Those Who Renounce the World Badly

Last of all, I am ashamed to say how many we find who have made their renunciation in such a way that they have changed nothing of their former sins and habits, but only their state of life and their worldly clothes. They are eager to pile up wealth they never had before, or else they do not give up what they had. Or, what is sadder still, they actually try to increase it, with this excuse: they claim it is right for them always to support their relatives or the brothers with it. Or they hoard it on the pretext of founding communities, over which they imagine they will preside as abbots. But if only they would sincerely seek the way of perfection, they would rather strive with all their might to reach this: to strip themselves not only of their wealth but of all their former tastes and occupations, and to put themselves entirely and without reserve under the guidance of the elders, so as to have no anxiety, not merely about others, but even about themselves. Instead we find that while they are eager to be set over their brothers, they are never subject to their own elders. With pride as their starting point, they are quite ready to teach others, but they take no trouble to learn themselves, or to practice what they are going to teach. And so it is sure to end with their becoming, as the Savior said, “blind leaders of the blind,” so that “both fall into the ditch.” [a]

This pride, though it is only one kind, takes a twofold form. One form always puts on an appearance of seriousness and gravity; the other breaks out with unbridled freedom into silly giggling and laughter. The first delights in not talking. The second finds it hard to be held to the restraint of silence, and has no scruples about talking freely on unsuitable and foolish matters, while it is ashamed to be thought inferior to others or less well informed than they are. The one seeks office among the clergy out of pride; the other looks down on it, because it fancies that such office is unsuitable, or beneath its former rank and way of life and what its birth deserves. Which of the two should be counted the worse, each person must weigh and decide for himself. At any rate, the disobedience is one and the same, whether a man breaks the elder’s commands out of zeal for work or out of love of ease. It is as harmful to upset the rules of the monastery for the sake of sleep as for the sake of keeping vigil. It is just the same to go against the abbot’s orders in order to read as to disregard them in order to sleep. Nor is there any difference in the spur to pride if you neglect a brother, whether it is because of your fast or because of your breakfast. The only difference is that the faults that show themselves under the guise of virtues and in the form of spirituality are worse, and less likely to be cured, than those that arise openly from the pleasures of the flesh. For these last, like sicknesses that are perfectly plain and visible, are taken in hand and cured. But the former, because they are covered with the cloak of virtue, remain uncured, and bring those who fall prey to them into a more dangerous and deadly state of ill health.