The Man Who Uses Both Hands as Right Hands

These, then, are the people whom Holy Scripture describes figuratively with the Greek word amphoterodexios, that is, ambidextrous. So Ehud is described in the book of Judges as one “who used either hand as his right hand.” We too can gain this power in a spiritual way. We do it if, by making a right and proper use both of the things that are fortunate and seem to be “on the right hand” and of those that are unfortunate and that we call “on the left hand,” we make both of them belong to the right side, so that whatever turns up proves to be for us, in the apostle’s words, “the armor of righteousness.” For we see that the inner man has two parts, and, if I may use the expression, two hands. None of the saints can do without what we call the left hand. Rather, it is by means of the left hand that the perfection of virtue is shown, when a man by skillful use can turn both hands into right hands. [a]

To make our meaning clearer: the saint’s right hand is his spiritual achievements. He is in them when, with a fervent spirit, he masters his desires and passions; when he is free from every attack of the devil and, without any effort or difficulty, rejects and cuts off all the sins of the flesh; when he is lifted above the earth and looks on everything present and earthly as light smoke or empty shadows, and scorns it as something about to vanish away. He is in them when, with an overflowing heart, he not only longs most intensely for the life to come but actually sees it more clearly; when he is fed more richly on spiritual contemplation; when he sees heavenly mysteries laid open to him more brightly; when he pours out his prayers to God with greater purity and readiness; when he is so on fire with fervor of spirit that he passes with the utmost readiness of soul to things invisible and eternal, so that he can scarcely believe he is still in the flesh. He also has a left hand. He is in it when he is tangled in the snares of temptation; when he burns with the heat of craving for fleshly lusts; when he is set on fire by the movement toward rage and anger; when he is overcome by being puffed up with pride or empty glory; when he is weighed down by the sorrow that brings death; when he is shaken to pieces by the schemes and attacks of acedia. He is in it when he has lost all spiritual warmth and grows indifferent with a kind of lukewarmness and unreasonable grief. Then he is not only abandoned by good and kindling thoughts, but even the Psalms, prayer, reading, and staying quietly in his cell all grow stale to him, and every exercise of virtue seems, through an unbearable and horrible loathing, to have lost its taste. When a monk is troubled in this way, he knows that he is being attacked “on the left hand.”

So anyone who is not at all puffed up with empty glory by any of the things on the right hand that we have mentioned, and who struggles bravely against those on the left, and does not yield to despair and give in, but instead takes up the armor of patience to train himself in virtue, can use both hands as right hands. In each kind of action he proves triumphant, and he carries off the prize of victory from his condition on the left hand as well as from his condition on the right. Such, we read, was the reward the blessed Job won. He was certainly crowned as a victor on the right hand when he was the father of seven sons and lived as a rich and wealthy man, and yet offered daily sacrifices to the Lord for their purification, anxious that they should prove acceptable and dear to God rather than to himself. So too when his gates stood open to every stranger, when he was “feet to the lame and eyes to the blind,” when the shoulders of the suffering were kept warm by the wool of his sheep, when he was a father to orphans and a husband to widows, and when he did not, even in his heart, rejoice at the fall of his enemy. And it was the same man who, with still greater virtue, triumphed over adversity on the left hand. In one moment he was deprived of his seven sons, and he was not overcome with bitter grief as a father, but as a true servant of God he rejoiced in the will of his Creator. Instead of wealthy he became poor; instead of rich, naked; instead of strong, wasting away; instead of famous and honored, despised and contemptible; and yet he kept his courage of mind unshaken. Last of all, stripped of all his wealth and property, he made his home on the dunghill. Like some stern executioner of his own body, he scraped away with a piece of broken pottery the pus that broke out on him, and plunging his fingers deep into his wounds, he dragged out masses of worms from his limbs on every side. And in all this he never fell into despair or blasphemy, and he never murmured at all against his Creator. More than that, he was so little overcome by the weight of such bitter trials that he tore and threw off the cloak that remained to cover his body out of all his former property, the one thing the devil could not destroy because he was wearing it. So over the nakedness the terrible robber had brought on him, he laid a nakedness he took on of his own will. The hair of his head too, the only thing left untouched of all that remained of his former glory, he shaved off and threw to his tormentor. Cutting off even what his savage foe had left him, he exulted over him and mocked him with that heavenly cry of his: “If we have received good from the hand of the Lord, should we not also receive evil? Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I would also be right to call Joseph ambidextrous. In prosperity he was very dear to his father, loving to his brothers, and acceptable to God. In adversity he was chaste and faithful to the Lord, most kind to the prisoners in the prison, forgetful of wrongs, and generous to his enemies. And to his brothers, who envied him and, as far as it lay in their power, were his murderers, he proved not only loving but lavishly generous. These men, then, and those like them, are rightly called amphoterodexios, that is, ambidextrous. For they can use either hand as the right hand, and as they pass through the things the apostle lists, they can fairly say: “Through the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report,” and all the rest. Solomon speaks of this right hand and left hand in the Song of Songs, in the voice of the bride: “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me.” This passage shows that both are useful, yet it puts one under the head, because misfortunes ought to be kept under the control of the heart. They are useful only for this: to train us for a time, to discipline us for our salvation, and to make us perfect in patience. But the right hand she hopes will always cling to her, to cherish her and hold her fast in the blessed embrace of the Bridegroom, and to unite her to him so that nothing can part them. We will be ambidextrous, then, when neither plenty nor want affects us; when plenty does not entice us into the luxury of a dangerous carelessness, and want does not drag us into despair and complaining; but when, giving thanks to God in either case alike, we gain one and the same benefit from good fortune and bad. That truly ambidextrous man, the teacher of the Gentiles, bears witness that he himself was such a man when he says: “For I have learned to be content in whatever state I am. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have been instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”