Why We Welcomed Bishop Paul

Now to the question you raise: when did I begin to accept the authority of Pope Theophilus and join him in fellowship of belief? You answer yourself: “Then, I suppose, when you were supporting Paul, whom he had condemned, and made every effort to help him, and urged him to get back, by a written ruling from the emperor, the bishopric from which the court of bishops had removed him.” I will not begin by answering for myself. First I will speak of the injury you have done to another here. What humanity or love is there in gloating over other people’s misfortunes and showing their wounds to the world? Is that the lesson you learned from the Samaritan who carried the half-dead man back to the inn? Is that what you take pouring oil into his wounds and paying the innkeeper’s costs to mean? Is this how you interpret the sheep brought back to the fold, the coin found again, the prodigal son welcomed home? Suppose you had a right to speak evil of me, because I had injured you and, in your words, had goaded you to madness and provoked you to abuse. What harm had a man who lives in obscurity done you, that you should lay bare his scars, and, when they had healed over, tear them open by inflicting this uncalled-for pain? Even if he deserved your reproaches, were you right to do this? Unless I am mistaken, those you want to strike through him (and I speak the open opinion of many) are the enemies of the Origenists; you use the troubles of one of them to vent your violence on both. [a]

If the decisions of Pope Theophilus please you so much, and you think it impious for a bishop’s decree to be overturned, what do you say about the rest of those he has condemned? And what do you say about Pope Anastasius, of whom you most truly say that no one thinks him capable, as bishop of so great a city, of wronging an innocent or an absent man? I do not say this because I set myself up as a judge of the bishops’ decisions, or want what they have decided to be undone. I say: let each of them do what he thinks right at his own risk; it is for him alone to consider how his judgment will itself be judged.

Our duty in our monastery is hospitality. We welcome everyone who comes to us with the smile of human kindness. We must take care that it does not happen again that Mary and Joseph find no room at the inn, and that Jesus is shut out and says to us, “I was a stranger and you did not take me in.” The only people we do not welcome are heretics, who are the only people you do welcome. For our calling binds us to wash the feet of those who come to us, not to debate their merits. Remember, my brother, how the man we are speaking of had confessed Christ. Think of that chest gashed by the scourges. Call to mind the imprisonment he had endured, the darkness, the exile, the labor in the mines, and you will not be surprised that we welcomed him as a passing guest. Are we to be counted rebels by you because we give a cup of cold water to the thirsty in the name of Christ?