|
BUT this is merikh', i.e., no thorough and altogether complete
perfection, but only a partial one. Perfection then is very rare and
granted by God's gift to but a very few. For he is truly and not partially
perfect who with equal imperturbability can put up with the squalor of the
wilderness in the desert, as well as the infirmities of the brethren in the
coenobium. And so it is hard to find one who is perfect in both lives,
because the anchorite cannot thoroughly acquire akthmosu'nh, i.e., a
disregard for and stripping oneself of material things, nor the coenobite
purity in contemplation, although we know that Abbot Moses and Paphnutius
and the two Macarii were masters of both in perfection. And so they were
perfect in either life, and while they withdrew further than all the
dwellers in the desert and delighted themselves unceasingly in the
retirement of the wilderness, and as far as in them lay never sought
intercourse with other men, yet they put up with the presence and the
infirmities of those who came to them so that when a large number of the
brethren came to them for the sake of seeing them and profiting by it, they
endured this almost continuous trouble of receiving them with imperturbable
patience, and men fancied that all the days of their life they had neither
learnt nor practised anything but how to show common civility to those who
came, so that it was a puzzle to all to say in which-life their zeal was
mainly shown, i.e., whether their greatness adapted itself more remarkably
to the purity of the hermitage or to the common life.
|
|