Voluntary Poverty (To the Deaconess Magna)

Contents

Reading pages: 1–16 · 17–36 · 37–50 · 51–64 · 65–67

1. 1Having earlier rebuked careless monks, Nilus now praises those who keep the rule of having nothing, for God will reward their care for the soul as he rewards the merciful.
2. 2Having nothing is not involuntary poverty but a freely chosen contentment with little, hard at first until practice makes it a habit.
3. 3The saints of old, homeless and persecuted, surpassed every modern monk, for they lived by Christ's teaching on the birds and the lilies.
4. 4Unlike modern monks who stock food, clothing and money, the old saints cared for the body only under compulsion, counting time spent on it a loss.
5. 5The labor of virtue bears lasting fruit, and God rewards even good intentions that necessity prevented; but the aim behind a deed can change it for better or worse.
6. 6Christ's commands to pray and give in secret show that the desire for praise, like a moth or a thief, destroys the treasure of good works.
7. 7As the law pardons killing a thief by night but not by day, a sudden evil thought is pardonable, but consent to a recognized evil is guilt; thoughts must be struck down at once.
8. 8Like David rescuing sheep from the lion and Jacob repaying lost animals, the monk must snatch back at once what passion steals, for the devil prowls like a lion.
9. 9Whoever is in the lion's mouth may escape or be swallowed by his own choice; on the narrow road to the kingdom one cannot walk weighed down by money or by care for praise.
10. 10Christ and Paul teach both having nothing and indifference to glory; one who has done all he was commanded must call himself an unprofitable servant who has only paid a debt.
11. 11Paul's “weapons for the right hand and the left” warn against both praise and blame, snares on either side of the race toward perfection.
12. 12Human verdicts count for nothing at God's judgment, which sees deeds and thoughts as they are, so it is vain to labor for the good opinion of gossiping people.
13. 13There are three ways of life, but the first, ordained by the Creator, was without possessions; God commanded Adam a plain diet and has since adapted his commands to human weakness.
14. 14God gave Adam a carefree life and one commandment to train him in obedience; after the fall he gave him a second life of labor and plain garments of skin.
15. 15Adam's carefree life in paradise, nourished by God's gifts and conversation, was better than the toilsome farming to which he was condemned; so is having nothing better than a life of possessions.
16. 16Farming is exposed to every kind of loss, but providence feeds those who trust it, as it fed Israel in the desert with manna, quail and water from the rock.
17. 17God fed Elijah and Elisha's company without farming, while farmers often go hungry; hope in God is secure, and those who serve him receive their food as a first wage.
18. 18The first, possessionless life, which the saints lived, is fitting for the rational creature: owning nothing, it receives all it needs from God's providence and creation serves it.
19. 19The saints of Scripture, friends of Christ through their purity, commanded creation: manna, drought, fire and hail, the opening earth, the parted sea, the furnace and the lions, and deliverance from prisons.
20. 20Scripture records these saints by name and deed; those who study it attentively find its words leading the mind on to contemplation.
21. 21John the Baptist and the apostles, with whom monastic life began, owned nothing; this is not the idleness of Adelphius and Alexander, who used continual prayer as an excuse not to work.
22. 22Prayer prolonged in idleness becomes a battlefield of thoughts: the body kneels while the mind wanders to friends, enemies, feasts, business and imagined church office.
23. 23True prayer is a mind possessed by God and free of every other thought; those who refuse work for the sake of prayer only want to eat at others' expense, while alternating work and prayer refreshes both.
24. 24Idleness feeds the passions, above all at prayer; Paul therefore commanded the Thessalonians to keep away from the idle and to work and eat their own bread.
25. 25Paul's severe rebuke shows that idleness breeds evils, while work is the anchor that keeps the mind steady against the storms of thoughts.
26. 26Those who refuse manual work for the sake of prayer do not truly pray, for an idle body lets the mind wander, while work holds it in place.
27. 27Prayer needs an undistracted mind; the perfect pray in rapture, like Paul caught up to the third heaven and in the temple, and Peter on the roof.
28. 28The second kind of prayer is saying the words with attention and compunction; God cannot be asked to hear a prayer the one praying does not hear himself.
29. 29The middle way, which works with its hands only for necessity and gives most of its time to prayer and reading, ranks second after the saints' total poverty.
30. 30The lowest kind of monk serves the body by farming and trade to rival the rich, seeking distinction by extravagance, which is as unfitting as men or women wearing each other's adornment.
31. 31The middle way is akin to the possessionless saints, not to monks of many possessions, who quarrel over property instead of serving God without care.
32. 32The possessionless shine like stars and are rightly admired, while monks who live contrary to their habit cause God's name to be blasphemed.
33. 33A monk who claims to have renounced the world yet chases its affairs is like an Israelite longing for Egypt, a ploughman looking back, or Lot's wife.
34. 34The monk has left all to follow Christ and died to the passions; one burdened with herds and fields has no time to remember God, pray or watch his thoughts.
35. 35Evil thoughts first appear in respectable guise; and a monk busy with property is kept awake at night by quarrels over boundaries, crops and water, with no peace for prayer.
36. 36Paul says the unmarried should be free of care for the Lord; an unmarried monk who toils for possessions is more blameworthy than a married man providing for his children.
37. 37We owe the flesh only a little; care for possessions beyond need is a fruitless wandering, and monks who chase them scandalize the people they should be examples to.
38. 38The bad example of venerable monks scandalizes the simple, who imitate evil more readily than good; even the Rechabites and Greek philosophers like Diogenes chose to own nothing.
39. 40Monks who have Christ's teaching should be ashamed to be outdone in poverty by Jews and pagan philosophers; Nilus's rebuke is for the careless, not for Magna's community.
40. 41Long habits are hard to break: the sluggard will not learn from the ant, and monks entangled in property will not learn from the birds that God feeds.
41. 42Nilus praises Magna's community as friends and soldiers of Christ who work only for need and, like naked wrestlers or Joseph fleeing without his cloak, give the enemy nothing to grasp.
42. 43Magna's community, free of possessions like Job's wild ass, should keep or raise the standard of their fathers, for as children of the heavenly Father they are to imitate him.
43. 44We must imitate God's nature, not look at other people; it is hard, especially for late starters, but zeal can do much in little time, like the eleventh-hour workers.
44. 45We were made in God's image to show his features of mercy and goodness; the soul shows its kinship with God by needing little, and the quiet, prayerful monk is God's living image.
45. 46Christ calls us to imitate the Father's compassion; God, free of envy, gladly shares his glory, and Paul spells out the virtues that make up the likeness.
46. 47The imitator of God shows his gentleness and does good even to enemies, shaming them into goodness; Paul spurs us on by calling us God's temple, children of light and members of Christ.
47. 48Paul wants us dead to the world and alive to God, a living sacrifice in which the passions are put to death but strength for good remains.
48. 49Those who live in the Spirit have taken sin's law captive and turned their members from weapons of unrighteousness into weapons of righteousness, though reshaping a habit is hard.
49. 50The same members can serve wrong or right; Magna's community, a living sacrifice and light of the world, should persevere and excel, earning a threefold reward by their example.
50. 51Monks with many possessions are to Magna's community what the Pharisees were to the apostles, like the tribes who stopped short east of the Jordan; persevere, and pity them.
51. 52Do not argue with possession-laden monks; they ignored Christ's words to the rich man, and the needle's eye admits no burdened soul, while having nothing trades for eternal goods.
52. 53Guard the movements of the mind, for sin can be committed and hidden in thought; a monk venerable outside but foul within is like a whitewashed tomb, only worse.
53. 54Outward gravity can hide inner disorder; the inner life must match the outer, and this is possible by cutting off sin at its root in perception, as one crushes a snake's head.
54. 55Joy and grief over possessions are not godly but a demonic attachment; no monk has so conquered his passions that he can afford to fill his mind with vain thoughts.
55. 56Anxiety over what we cannot control is a dream that leaves us thirsty; all our time belongs to thanksgiving, study of the law and unceasing prayer.
56. 57Scripture's commands exceed our strength so that we stay humble and keep striving; virtue, unlike a craft, has no fixed end and always stays a little ahead, like the place Abraham saw from afar.
57. 58Virtue's goal always stays ahead to keep us striving; no one has fully achieved love, which rejoices in a brother's success and grieves at his fall as at one's own.
58. 59Love makes all one body; but the demons use our senses, anger, vainglory and pride against us, so a wandering mind cannot finish the road or escape their snares.
59. 60The demons who cast down the devil by pride try to snare the high-minded; any thought outside the contest gives them a hold, so Scripture bids us think only on what is just and good.
60. 61David meditated on God's statutes and works; contemplating sun, stars, plants and creatures fills the mind with gladness and teaches ethical and theological lessons.
61. 62God teaches us by the ant, the bee, the migrating birds and the sea that keeps its bounds, shaming rational beings into keeping his commandments of their own free will.
62. 63The sun teaches the Son's eternal relation to the Father; the moon's phases teach that prosperity and adversity change gradually and quickly, so neither should move us.
63. 64Growth is seen only over time; we should learn contentment from the stars and wisdom from creatures, and Magna's community, though different in their tasks, sound together like a tuned psaltery.
64. 65The newer members of the community fight gluttony, vainglory and pride: gluttony fuels lust, vainglory forfeits God's reward, and pride is groundless since each receives his own wage.
65. 66Pride is as harmful as neglect; in Magna's community humility rules, the advanced and the beginners do not envy one another, and all imitate Christ's obedience and love.
66. 67Magna's community has imitated Christ's gentleness, turning the other cheek and living out all the beatitudes, and so has the kingdom of heaven within it.