Lot from Abraham, while God fed Israel in the desert and Elijah without farming.
11. 14God can sustain life without food, as with Elijah and Moses; monks who trust in their own hands are like the unclean animals of the law.
12. 15The soul must bend to the body's needs only briefly and spring up again; to crawl always toward pleasure is what the law calls unclean.
13. 16The murder of Ishbosheth, whose doorkeeper dozed over her wheat, teaches that the mind must not entrust its guard to the senses; the body needs only bread, water and plain clothing.
14. 17Even Babylonians honored Jeremiah, and the Shunammite and the widow of Zarephath provided for the prophets because of their virtue.
15. 18Through freedom from need the prophets spoke boldly to kings, and virtue proved stronger than royal power.
16. 19Unlike the saints, who would rather die than flatter the rich, monks now fawn on the wealthy and farm for gain, though every harvest depends on God.
17. 20God provides even in sickness; monks should return to the desert, as the crowds who left the cities to see John the Baptist show.
18. 21Virtue outlasts riches; Nilus attacks men who learn only the outward forms of monastic life and at once set up as teachers.
19. 22Every craft must be learned except, it seems, godliness; untrained men rush to lead others and make the monastic life contemptible.
20. 23Eli's fate and Job's care for his sons warn untrained superiors who take charge of others before healing their own passions.
21. 24A guide must know the war with the passions from experience and pass it on, as Joshua set up inscribed stones at the Jordan; many superiors treat the brothers as slaves.
22. 25True leaders teach by example, like Gideon, Paul and Christ; those who rule by command and punishment blind their own contemplation.
23. 26As in Jotham's parable the fruitful trees refused to reign and only the bramble accepted, so those who have the fruit of virtue decline to rule others.
24. 27Ruling souls is the hardest of tasks, dangerous for an inexperienced teacher and his disciples alike.
25. 28The temple's solid lampstand and laver-bearing oxen show that a guide must be blameless, bear the burdens of others, and know the enemy's designs.
26. 29The devil hides behind disguises, as Paul and Job show; one who teaches spiritual discernment without secure knowledge endangers his hearers.
27. 30The lost axe-head of Elisha's disciple figures teaching borrowed from others; repentance, hidden before the cross, was revealed through its wood.
28. 31Only one who has subdued his passions should turn from warfare to cultivating others; to the rest Scripture says to beat ploughs into swords.
29. 32Israel did not farm until its enemies were destroyed; so the spiritual life must follow its order from the beginnings to perfection, as Jacob had to serve for Leah before Rachel.
30. 33Untrained men eagerly gather disciples and, to keep them, indulge their desires like a charioteer who drops the reins.
31. 34Like the women of Ezekiel who sewed pillows for every elbow, indulgent superiors destroy souls; Christ forbade even the apostles to be called Rabbi.
32. 35One compelled to lead others must teach by his life and answer for them; the saints formed disciples better than themselves.
33. 36Ezekiel's brick shows the teacher forming disciples under his own eyes; he must warn them, or answer for their souls.
34. 37One must not go back to dwell on conquered passions, as Moses warned and as Jacob buried the foreign gods at Shechem.
35. 38Burying the gods at Shechem is praised but a secret idol is cursed: shameful thoughts must be buried, not cherished in the memory.
36. 39Evil thoughts must be stopped at their first approach; failing that, comparing where two temptations end exposes them, as Samson tied the foxes tail to tail.
37. 40Examples: vainglory that leads to sexual sin, and gluttony that ends in sadness, are exposed by looking at where they end.
38. 41One who leads others must know the war against the passions and live at peace himself; then obedient disciples can be shaped like material by a craftsman.
39. 42Disciples should trust their teacher as passengers trust a helmsman, and renounce everything without holding back, remembering Ananias.
40. 43Renunciation must be total, like Elisha slaughtering his oxen and Christ's command to the rich man; then kin and family must be forgotten.
41. 44The cows that drew the ark without turning back to their calves, and Joseph sent on to Dothan, teach detachment from family.
42. 45Leaving kin is necessary for perfection; newly renounced monks should keep stillness, which is hard at first but heals the mind.
43. 46Beginners should stay in stillness and avoid crowds, as Israel stayed indoors from the destroyer and the young Joshua kept to the tent.
44. 47Dinah's curiosity warns against undertaking what is beyond one's strength; one must withdraw so far that even the noise of the world ceases.
45. 48As a riverbed can be seen only when the stream is checked upstream, the mind can be cleansed of passions only when the senses stop feeding it.
46. 49Passions must be destroyed while small, like Babylon's seed or the infants of Ps 137, before the 'ant' becomes a 'lion.'
47. 50The latticed temple windows teach guarding the senses with the thought of judgment; Ahaziah's fall through the lattice shows what happens otherwise.
48. 51The trained mind does not feel the blows of temptation; the war of the four kings against the five of Sodom figures the war of the objects of sense against the senses.
49. 52From childhood the senses serve their objects; reason must rebel and stay firm, or the soul falls like the kings of Sodom into the bitumen pits.
50. 53The slave who chooses to stay, the woman who seized the wrong thing, and Lot's wife show the danger of turning back to the world after renouncing it.
51. 54Habit becomes a second nature; the soul sits on its idols like Rachel, giving form to formless things like wealth and glory.
52. 55Extravagance gives form to formless things; gluttony is the root from which love of money, anger and sadness grow.
53. 56Following Philo's allegory of the priestly rites, Nilus distinguishes the perfect, who removes anger and pleasure entirely, from those who master or wash them.
54. 57The belly cannot be cut out as anger can; beginners remove its fat, the advanced its contents, and the perfect cast off all beyond need.
55. 58Gluttony feeds sexual passion and, like Nebuchadnezzar's 'chief cook' who razed Jerusalem's walls, pulls down every virtue.
56. 59As the barley cake overturned Midian's tents, a frugal diet overthrows sexual passion; virtue is a wall, vice a flimsy tent.
57. 60The saints fled the cities and lived simply, like Elijah, Elisha and John the Baptist; the manna teaches living one day at a time.
58. 61The saints fled to the desert because beasts, unlike men, do not teach vice; the lions honored Daniel's virtue.
59. 62Monks should be like Job's wild ass, free of the city's taxes, or like the ass loosed for the Lord's use, grazing on the words of Scripture.
60. 63Monks cling to worldly things like children to toys because they do not grasp how much greater the eternal goods are.
61. 64As sailors throw cargo overboard in a storm and athletes strip to compete, monks must cast off possessions to fight their naked spiritual enemies.
62. 65The monk must be naked of cares to fight the demons: Joseph escaped by leaving his garment, and Adam was naked until he was defeated.
63. 66The monk must enter the contest stripped and oiled; cares are the dust that lets the devil take hold.
64. 67The perfect soul is carefree like the lily among thorns; the ungodly spend all their life caring for the body and none for the soul.
65. 68The body's need is the measure of possessions; those who judge otherwise are like the blind judging colors.
66. 69Achan buried the silver under the stolen goods as the greedy bury reason beneath matter; beyond need, desire has no limit.
67. 70Once past natural need, desire moves step by step to wine, fine wool, embroidered silk, and even silver chamber-pots.
68. 71Animals keep to the diet God gave and mate only in season; human extravagance in food breeds unceasing sexual desire.
69. 72Possessions breed every passion; monks who seem to have defeated the devil are killed while stripping his spoils, like greedy soldiers stripping the fallen.
70. 73The five foolish virgins conquered lust but fell to avarice; the devil still offers the world as he did to Christ, and only godliness defeats him.
71. 74Beginners must check the passions' actions, the advanced must guard their thoughts; as a passion absorbs the mind, so should zeal for virtue.
72. 75As a strong passion absorbs the mind, so love of philosophy should absorb it in contemplation; the monk seeks praise from God, not from men.