Solitude Is No Escape

Even in solitude it does not stop pursuing the man who has fled from all human company for the sake of glory. And the more completely a man has shunned the whole world, the more keenly it pursues him. It tries to lift up one man with pride because of his great endurance in work and labor, another because of his great readiness to obey, another because he outstrips others in humility. One man is tempted through the extent of his knowledge, another through the extent of his reading, another through the length of his vigils. [a]

This sickness tries to wound a man only through his virtues, setting deadly obstacles in the very things through which he seeks the means of life. For when people are eager to walk in the path of holiness and perfection, the enemies lay their snares to trap them nowhere else than in the way along which they walk, as the blessed David says: “In the way where I walked they have laid a snare for me.” So in this very way of virtue along which we are walking, as we press on toward “the prize of our high calling,” we may be lifted up by our successes, and so sink down and fall, the feet of our soul tangled and caught in the snares of empty glory. So it happens that those of us who could not be beaten in the fight with the enemy are overcome by the very greatness of our triumph. Or else, and this is another kind of deception, we strain beyond the limits of the self-restraint that is possible for us, and through bodily weakness fail to keep on in our course.