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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." 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." 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 m princes." 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." 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." 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." 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."
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