|
MOSES: Just as all young men are not alike in fervour of spirit nor
equally instructed in learning and good morals, so too we cannot find that
all old men are equally perfect and excellent. For the true riches of old
men are not to be measured by grey hairs but by their diligence in youth
and the rewards of their past labours. "For," says one, "the things that
thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shall thou find them in thy old
age?" "For venerable old age is not that of long time, nor counted by the
number of years: but the understanding of a man is grey hairs, and a
spotless life is old age." And therefore we are not to follow in the
steps or embrace the traditions and advice of every old man whose head is
covered with grey hairs, and whose age is his sole claim to respect, but
only of those whom we find to have distinguished themselves in youth in an
approved and praiseworthy manner, and to have been trained up not on self-
assurance but on the traditions of the Elders. For there are some, and
unhappily they form the majority, who pass their old age in a lukewarmness
which they contracted in youth, and in sloth, and so obtain authority not
from the ripeness of their character but simply from the number of their
years. Against whom that reproof of the Lord is specially aimed by the
prophet: "Strangers have devoured his strength and he knew it not: yea,
grey hairs also are spread about upon him, and he is ignorant of it."
These men, I say, are not pointed out as examples to youth from the
uprightness of their lives, nor from the strictness of their profession,
which would be worthy of praise and imitation, but simply from the number
of their years; and so the subtle enemy uses their grey hairs to deceive
the younger men, by a wrongful appeal to their authority, and endeavours in
his cunning craftiness to upset and deceive by their example those who
might have been urged into the way of perfection by their advice or that of
others; and drags them down by means of their teaching and practice either
into a baneful indifference, or into deadly despair. And as I want to give
you an instance of this, I will tell you a fact which may supply us with
some wholesome teaching, without giving the name of the actor, lest we
might be guilty of something of the same kind as the man who published
abroad the sins of the brother which had been disclosed to him. When this
one, who was not the laziest of young men, had gone to an old man, whom we
know very well, for the sake of the profit and health of his soul, and had
candidly confessed that he was troubled by carnal appetites and the spirit
of fornication, fancying that he would receive from the old man's words
consolation for his efforts, and a cure for the wounds inflicted on him,
the old man attacked him with the bitterest reproaches, and called him a
miserable and disgraceful creature, and unworthy of the name of monk, while
he could be affected by a sin and lust of this character, and instead of
helping him so injured him by his reproaches that he dismissed him from his
cell in a state of hopeless despair and deadly despondency. And when he,
oppressed with such a sorrow, was plunged in deep thought, no longer how to
cure his passion, but how to gratify his lust, the Abbot Apollos, the
most skilful of the EIders, met him, and seeing by his looks and gloominess
his trouble and the violence of the assault which he was secretly revolving
in his heart, asked him the reason of this upset; and when he could not
possibly answer the old man's gentle inquiry, the latter perceived more and
more clearly that it was not without reason that he wanted to hide in
silence the cause of a gloom so deep that he could not conceal it by his
looks, and so began to ask him still more earnestly the reasons for his
hidden grief. And by this he was forced to confess that he was on his way
to a village to take a wife, and leave the monastery and return to the
world, since, as the old man had told him, he could not be a monk, if he
was unable to control the desires of the flesh and to cure his passion. And
then the old man smoothed him down with kindly consolation, and told him
that he himself was daily tried by the same pricks of desire and lust, and
that therefore he ought not to give way to despair, nor be surprised at the
violence of the attack of which he would get the better not so much by
zealous efforts, as by the mercy and grace of the Lord; and he begged him
to put off his intention just for one day, and having implored him to
return to his cell, went as fast as he could to the monastery of the above
mentioned old man--and when he had drawn near to him he stretched forth his
hands and prayed with tears, and said "O Lord, who alone art the righteous
judge and unseen Physician of secret strength and human weakness, turn the
assault from the young man upon the old one, that he may learn to
condescend to the weakness of sufferers, and to sympathize even in old age
with the frailties of youth." And when he had ended his prayer with tears,
he sees a filthy Ethiopian standing over against his cell and aiming fiery
darts at him, with which he was straightway wounded, and came out of his
cell and ran about hither and thither like a lunatic or a drunken man, and
going in and out could no longer restrain himself in it, but began to hurry
off in the same direction in which the young man had gone. And when Abbot
Apollos saw him like a madman driven wild by the furies, he knew that the
fiery dart of the devil which he had seen, had been fixed in his heart, and
had by its intolerable heat wrought in him this mental aberration and
confusion of the understanding; and so he came up to him and asked "Whither
are you hurrying, or what has made you forget the gravity of years and
disturbed you in this childish way, and made you hurry about so rapidly"?
And when he owing to his guilty conscience and confused by this disgraceful
excitement fancied that the lust of his heart was discovered, and, as the
secrets of his heart were known to the old man, did not venture to return
any answer to his inquiries, "Return," said he, "to your cell, and at last
recognize the fact that till now you have been ignored or despised by the
devil, and not counted in the number of those with whom he is daily roused
to fight and struggle against their efforts and earnestness,--you who could
not--I will not say ward off, but not even postpone for one day, a single
dart of his aimed at you after so many years spent in this profession of
yours. And with this the Lord has suffered you to be wounded that you may
at least learn in your old age to sympathize with infirmities to which you
are a stranger, and may know from your own case and experience how to
condescend to the frailties of the young, though when you received a young
man troubled by an attack from the devil, you did not encourage him with
any consolation, but gave him up in dejection and destructive despair into
the hands of the enemy, to be, as far as you were concerned, miserably
destroyed by him. But the enemy would certainly never have attacked him
with so fierce an onslaught, with which he has up till now scorned to
attack you, unless in his jealousy at the progress he was to make, he had
endeavoured to get the better of that virtue which he saw lay in his
disposition, and to destroy it with his fiery darts, as he knew without the
shadow of a doubt that he was the stronger, since he deemed t worth his
while to attack him with such vehemence. And so learn from your own
experience to sympathize with those in trouble, and never to terrify with
destructive despair those who are in danger, nor harden them with severe
speeches, but rather restore them with gentle and kindly consolations, and
as the wise Solomon says, "Spare not to deliver those who are led forth to
death, and to redeem those who are to be slain," and after the example
of our Saviour, break not the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax,
and ask of the Lord that grace, by means of which you yourself may
faithfully learn both in deed and power to sing: "the Lord hath given me a
learned tongue that I should know how to uphold by word him that is
weary:" for no one could bear the devices of the enemy, or extinguish or
repress those carnal fires which burn with a sort of natural flame, unless
God's grace assisted our weakness, or protected and supported it. And
therefore, as the reason for this salutary incident is over, by which the
Lord meant to set that young man free from dangerous desires and to teach
you something of the violence of their attack, and of the feeling of
compassion, let us together implore Him in prayer, that He may be pleased
to remove that scourge, which the Lord thought good to lay upon you for
your good (for "He maketh sorry and cureth: he striketh and his hands heal.
He humbleth and exalteth, he killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to
the grave and bringeth up"), and may extinguish with the abundant dew of
His Spirit the fiery darts of the devil, which at my desire He allowed to
wound you. And although the Lord removed this temptation at a single prayer
of the old man with the same speed with which He had suffered it to come
upon him, yet He showed by a clear proof that a man's faults when laid bare
were not merely not to be scolded, but that the grief of one in trouble
ought not to be lightly despised. And therefore never let the clumsiness or
shallowness of one old man or of a few deter you and keep you back from
that life-giving way, of which we spoke earlier, or from the tradition of
the Elders, if our crafty enemy makes a wrongful use of their grey hairs in
order to deceive younger men: but without any cloak of shame everything
should be disclosed to the Elders, and remedies for wounds be faithfully
received from them together with examples of life and conversation: from
which we shall find like help and the same sort of result, if we try to do
nothing at all on our own responsibility and judgment.
|
|