Stubbornness in Such a Decision Is Unreasonable

There is no doubt that these are the rulings of those monasteries in which, as you tell us, you were trained in the infancy of your renunciation. Their leaders are used to preferring their own will to a brother’s supper, and they cling most stubbornly to whatever they have once intended. But our elders, to whose faith the signs of apostolic power have borne witness, and who have handled everything with judgment and discernment of spirit rather than with a stiff and stubborn mind, have laid down that those who give way to the weaknesses of others receive much richer fruits than those who persist in their own decisions. And they have declared it a better deed to conceal abstinence, as was said, by this needful and humble lie, than to display it with a proud show of truth. [a]