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| Chapter II. How the old man exposed our errors.
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Chapter II.
How the old man exposed our errors.
The feebleness of your
ideas shows that you have not yet renounced worldly desires nor
mortified your former lusts. For as the wandering character of your
desires testifies to the sloth of your heart, this pilgrimage and
absence from your kinsfolk, which you ought rather to endure with your
heart, you do endure only with the flesh. For all these things
would have been buried and altogether driven out of your hearts, if you
had got hold of the right method of renunciation, and the main reason
for the solitude in which we dwell. And so I see that you are labouring
under that infirmity of sluggishness, which is thus described in
Proverbs: “Every sluggard is always desiring something;”
and again: “Desires kill the slothful.”2296
For in our case too these supplies of
worldly conveniences, which you have described, would not be wanting,
if we believed that they were appropriate to our calling, or thought
that we could get out of those delights and pleasures as much profit as
that which is gained from this squalor of the country and bodily
affliction. Nor are we so deprived of the solace of our kinsfolk, that
those who delight to support us with their substance should fail us,
were it not that this saying of the Saviour meets us and excludes
everything that contributes to the support of this flesh, as He says:
“He who doth not leave (or hate) father and mother and children
and brethren cannot be My disciple.”2297
But if we were altogether deprived of
the protection of our parents, the services of the princes of this
world would not be wanting, as they would most thankfully rejoice to
minister to our necessities with prompt liberality. And supported by
their bounty, we should be free from the care of preparing food, were
it not that this curse of the prophet terribly frightened us. For
“Cursed,” he says, “is the man that putteth his hope
in man;” and: “Put not your trust in
princes.”2298
| 2298 Jer.
xvii. 5; Ps. cxlv. (cxlvi.) 2. | We should
also at any rate place our cells on the banks of the river Nile and
have water at our very doors, so as not to be obliged to carry it on
our necks for four miles, were it not that the blessed Apostle rendered
us indefatigable in enduring this labour, and cheered us by his words,
saying: “Every one shall receive his own reward according to his
labour.”2299
Nor are we
ignorant that there are even in our country some pleasant recesses,
where plenty of fruits, and pleasant gardens, and fertile ground would
furnish the food we need with the slightest bodily efforts on our part,
were it not that we were afraid lest that reproach might apply to us,
which is directed against the rich man in the gospel: “Because
thou hast received thy consolation in this life.”2300
But as we despise all these things and
scorn them together with all the pleasures of this world, we delight
only in this squalor, and prefer to all luxuries this dreadful and vast
desert, and cannot compare any riches of a fertile soil to these
barren sands, as we pursue no
temporal gains of this body, but the eternal rewards of the spirit. For
it is but little for a monk to have once made his renunciation, i.e.,
in the early days of his conversion to have disregarded the present
world, unless he continues to renounce it daily. For to the very end of
this life we must with the prophet say this: “And I have not
desired the day of man, Thou knowest.”2301
Wherefore also the Lord says in the gospel: “If any man will come
after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow
Me.”2302
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