How Abbot Piamun Hid His Abstinence

Finally, Abbot Piamun, after twenty-five years, did not hesitate to accept some grapes and wine that a certain brother offered him. Against his own rule, he at once preferred to taste what was brought to him rather than to display his abstinence, which was a secret from everyone. Bear in mind, too, what we remember our elders always did. When they had to bring forward the marvels of their own good deeds and their own acts in the conferences, for the instruction of the younger monks, they used to conceal them under cover of other people. What else can we call that but an open lie? And oh, that we too had anything worthy to bring forward to stir up the faith of the younger monks! We would certainly have no scruples about following their fictions of that kind. For it is better to tell a lie under the color of a figure like that than, for the sake of keeping to that unreasonable truthfulness, either to hide in ill-advised silence what might build up the hearers, or to fall into the display of an objectionable vanity by telling them the truth in our own person. And the teacher of the Gentiles clearly teaches us the same lesson, since he chose to bring forward the great revelations made to him under the character of someone else, saying: “I know a man in Christ, whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, God knows, who was caught up even to the third heaven. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which no human being is permitted to utter.” [a]