The Hundredfold Promised in This Life

Further, that reward in which the Lord promises a hundredfold in this life to those whose renunciation is perfect is also rightly and truly taken in the same sense, without any disturbance to faith. He says, “And everyone who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold in the present time, and will inherit eternal life.” Many people seize on this saying and insist, with a crude understanding, that these things will be given in a bodily way in the millennium. Yet they must certainly admit that the age which they say will come after the resurrection cannot possibly be understood as the present. So it is more believable, and much clearer, that whoever, at Christ’s persuasion, has made light of any worldly affections or goods receives, even in this life, a love a hundred times better from the brothers and companions of his life, who are joined to him by a spiritual tie. For it is certain that among parents and children, brothers, wives and relations, where the tie is formed merely by close association, or the bond of union by the claims of kinship, love is fairly short-lived and easily broken. Indeed, even good and dutiful children, when they have grown up, are sometimes shut out by their parents from their homes and property. Sometimes, for a really good reason, the tie of marriage is severed, and a quarrelsome division destroys the property of brothers. Monks alone keep a lasting union in close friendship and hold all things in common, since they regard everything that belongs to their brothers as their own, and everything of their own as their brothers’. [a]

If, then, the grace of our love is compared with those affections whose bond of union is a love of the flesh, it is certainly a hundred times sweeter and finer. From self-control in marriage, too, a pleasure will be gained a hundred times greater than the one that comes from the union of the sexes. And instead of the joy a man has from owning a single field or house, he will enjoy a delight in riches a hundred times greater if he passes over into adoption as a son of God, and possesses as his own all that belongs to the eternal Father, and declares in heart and soul, after the manner of that true Son, “All that the Father has is mine.” He will have it, too, if he is no longer troubled by that sinful anxiety among distractions and cares, but, free from care and glad at heart, comes into his own possessions wherever he goes, hearing every day the announcement the apostle makes to him, “For all things are yours, whether the world, or things present, or things to come,” and Solomon’s, “The faithful man has a whole world of riches.” There you have that hundredfold reward, shown in the greatness of its value and in a difference of kind that cannot be measured. For if someone gave, in exchange for a set weight of brass or iron or some still commoner metal, only the same weight in gold, he would seem to have given far more than a hundredfold. In the same way, when the scorn of pleasures and earthly affections is repaid with spiritual joy and the gladness of a most precious love, even if the actual amount is the same, it is still a hundred times better and greater. To make this plainer by repeating it often: I used to have a wife in the lustful passion of desire; now I have one in honorable holiness and the true love of Christ. The woman is only one, but the value of the love has grown a hundredfold. And if, instead of anger and wrath, you look to constant gentleness and patience; instead of the strain of anxiety and trouble, to peace and freedom from care; instead of the fruitless and sinful vexation of this world, to the wholesome fruits of sorrow; instead of the emptiness of passing joy, to the richness of spiritual delights, then you will see in the exchange of these feelings a hundredfold reward. And if we compare the short-lived and fleeting pleasure of each sin with the benefits of the opposite virtues, the greater delight will prove that they are a hundred times better. For in counting on your fingers you move the number one hundred from the left hand to the right, and though you seem to keep the same position of the fingers, the amount grows greatly. So it will turn out that we, who seemed to bear the form of the goats on the left hand, will be moved across and gain the reward of the sheep on the right hand.

Now let us go on to consider what kind of things Christ gives back to us in this world for our scorn of worldly advantages, following particularly the Gospel of Mark, who says: “There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel’s sake, who will not receive a hundred times as much now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life.” For whoever, for the sake of Christ’s name, disregards the love of a single father or mother or child, and gives himself over to the purest love of all who serve Christ, will receive a hundred times as many brothers and kinsfolk. Instead of only one, he will begin to have so many fathers and brothers, bound to him by a still more fervent and admirable affection. He who has given up a single house for the love of Christ will also be enriched with a greater store of lands, since he possesses countless homes in the monasteries as his own, and to whatever part of the world he may withdraw, he goes as to his own house. For how can he fail to receive a hundredfold, and, if it is not wrong to add a little to our Lord’s words, more than a hundredfold, when he gives up the faithless and forced service of ten or twenty slaves and relies on the willing attendance of so many noble and freeborn men? You could prove this by your own experience. Each of you has left only one father and mother and home, and yet, without any effort or care, in whatever part of the world you have come to, you have gained countless fathers and mothers and brothers, as well as houses and lands and most faithful servants, who receive you as their masters, and welcome you, and respect you, and look after you with the greatest attention. But I say that the saints will enjoy this service rightly and with confidence if they have first given themselves and everything they have as a willing offering for the service of the brothers. For, as the Lord says, they will freely receive back what they themselves have given to others. But if a man has not first offered this with true humility to his companions, how can he calmly bear to have it offered to him by others? He knows that he is burdened rather than helped by their services, because he would rather receive attention from the brothers than give it to them.

But he will receive all these things, not with careless slackness and lazy delight, but, as the Lord says, “with persecutions,” that is, with the pressure of this world and terrible distress from his passions. For, as the wise man testifies, “He who is easygoing and without trouble will come to want.” It is not the lazy, or the careless, or the soft, or the delicate who take the kingdom of heaven by force, but the violent. Who, then, are the violent? Surely those who show a splendid violence, not to others, but to their own soul. By a praiseworthy force they deprive it of every delight in present things, and the Lord’s own mouth declares them splendid plunderers, who by robbery of this kind seize the kingdom of heaven by force. For, as the Lord says, “The kingdom of heaven is subjected to violence, and the violent take it by force.” Those who do violence to their own destruction certainly deserve praise as violent men, for, as it is written, “A man who is in sorrow labors for himself, and does violence to his own destruction.” For our destruction is delight in this present life; and, to speak more precisely, it is doing what we ourselves like and desire. So if a man withdraws these things from his soul and puts them to death, he at once does a glorious and valuable violence to his own destruction, provided that he refuses his soul the pleasantest of its wishes. The divine word often rebukes these wishes through the prophet, saying, “For in the days of your fast your own will is found,” and again, “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your will on my holy day, and glorify him, while you do not go your own ways, and your own will is not found, to speak a word.” And at once the prophet adds the great blessedness that is promised to such a man. “Then,” he says, “you will delight in the Lord, and I will lift you up above the high places of the earth, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” That is why our Lord and Savior, to give us an example of giving up our own wills, says, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me,” and again, “Not as I will, but as you will.” And this good quality is shown above all by those who live in the coenobia and are governed by the rule of the elders. They do nothing of their own choice; their will depends on the will of the abbot. [j]

Finally, to bring this discussion to a close, I ask you: do not those who faithfully serve Christ most clearly receive grace a hundredfold in this life? For his name’s sake they are honored by the greatest princes. Though they do not look for human praise, they become revered in the trials of persecution, these men whose humble condition might perhaps have been looked down on even by common people, because of their obscure birth or because they were slaves, if they had stayed in their life in the world. But because of the service of Christ, no one will dare to slander them over their rank, or to throw the obscurity of their origin in their faces. On the contrary, through the very disgrace of a humble condition, which shames and confounds others, the servants of Christ are made all the more splendidly noble. We can clearly show this by the case of Abbot John, who lives in the desert that borders on the town of Lycon. He was born of obscure parents, but because of the name of Christ he has become so well known to almost all mankind that the very masters of the world, who hold the reins of this world and of the empire and are a terror to all powers and kings, revere him as their lord. They seek his advice from distant countries, and entrust to his prayers and merits the crown of their empire, their safety, and the fortunes of war.

In such terms the blessed Abraham spoke about the origin of our delusion and its remedy. He laid bare before our eyes the crafty thoughts that the devil had started and suggested, and he kindled in us the desire for the true putting to death of self. We hope that many others too may be set on fire by it, even though all these things have been written in a rather simple style. For though the dying embers of our words cover up the glowing thoughts of the greatest fathers, we hope that in very many who try to clear away the embers of our words and fan the hidden thoughts into flame, coldness will be turned into heat. But, holy brothers, I have not been so puffed up by a spirit of presumption as to hand on to you this fire, which the Lord came to send upon the earth and which he eagerly longs to kindle, as though by applying its warmth I could set alight your purpose, which is already at white heat. I have done it so that your authority with your children may be the greater, when the precepts of the greatest and most ancient fathers also support what you are teaching, not by the dead sound of words but by your living example. It only remains that I, who have until now been tossed about by a most dangerous storm, may be carried into the safe harbor of silence by the spiritual winds of your prayers. [r]