Those Who Flee Rule for Their Own Ease

For there are some who are outstandingly endowed with virtues and lifted up by great gifts for the training of others. They are pure in their zeal for chastity, strong in the might of abstinence, filled with the feasts of teaching, humble in long and patient endurance, upright in the courage of authority, tender in the grace of kindness, strict in the severity of justice. Truly, if such people refuse to take up offices of the highest rule when they are called, they for the most part deprive themselves of the very gifts they received not for themselves alone, but for others as well. And while they think about their own gain and not another’s, they lose the very benefits they want to keep for themselves. That is why the Truth said to his disciples, “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, so that it may give light to all who are in the house.” That is why he says to Peter, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?” And when Peter had at once answered that he loved him, he was told, “If you love me, feed my sheep.” If, then, the care of feeding is the proof of loving, whoever is rich in virtues and yet refuses to feed the flock of God is convicted of not loving the chief Shepherd. That is why Paul says, “If Christ died for all, then all died. And if he died for all, it remains that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again.” [a]

That is why Moses says that a surviving brother is to take as his wife the widow of a brother who has died without children, and raise up children in his brother’s name. And if he happens to refuse to take her, the woman is to spit in his face, and her kinsman is to loosen the shoe from one of his feet, and call his house the house of the man whose shoe was loosened. Now the brother who died is he who, after the glory of the resurrection, said, “Go, tell my brothers.” For he died, as it were, without children, in that he had not yet filled up the number of his elect. Then it is ordered that the surviving brother is to have the wife assigned to him, because it is surely fitting that the care of holy church be laid on the one who is best able to rule it well. But if he is unwilling, the woman spits in his face. For whoever does not care to benefit others out of the gifts he has received, holy church reproaches even the good he has, and, as it were, spits in his face. And the shoe is taken from one foot, for it is written, “Your feet shod in readiness for the good news of peace.” If, then, we carry the care of our neighbor as well as of ourselves, we have each foot protected by a shoe. But the one who thinks of his own advantage and neglects that of his neighbors loses, to his disgrace, the shoe of one foot.

And so there are some, as we have said, enriched with great gifts, who are eager for the studies of contemplation alone and shrink from serving their neighbor’s benefit by preaching. They love a secret place of quiet; they long for a retreat for reflection. For this conduct, if they are strictly judged, they are without doubt guilty in proportion to the greatness of the gifts by which they could have been of public use. For with what frame of mind does one who could shine in helping his neighbors prefer his own privacy to the good of others, when the only Son of the supreme Father himself came forth from the bosom of the Father into the midst of us all, so that he might help many?