Seeking Peace of Mind

Everything should be done and sought by us for the sake of this. For this we must seek solitude. For this we know that we ought to submit to fasts, vigils, toil, bodily nakedness, reading and all the other virtues: so that through them we may be able to prepare our heart and keep it unharmed by every evil passion, and, resting on these as on steps, climb to the perfection of love. As for these observances, if we happen to have been occupied in some good and useful work and have been unable to keep our usual discipline, we should not be overcome by vexation or anger or passion; for it was to overcome these very things that we were going to do what we have left undone. The gain from fasting will not make up for the loss from anger, nor is the profit from reading as great as the harm that comes from despising a brother. [a]

The things of secondary importance, such as fasts, vigils, withdrawal from the world and meditation on Scripture, we ought to practice with a view to our main object, that is, purity of heart, which is love. We ought not to drive away this main virtue on their account. For as long as it is still found in us whole and unharmed, we will not be hurt if one of the things of secondary importance has to be left out of necessity; whereas it will be of no use at all to have done everything, if this main reason we have spoken of, for whose sake everything is to be done, is taken away. This is why a person is anxious to get and provide himself with the tools for any kind of work. It is not simply to own them to no purpose, as though the profit and advantage looked for from them lay in the bare fact of owning them. It is so that by using them he may actually gain the practical skill, and reach the end of the craft they serve. So fasts, vigils, meditation on the Scriptures, self-denial and the giving up of all possessions are not perfection, but aids to perfection, because the end of that discipline does not lie in them; rather, by means of them we arrive at the end. He, then, will practice these exercises for nothing who is content with them as though they were the highest good, who has fixed the purpose of his heart on them alone and does not stretch his efforts toward reaching the end for whose sake they should be sought. He has the tools of his craft, but he does not know the end, in which all that is valuable lies. Whatever, then, can disturb that purity and peace of mind, even though it may seem useful and valuable, should be shunned as truly harmful. By this rule we will escape harm from mistakes and wanderings, and make straight for the end we desire, and reach it.