|
JOSEPH: It is good indeed and right and altogether in accordance with
our profession, for us effectually to perform what we decided to do in the
case of any promise. Wherefore a monk ought not to make any promise
hastily, lest he may be forced to do what he incautiously promised, or if
he is kept back by consideration of a sounder view, appear as a breaker of
his promise. But because at the present moment our purpose is to treat not
so much of a state of health as of the cure of sickness we must with
salutary counsel consider not what you ought to have done in the first
instance, but how you can escape from the rocks of this perilous shipwreck.
When then no chains impede us and no conditions restrict us, in the case of
a comparison of good things, if a choice is proposed, that which is most
advantageous should be preferred: but when some detriment and loss stands
in the way, in a comparison of things to our hurt, that should be sought
which exposes us to the smallest loss. Further, as your assertion shows,
when your heedless promise has brought you to this state that in either
case some serious loss and inconvenience must result to you, the will in
choosing should incline to that side which involves a loss that is more
tolerable, or can be more easily made up for by the remedy of making
amends. If then you think that you will get more good for your spirit by
staying here than what accrued to you from your life in that monastery, and
that the terms of your promise cannot be fulfilled without the loss of
great good, it is better for you to undergo the loss from a falsehood and
an unfulfilled promise (as it is done once for all, and need not any longer
be repeated or be the cause of other sins) than for you to incur that loss,
through which you say that your state of life would become colder, and
which would affect you with a daily and unceasing injury. For a careless
promise is changed in such a way that it may be pardoned or indeed praised,
if it is turned into a better path, nor need we take it as a failure in
consistency, but as a correction of rashness, whenever a promise that was
faulty is corrected. And all this may be proved by most certain witness
from Scripture, that for many the fulfilment of their promise has led to
death, and on the other hand that for many it has been good and profitable
to have refused it.
|
|