Patermucius and His Little Son

Let it be enough for me to have told these few things out of many about Abbot John. Now I will relate a memorable deed of Abbot Patermucius. When he was eager to renounce the world, he lay for a long time before the doors of the monastery, until by his dogged persistence he persuaded them, against all the rules of the coenobia, to receive him together with his little boy, who was about eight years old. When they were at last admitted, they were at once not only put in the care of different superiors, but also given separate cells to live in. This was so that the father would not be reminded, by constantly seeing the little one, that out of all his possessions and treasures of the flesh, which he had cast off and renounced, at least his son was left to him; and so that, as he had already been taught that he was no longer a rich man, he might also forget that he was a father. [a]

It had to be tested more thoroughly whether he would make more of affection and love for his own flesh and blood than of obedience and Christian self-denial, which all who renounce the world ought, out of love for Christ, to put first. So the child was deliberately neglected and dressed in rags instead of proper clothes. He was so covered and disfigured with dirt that he would disgust rather than delight his father’s eyes whenever he saw him. Further, he was exposed to blows and slaps from different people, which the father often saw dealt out, without the slightest reason, to his innocent child under his very eyes, so that he never saw the boy’s cheeks without the dirty streaks of tears on them. Yet though the child was treated like this day after day before his eyes, the father’s heart stood firm and unmoved, out of love for Christ and for the virtue of obedience. For he no longer regarded him as his own son, since he had offered him to Christ along with himself. Nor was he troubled about the boy’s present injuries; rather he rejoiced, because he saw that they were not being endured without profit. He thought little of his son’s tears, and was anxious about his own humility and perfection.

When the superior of the coenobium saw his steadfastness of mind and his immovable firmness, he wanted to prove the constancy of his purpose thoroughly. One day, when he had seen the child crying, he pretended to be annoyed with him and told the father to throw him into the river. Then the father, as if the Lord had commanded it, at once snatched up the child as quickly as he could and carried him in his arms to the riverbank to throw him in. And in the fervor of his faith and obedience this would at once have been carried out in act, had not some of the brothers been purposely posted to watch the banks of the river very carefully. When the child was thrown in, they somehow snatched him out of the bed of the stream, and so kept the command, which had really been fulfilled by the father’s obedience and devotion, from being completed in act and result.