Our Visit to Pinufius

Not long afterward, a desire for holy instruction urged us too to visit Egypt. We sought him out with the greatest eagerness and devotion, and he welcomed us with such kindness and courtesy that he actually honored us, as his former cellmates, with lodging in his own cell, which he had built in the farthest corner of his garden. There, in the presence of all the brothers at the service, he gave to one of the brothers who was submitting to the rule of the monastery some rather difficult and lofty precepts, which, as we said, I summarized as briefly as I could in the fourth book of the Institutes. The heights of a true renunciation seemed to us so unattainable and so marvelous that we did not think people as lowly as we were could ever climb them. So, cast down in despair, and not hiding in our faces the inner bitterness of our thoughts, we came back to the blessed old man with quite an anxious heart. When he at once asked why we were so sad, Abbot Germanus groaned deeply and answered as follows. [a]