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| Chapter IX. Of true and complete perfection.
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Chapter IX.
Of true and complete perfection.
But this is μερική, i.e., no
thorough and altogether complete perfection, but only a partial one.
Perfection then is very rare and granted by God’s gift to but a
very few. For he is truly and not partially perfect who with equal
imperturbability can put up with the squalor of the wilderness in the
desert, as well as the infirmities of the brethren in the
Cœnobium. And so it is hard to find one who is perfect in both
lives, because the anchorite cannot thoroughly acquire ἀκτημοσύνη
, i.e., a disregard for and stripping oneself of material things, nor
the Cœnobite purity in contemplation, although we know that Abbot
Moses and Paphnutius and the two Macarii2114
| 2114 Moses, Paphnutius,
and the two Macarii have all been mentioned frequently before. On Moses
(to whom the first two Conferences are assigned) see the note on the
Institutes X. xxv.; on Paphnutius see on Conference III. i.; and on the
two Macarii, the Institutes V. xli. |
were masters of both in perfection. And so they were perfect in either
life, and while they withdrew further than all the dwellers in the
desert and delighted themselves unceasingly in the retirement of the
wilderness, and as far as in them lay never sought intercourse with
other men, yet they put up with the presence and the infirmities of
those who came to them so that when a large number of the brethren came
to them for the sake of seeing them and profiting by it, they endured
this almost continuous trouble of receiving them with imperturbable
patience, and men fancied that all the days of their life they had
neither learnt nor practised anything but how to show common civility
to those who came, so that it was a puzzle to all to say in which life
their zeal was mainly shown, i.e., whether their greatness adapted
itself more remarkably to the purity of the hermitage or to the common
life.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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