How a Hermit Can Find Out His Faults

To those who are truly seeking relief, healing remedies from the true Physician of souls will certainly not be lacking. They will be given above all to those who do not disregard their sickly state, whether because they despair of it or because they do not care about it; who do not hide the danger of their wound, nor reject the remedy of repentance in a wanton heart, but with a humble and careful heart flee to the heavenly Physician for the diseases they have contracted through ignorance, or error, or necessity. So we ought to know that if we withdraw into solitude or hidden places without first having our faults cured, their working is only held down, while the capacity to feel them is not put out. For the root of all sins, not having been dug out, still lies hidden in us, or rather is creeping upward; and we can tell that it is still alive by these signs. [a]

For instance, if, while we live in solitude, we receive the arrival of some brothers, or any very slight lingering on their part, with any anxiety or fretfulness of mind, we should recognize that an incitement to the most hasty impatience still exists in us. But if, when we are hoping for a brother’s coming and for some reason he is a little late, our indignation silently blames his slowness, and annoyance at this inconvenient waiting disturbs our mind, the examination of our conscience will show that the sin of anger and vexation plainly still remains in us. Again, if a brother asks for our book to read, or for some other article to use, and his request annoys us, or our refusal upsets him, there can be no doubt that we are still caught in the meshes of avarice or greed. But if a sudden thought, or a passage of Holy Scripture, brings back the memory of a woman, and we feel ourselves in any way drawn toward her, we should know that the fire of sexual immorality is not yet put out in us. And if, in comparing our own strictness with another’s laxity, even the slightest conceit tempts our mind, it is clear that we are affected with the dreadful plague of pride.

When, then, we find these signs of faults in our heart, we should clearly recognize that it is only the opportunity for sin, not the passion of it, that we are deprived of. Certainly, if we were at any time to mix in the ordinary life of men, these passions would at once spring out from their lurking places in our thoughts. They would prove that they did not come into being for the first time when they broke out, but that they were then at last brought into the open, because they had long lain hidden. And so even a solitary can detect by sure signs that the roots of each fault are still planted in him, if he tries, not to display his purity to men, but to keep it unbroken in the sight of him from whom no secrets of the heart can be hidden.