Abbot Chaeremon Excuses Himself

So the blessed Archebius thought it best to take us first to Chaeremon, because he lived nearer to his monastery and because he was older than the other two. He had passed the hundredth year of his life. He was vigorous only in spirit, and his back was so bowed with age and constant prayer that, as if he were in his childhood again, he crawled with his hands hanging down and resting on the ground. We gazed at one and the same time on this man’s wonderful face and on his way of walking; for though all his limbs had already failed and were dead, he had lost none of the severity of his former strictness. We humbly asked him for his word and teaching, and declared that a longing for spiritual instruction was the only reason we had come. He sighed deeply and said: “What teaching can I give you, when the feebleness of age has relaxed my former strictness, just as it has also destroyed my confidence in speaking? For how could I presume to teach what I do not do, or instruct another in what I know I now practice only feebly and coldly? That is why, now that I am of such an advanced age, I do not allow any of the younger men to live with me, for fear that the other’s strictness might be relaxed by my example. For a teacher’s authority will never be strong unless he fixes it in the heart of his hearer by actually doing his duty.” [a]