Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter IV. The testimony of Abbot Antony in which he teaches that each virtue ought to be sought for from him who professes it in a special degree.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.
The testimony of Abbot Antony in which he teaches that
each virtue ought to be sought for from him who professes it in a
special degree.
For it is an ancient and
excellent saying of the blessed Antony823
| 823 S. Antony,
the “founder of asceticism” and one of the most famous of
the early monks, was born about 250 a.d. at
Coma, on the borders of Egypt, and died about 355, at the great age of
105. He is frequently mentioned by Cassian in the
Conferences. |
that when a monk is endeavouring after the plan of the monastic life to
reach the heights of a more advanced perfection, and, having learned
the consideration of discretion, is able now to stand in his own
judgment, and to arrive at the very summit of the anchorite’s
life, he ought by no means to seek for all kinds of virtues from one
man however excellent. For one is adorned with flowers of knowledge,
another is more strongly fortified with methods of discretion, another
is established in the dignity of patience, another excels in the virtue
of humility, another in that of continence, another is decked with the
grace of simplicity.
This one excels all others in
magnanimity, that one in pity, another in vigils, another in silence,
another in earnestness of work. And therefore the monk who desires to
gather spiritual honey, ought like a most careful bee, to suck out
virtue from those who specially possess it, and should diligently store
it up in the vessel of his own breast: nor should he investigate what
any one is lacking in, but only regard and gather whatever virtue he
has. For if we want to gain all virtues from some one person, we shall
with great difficulty or perhaps never at all find suitable examples
for us to imitate. For though we do not as yet see that even Christ is
made “all things in all,” as the Apostle says;824
still in this way we can find Him bit by
bit in all. For it is said of Him, “Who was made of God to you
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption.”825
While then in one
there is found wisdom, in another righteousness, in another
sanctification, in another kindness, in another chastity, in another
humility, in another patience, Christ is at the present time divided,
member by member, among all of the saints. But when all come together
into the unity of the faith and virtue, He is formed into the
“perfect man,”826
completing the
fulness of His body, in the joints and properties of all His members.
Until then that time arrives when God will be “all in all,”
for the present God can in the way of which we have spoken be “in
all,” through particular virtues, although He is not yet
“all in all” through the fulness of them. For although our
religion has but one end and aim, yet there are different ways by which
we approach God, as will be more fully shown in the Conferences of the
Elders.827
| 827 See especially
Conferences XVIII. and XIX. | And so we must seek a model of
discretion and continence more particularly from those from whom we see
that those virtues flow forth more abundantly through the grace of the
Holy Spirit; not that any one can alone acquire those things which are
divided among many, but in order that in those good qualities of which
we are capable we may advance towards the imitation of those who
especially have acquired them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
