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| Chapter XII. Wherein we must do penance for a time only; and wherein it can have no end.
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Chapter XII.
Wherein we must do penance for a time only; and wherein
it can have no end.
But that description of
the forgetfulness spoken of only has to do with capital offences, which
are also condemned by the mosaic law, the inclination to which is
destroyed and put an end to by a good life, and so also the penance for
them has an end. But for those small offences in which, as it is
written, “the righteous falls seven times and will rise
again”2153
penitence will
never cease. For either through ignorance, or forgetfulness, or
thought, or word, or surprise, or necessity, or weakness of the flesh,
or defilement in a dream, we often fall every day either against our
will or voluntarily; offences for which David also prays the Lord, and
asks for purification and pardon, and says: “Who can understand
sins? from my secret ones cleanse me; and from those of others spare
Thy servant;”2154
and the Apostle:
“For the good which I would I do not, and the evil which I would
not, that I do.” For which also the same man exclaims with a sigh
“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?”2155
For we slip into
these so easily as it were by a law of nature, that however carefully
and guardedly we are on the lookout against them, we cannot altogether
avoid them. Since it was of these that one of the disciples, whom Jesus
loved, declared and laid down absolutely saying: “If we say that
we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and His word is not in
us.”2156
Further for a man
who is anxious to reach the heights of perfection it will not greatly
help him to have arrived at the end of penitence, i.e., to restrain
himself from unlawful acts, unless he has always urged himself forward
in unwearied course to those virtues whereby we come to the signs of
satisfaction. For it will not be enough for a man to have kept himself
clear from those foul stains of sins which the Lord hates, unless he
has also secured by purity of heart and perfect Apostolical love that
sweet fragrance of virtue in which the Lord delights. Thus far Abbot
Pinufius discoursed on the marks of satisfaction and the end of
penitence. And although he pressed us with anxious love to decide to
stay in his Cœnobium, yet when he could not retain us, as we were
incited by the fame of the desert of Scete, he sent us on our
way.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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