The Old Man Exposes Our Mistakes

The feebleness of your ideas shows that you have not yet renounced worldly desires or put to death your former lusts. For the wandering of your desires testifies to the sloth of your hearts: this exile and separation from your families, which you ought rather to bear in your hearts, you are bearing only in the flesh. For all these things would have been buried and driven completely out of your hearts if you had grasped the right method of renunciation and the chief reason for the solitude in which we live. So I see that you are suffering from that weakness of sluggishness which is described this way in Proverbs: “Every sluggard is always desiring something”; and again: “Desires kill the slothful.” [a]

For we too would not lack the supply of worldly comforts you have described, if we believed they were suited to our calling, or thought we could get as much profit from those delights and pleasures as is gained from this squalor of the land and from bodily hardship. Nor are we so cut off from the comfort of our families that there would be no one glad to support us out of their means, were it not that this saying of the Savior confronts us and shuts out everything that goes to support this flesh: “He who does not leave,” or hate, “father and mother and children and brothers cannot be my disciple.” And even if we were altogether without the protection of our parents, the services of the princes of this world would not be lacking, for they would be most thankful and glad to supply our needs with ready generosity. Supported by their bounty, we would be free from the care of preparing food, were it not that this curse of the prophet terribly frightens us: “Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man”; and: “Do not put your trust in princes.” We could also, at any rate, set our cells on the banks of the river Nile and have water at our very doors, so as not to have to carry it on our necks for four miles, were it not that the blessed apostle has made us tireless in bearing this labor and has cheered us with his words: “Each one will receive his own reward according to his labor.” Nor are we unaware that even in our own country there are some pleasant retreats, where plenty of fruit, pleasant gardens and fertile ground would supply the food we need with the least bodily effort on our part, were it not that we were afraid the reproach aimed at the rich man in the gospel might apply to us: “Because you have received your consolation in this life.”

But we despise all these things and scorn them, together with all the pleasures of this world. We delight only in this squalor. We prefer this dreadful, vast desert to every luxury, and cannot compare any riches of fertile soil with these barren sands, because we are pursuing no passing gains for this body, but the eternal rewards of the spirit. For it is not much for a monk to have made his renunciation once, that is, to have disregarded the present world in the early days of his conversion, unless he goes on renouncing it daily. To the very end of this life we must say with the prophet: “And I have not desired the day of man, you know.” That is why the Lord also says in the gospel: “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”