The Boys and the Asp

“Not far from the desert, and close to the Nile, there are many monasteries. For the most part the monks there live together in companies of a hundred. Their highest rule is to live under the orders of their abbot: to do nothing by their own choice, but to depend on his will and authority in everything. If any of them conceives in his mind a lofty ideal of virtue and wishes to go off into the desert to live a solitary life, he does not dare to act on this desire without the abbot’s permission. For in their eyes this is the first of virtues: to live in obedience to the will of another. Those who go off to the desert are supplied with bread or some other kind of food by order of that abbot. [a]

“Now it happened that in the days when I had come there, the abbot had sent bread to a man who had withdrawn into the desert and pitched a tent for himself not more than six miles from the monastery. The bread was carried by two boys, the elder fifteen years old and the younger twelve. As these boys were coming home, an asp of remarkable size met them. They were not the least afraid at meeting it; and the snake, coming right up to their feet as if charmed by some music, laid its dark green neck down before them. The younger boy took hold of it with his hand, wrapped it in his clothing, and went on his way with it. Then he walked into the monastery with the air of a conqueror, met the brothers, and with everyone looking on he opened his clothing and set down the captive beast, not without some show of boasting.

“But while the others who saw it praised the faith and virtue of the children, the abbot, seeing more deeply, and to keep them from being puffed up with pride at so tender an age, had them both punished. He did this after scolding them severely for having made public what the Lord had done through them. He declared that it was not to be credited to their faith but to the power of God, and added that they should learn instead to serve God in humility and not to boast in signs and wonders, since a sense of their own weakness was better than any vain display of power.