Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXIII. The answer with the explanation of the saying.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXIII.
The answer with the explanation of the saying.
Abraham: We can prove by
the easy teaching of our own experience that our Lord and
Saviour’s saying is perfectly true, if we approach the way of
perfection properly and in accordance with Christ’s will, and
mortifying all our desires, and cutting off injurious likings, not only
allow nothing to remain with us of this world’s goods (whereby
our adversary would find at his pleasure opportunities of destroying
and damaging us) but actually recognize that we are not our own
masters, and truly make our own the Apostle’s words: “I
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”2326
For what can be burdensome, or hard to
one who has embraced with his whole heart the yoke of Christ, who is
established in true humility and ever fixes his eye on the Lord’s
sufferings and rejoices in all the wrongs that are offered to him,
saying: “For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in
reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ:
for when I am weak, then am I strong”?2327
By what loss of any common thing, I
ask, will he be injured, who boasts of perfect renunciation, and
voluntarily rejects for Christ’s sake all the pomp of this world,
and considers all and every of its desires as dung, so that he may gain
Christ, and by continual meditation on this command of the gospel,
scorns and gets rid of agitation at every loss: “For what shall
it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul? Or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”2328
For the loss of what will he be
vexed, who recognizes that everything that can be taken away from
others is not their own, and proclaims with unconquered valour:
“We brought nothing into this world: it is certain that we cannot
carry anything out”?2329
By the needs
of what want will his courage be overcome, who knows how to do without
“scrip for the way, money for the purse,”2330
and, like the Apostle, glories “in
many fasts, in hunger and thirst, in cold and
nakedness”?2331
What effort,
or what hard command of an Elder can disturb the peace of his bosom,
who has no will of his own, and not only patiently but even gratefully
accepts what is commanded him, and after the example of our Saviour,
seeks to do not his own will, but the Father’s, as He says
Himself to His Father: “Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou
wilt”?2332
By what
wrongs also, by what persecution will he be frightened, nay, what
punishment can fail to be delightful to him, who always rejoices
together with apostles in stripes, and longs to be counted worthy to
suffer shame for the name of Christ?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
