The Value of Work and the Harm of Idleness

And so, though we too might have the protection of our families, we have preferred his abstinence to all riches. We have chosen to earn our daily bodily food by our own efforts rather than rely on the sure provision our relatives would make. We have less liking for that idle meditation on Holy Scripture you spoke of, and that fruitless attention to reading, than for this laborious poverty. And certainly we would most gladly pursue the former, if the authority of the apostles had taught us by their example that it was better for us, or the rules of the elders had laid it down for our good. But you must know that this does you harm no less than the harm I spoke of above. For though your body may be sound and vigorous, you are supported by other people’s gifts, something that properly belongs only to the weak. Certainly the whole human race, except only that class of monks who live by the daily labor of their own hands as the apostle commands, looks to others’ compassion for alms. [a]

So it is clear that not only those who boast that they are supported by the wealth of their relatives, or the labor of their servants, or the produce of their farms, but even the kings of this world, live on alms. This, at any rate, is included in the definition of our predecessors, who laid it down that anything taken for the needs of daily food which has not been earned and prepared by the labor of our own hands must be counted as alms. So the apostle teaches, who altogether forbids the help of other people’s bounty to the idle, and says: “If a man does not work, neither let him eat.” These are the words the blessed Antony used against someone. And by the example of his teaching he taught us, too, to shun the harmful attractions of our relatives and of all who would supply the alms for our food, as well as the delights of a pleasant home. He taught us to prefer to all the wealth of this world sandy wastes bristling with the barrenness of nature, and regions buried under living crusts and so subject to no control or rule of man. In this way we would not only avoid the company of men for the sake of a pathless waste, but the nature of fruitful soil would never tempt us into the distractions of farming it, by which the mind would be called away from the chief service of the heart and made useless for spiritual aims.