Theonas Urges His Wife to Renounce the World

When the blessed Theonas heard this, he was fired with an uncontrollable desire for the perfection of the gospel. The seed of the word, which he had received in a fruitful heart, he committed, as it were, to the deep and broken furrows of his breast. For he was greatly humbled and stricken in conscience, because the old man had said not only that he had failed to reach the perfection of the gospel, but that he had scarcely fulfilled the commands of the law. Though he was used to paying the tithes of his crops every year as alms, he grieved that he had never even heard of the law of the firstfruits; and he humbly confessed that even if he had kept this as well, he would still, in the old man’s view, have been very far from the perfection of the gospel. [a]

So he went home sad, and filled with that sorrow which works repentance leading to salvation. By his own will and resolve he turned all his wife’s care and concern toward salvation, and began to stir her up to the same eager desire with which he himself had been set on fire. With the same kind of urging, and with tears day and night, he pressed her that together they might serve God in holiness and chastity. He told her that their turning to a better life ought not to be put off, since a vain hope placed in their youth would be no defense against sudden death, which no one escapes, and which carries off boys and youths and young people just as it does old men.