A Lukewarm Monk Caught by Greed

I know of one man who thinks himself a monk, and, what is worse, flatters himself that he is perfect. He had been received into a monastery, and his abbot charged him not to turn his thoughts back to the things he had given up and renounced, but to free himself from greed, the root of all kinds of evil, and from earthly snares. He was told that if he wanted to be cleansed of his former passions, by which he saw that he was heavily weighed down from time to time, he should stop caring about things that had not been his own even before; for while he was entangled in their chains he certainly could not make progress toward purifying himself of his faults. With an angry look he did not hesitate to answer, “If you have the means to support others, why do you forbid me to have them too?”