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| Chapter IX. That those need not fear the neighbourhood of their kinsfolk, who can emulate the mortification of Abbot Apollos.
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Chapter IX.
That those need not fear the neighbourhood of their
kinsfolk, who can emulate the mortification of Abbot Apollos.
But that you may be able
fairly to measure the amount of your strength by a certain test of
strictness I will point out to you what was done by a certain old man;
viz., Abbot Apollos2307
| 2307 Cf. the note on
II. xiii. | that if your
secret scrutiny of your heart decides that you are not behind this man
in purpose and goodness, you may venture on remaining in your country
and living near your kinsfolk without detriment to your purpose or
injury to your mode of life, and be sure that neither the feeling of
nearness nor your love for the district can interfere with the
strictness of this humble lot,2308
| 2308 Cf. the note on
XIX. iii. | which not only
your own will but the needs also of your pilgrimage enforce upon you in
this country. When then his own brother had come to this old man, whom
we have mentioned, in the dead of night, begging him to come out for a
little while from his monastery, to help him to rescue an ox, which as
he sadly complained had stuck in the mire of a swamp a little way off,
because he could not possibly rescue it alone, Abbot Apollos stolidly
replied to his entreaties: “Why did you not ask our younger
brother who was nearer to you as you passed by than I?” and when
the other, thinking that he had forgotten the death of his brother who
had been long ago buried, and that he was almost weak in his mind from
excessive abstinence and continual solitude, replied: “How could
I summon one who died fifteen years ago?” Abbot Apollos said:
“Don’t you know that I too have been dead to this world for
twenty years, and that I can’t from my tomb in this cell give you
any assistance in what belongs to the affairs of this present life? And
Christ is so far from allowing me ever so little to relax my purpose of
mortification on which I have entered, for extricating your ox, that He
did not even permit the very shortest intermission of it for my
father’s funeral, which would have been undertaken much more
readily properly and piously.” And so do ye now search out the
secrets of your breast and carefully consider whether you also can
continually preserve such strictness of mind with regard to your
kinsfolk, and when you find that you are like him in this mortification
of soul, then at last you may know that in the same way the
neighbourhood of your kinsfolk and brothers will not hurt you, when, I
mean, you hold that though they are very close to you, you are dead to
them, in such a way that you suffer neither them to be benefited by
your assistance, nor yourselves to be relaxed by duties towards
them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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