The Devil’s Promise of a Remoter Desert

Never to be visited by anyone at all is a sign of unreasonable and ill-considered strictness, or rather of the greatest coldness. For if a man walks too slowly on the way he has entered, and lives according to his old self, it is right that no one should visit him, and I do not mean only the saints, but anyone at all. But you, if you are on fire with a true and perfect love for our Lord, and follow God, who is love, with the whole fervor of your spirit, are sure to be visited by people, to whatever inaccessible place you may flee. And the nearer the warmth of divine love brings you to God, the larger the crowd of holy brothers that will flock to you. For, as the Lord says, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden,” because, says the Lord, “those who love me I will honor, and those who despise me will be despised.” [a]

But you ought to know that this is the devil’s subtlest trick, his best-hidden pit. Into it he throws some wretched and careless people: while he promises them greater things, he takes away the advantages they need for their daily progress. He persuades them that more remote and vaster deserts should be sought, and he paints these in their hearts as if they were sown with marvelous delights. What is more, he pretends that certain unknown and nonexistent places are well known and suitable, already handed over to our power and able to be secured without any difficulty. He pretends, too, that the people of that country are teachable and followers of the way of salvation, so that while he promises richer fruit for the soul there, he may craftily destroy our present profit. For when, because of this empty hope, someone separates himself from living with the elders, and has lost all those things he idly imagined in his heart, he wakes as if from a very deep sleep, and once awake he finds none of the things he had dreamed of. Then, because he is tied down by greater needs for this life and by snares he cannot escape, the devil will not even let him reach for the things he once promised himself. And since he is now exposed, not to those rare and spiritual visits of the brothers which he used to avoid, but to daily interruptions from worldly people, the devil will never let him go back even to the moderate quiet and ordered way of the anchorite’s life.