Why We Wanted to Stay in Egypt

To this Germanus replied: We used to think that we would go back to our monastery richly filled, not only with spiritual joy but also with real profit from seeing your holiness, and that after our return we would follow what we had learned from your teaching, though as feeble rivals. Our love for our elders led us to promise them this, since we imagined that in that monastery we could to some degree follow your lofty life and teaching. So, just as we thought that this way would bring us every joy, we are now on the other hand overwhelmed with unbearable grief, since we find that by this way we cannot possibly obtain what we know is good for us. [a]

So we are hemmed in on both sides. If we want to keep the promise we made in the presence of all the brothers in the cave where our Lord himself shone forth from his chamber in the Virgin’s womb, a promise he himself witnessed, we will suffer the greatest loss in our spiritual life. But if we disregard our promise and stay in this district, and choose to treat that oath of ours as less important than our perfection, we are afraid of the dreadful dangers of falsehood and perjury. Nor can we lighten our burdens by this plan: keeping the terms of our oath by a very hasty return, and then coming back to these parts again as quickly as possible. For even a short delay is dangerous and harmful to those who are aiming at goodness and progress in spiritual things. Still, we would keep our word and our promise, though by an unwilling return, if we were not sure that both the authority and the love of the elders would bind us down so tightly that from then on we would have no chance at all to come back to this place.