How a Monk Should Guard His Thoughts

So a monk’s whole attention should be fixed on one point, and the rise and circle of all his thoughts should be firmly held to it, namely, to the remembrance of God. It is like a man who wants to raise high the vault of a round arch. He must keep drawing a line around it from its exact center, and by the sure standard the center gives, he finds, by the rules of building, all the evenness and roundness that are needed. But if anyone tries to finish it without fixing its center, however confident he is in his art and ability, he cannot possibly keep the curve even and free from error, or tell simply by looking how much his mistake has taken away from the beauty of true roundness. He can do it only if he always goes back to that test of truth, corrects the inner and outer edges of his work by its verdict, and so brings the great and lofty structure to its exact point. [a]

So it is with our mind. It must work around the love of the Lord alone as its immovably fixed center, and through all the circumstances of our works and plans either fit or reject the shape of every one of our thoughts by the excellent compass, if I may call it that, of love. Unless it does this, it will never build, with fine skill, the structure of that spiritual building of which Paul is the architect, nor possess that beautiful house which the blessed David longed in his heart to show the Lord, when he said: “I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells.” Instead, without foresight, such a man will raise in his heart a house that is not beautiful and is unworthy of the Holy Spirit, one that will soon fall. And so he will receive no glory from welcoming the blessed Inhabitant, but will be miserably destroyed by the collapse of his building.