Cassian and Germanus Consult Abba Abraham of Diolkos
Although it made us uneasy to admit it, we told Abba Abraham about something that had been assailing our thoughts: we had been agitated for days by an urge to return to our homeland and see our families again. Ultimately these desires had arisen because we were reflecting on how deeply religious and dedicated our families are, so much so that we figured they would never be an obstacle to our own plans. We kept thinking about how much more successful we’d be with their help, how deeply engaged we’d be. We wouldn’t have to take care of any practicalities at all—we wouldn’t even have to think about our next meal—if our families were happily supplying us with everything we possibly needed.
We indulged our souls even further with vapid hopes of happiness. We were sure that we would convert many people and reap enormous benefits; they would be guided to the path of salvation by our example and by our words.46 On top of that, the sheer loveliness of the places where our ancestral estates are located appeared like a work of art before our eyes: how beautifully and charmingly the terrain unfurled into sites of solitude! The retreats in the woodlands there could be attractive to monks—and could also offer an enormous cache of food.
We confided all of this to Abraham frankly, and true to our feelings. Then we wept and said we couldn’t handle the intensity of this inner conflict unless, with God’s support, he cured us with his medicine. He was quiet for a long time, then at last he groaned loudly and said:
“The weakness of your thoughts has betrayed the fact that you still haven’t given up your worldly desires or killed off your old tendencies! And these distracting desires testify to the inertia of your heart. You’re keeping this pilgrimage and this absence from your families going only in a physical sense—when you should be upholding it in your mind. If you had actually grasped the logic of renunciation and the fundamental reason for our commitment to solitude, all these ideas would have already been put to rest and dug out from the depths of your hearts. For that reason, I think you’re afflicted by the laziness that Proverbs describes like this: ‘Every lazy person has desires’ and ‘Desires kill the lazy.’
“It’s not like I lack access to the material conveniences you mentioned. I could take advantage of them, too, if I believed that they aligned with my plan, or if I determined that the benefit I derived from those sensuous gratifications would match what I get from this desolation and physical anguish. I’m not bereft of the consolation of my family or cut off from people who would be happy to support me financially, either. But I’m confronted with the Savior’s saying about distancing ourselves from anything that pampers us: ‘If any man come to me, and abandon (or hate) not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, he cannot be my disciple.’
“But even if we were to be totally deprived of any assistance from our families, the backing of the powerful people of this world would still be at our disposal. They would be grateful for the chance to supply us with what we need, giving liberally without a second thought. We wouldn’t have to bother with stocking up on food if we were supported by their generosity—if that prophetic curse didn’t forcefully deter us: ‘Cursed is the person who has his hope in a human.’ And also: ‘Put not your trust in princes.’47
“Or take another case: if we had set up our dwellings right along the Nile, we could have gotten water right outside our doors, rather than having to haul it back on our necks for four miles—except that we were moved by the words of the blessed apostle to endure this work over and over again without getting tired: ‘Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor.’
“I’m not unaware that there are lovely retreats in our environs, too, where the fruit is bountiful and the gardens generous, and the abundance of food would meet our needs with barely any effort on our part—except we take seriously that compelling assertion made to the rich man in the Gospel: ‘Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things.’
“But when we’ve rejected all that, when we’ve devalued it along with the rest of the world’s attractions, when we’re seduced only by the desert, when we prefer the intimidating wilderness of this isolation of ours to all the world’s charms, and when we think that no fertile soil, however rich it is, can rival this bitter sandscape: then we are in pursuit of everlasting gains for the spirit, rather than fleeting benefits to the body.
“It’s really not enough for monks to perform the act of renunciation just once, to discard what they’ve got when they first convert to monasticism. They have to keep renouncing it every day, until the end of this life. What the prophet said applies to us: ‘I have not desired the day of man, thou knowest.’ And this is what the Lord is saying in the Gospel: ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.’
“And so a monk who is always keeping an eye on his inner clarity should seek out locations that won’t distract him with thoughts about farming them for high yields, and which won’t drive him from the designated fixed spot of his cell and force him do some other work out in the open. Once outside, his thoughts will basically spread out everywhere. Every line of thinking, even his crystal-clear view of his short-term goal, will be scattered in all directions.
“Nobody, no matter how careful and alert they are, can avoid these risks or even perceive them unless they keep their body and mind walled in at all times. They should work like an expert fisherman with apostolic know-how, focusing on the shoals of thoughts swimming in the quiet deep of their heart, casting their gaze on their next meal, lying in wait without moving a muscle, peering into the depths like they’re perched on an overhanging ledge. And using their shrewd discernment they should differentiate which thoughts to hook and pull in, and which to disregard and release like bad and poisonous fish. Anyone who keeps watch like this nonstop will successfully fulfill what the prophet Habakkuk was so obviously describing: ‘I will stand at my watch post and station myself on a rock. And I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what I should answer to my reproof.’
“The experiences of the monks who dwelled in the desert of Calamus or Porphyry demonstrate very clearly how much work this is, and how hard it is, too.48 These monks are much more isolated from cities and populations than the desert of Scetis is: after traveling the vast expanses of uninhabited desert for seven or eight days you would only just reach their remote dwellings. But they’re not really restricted to their cells because they do farmwork there. So when they visit the crude sites where I live, or the ones at Scetis, they’re agitated by so many thoughts and by such mental distress that—like novices or monks who haven’t trained in isolation, not even a little bit—they can’t bear to stay in their cell and keep still, so they give up in no time at all. They’re rattled like inexperienced beginners.
“That’s because they haven’t learned how to quell the movements of their inner person, or how to confront their stormy thoughts with nonstop concern and steadfast attentiveness. While they’re sweating away at work outside under the great big sky, all day every day, it’s not just their bodies that are bustling around. Their minds are, too, and with every step they take they pour their thoughts out into the open. So they don’t notice the mind’s aimless cravings, and they can’t keep its slippery meanderings in check. Because they can’t bear spiritual anguish, they find endless silence to be unbearable. And after so much tough agrarian work, they succumb to inactivity, then the lengthiness of their down time wears them out!
“It’s no wonder that a monk staying in his cell, stuffed into confinement with his thoughts, would be choked by all sorts of anxieties—and that when the monk leaves his dwelling, these thoughts would immediately break out from their prison, galloping all over the place like unbridled horses. When they wander out of their ‘stables,’ the monk immediately feels some relief. But that moment is fleeting and sad, because when the whole herd of thoughts comes running back to his cell along with his body, as if they’re heading home, his old habitual lack of restraint riles them up again even more severely.
“So when monks can’t or won’t resist the prodding of their own wills, and they’re tormented in their cell by a restless dissatisfaction that catches them off guard and attacks them really violently: if their reaction is to abandon the principle of restrictiveness and give themselves free rein to go out, this supposed ‘cure’ will only intensify the corrosive disease that afflicts them. It’s like how some people believe that they can chill the heat of internal fevers by drinking ice-cold water, when of course this will obviously fuel the fire rather than put it out, since that momentary alleviation is followed by pain that is much more severe.
“For that reason a monk’s complete attention should always be fixed on one thing, and all his rising and revolving thoughts should be drawn back quickly to it alone—to the memory of God.
“It’s like when someone wants to construct a domed vault: they encircle the axis over and over with extreme precision, and adhering to this exact measurement enables them to produce a perfectly round structure.49 People who try to accomplish this without taking that center into account, no matter how confident they are in their skill or talent, will find that it’s truly impossible to maintain a perfect circle without any mistakes by relying on sight alone to catch any deviations from perfect roundness. They can enclose such a colossal towering structure only with recourse to a single point. They have to keep referring back to that true focus while making calculated adjustments to the inner and outer circumferences of the dome as they go.50
“Our mind also works that way. In every moment of our construction and demolition projects, it should revolve exclusively around the love of God as its fixed unchanging center. Using this reliable compass of love (as I might describe it), it should accommodate or curtail its thoughts, depending on the property of each one. Otherwise the mind will lack the real skills to construct that spiritual building of which Paul is the architect, and it won’t attain the beauty of the house that the blessed David wanted to offer in his heart to the Lord: ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honor dwelleth.’ Instead it will inadvertently produce an ugly house in its heart that isn’t fit for the Holy Spirit and is liable to give way at any time. It won’t be a hospitable place for the Blessed Guest! Instead of celebrating, the mind will collapse in sadness along with its shoddy construction.”
Germanus said: “Your blessedness, you have perceptively seen right through our misguided fantasies, which had been fueling our desire for our birthplace with the empty assurance that things would be spiritually convenient there. But this one major issue still stands out: in our current circumstances, our fellow monks keep paying us visits, and there’s no way that we can stick to the seclusion and enduring silence we long for. When our various brothers show up, we have to cut our daily routine of self-restraint short, even though for the sake of physical discipline we want to keep it up forever without any breaks. We’re certain this wouldn’t happen at home. Where we’re from, you would never—or at least only very rarely—come across another monk!”
Abraham said: “Never being visited by other people is an unreasonably strict policy, and a thoughtless one, too. Worse, it’s a sign of total lukewarmness. A person who walks really sluggishly down the road he’s taken and reverts into the kind of person he was before he left: it’s fair to say that not a single holy person—or even single regular person—would join up with him. But if you burn with a true and perfect love for our Lord, and follow God (who is love itself) with your spirit on full boil, and flee to some remote place? Then other people will inevitably visit! Because the more that the heat of divine love brings you closer to God, the more an increasingly large number of holy monks will flock to you. According to what the Lord said, a city set on a hill can’t be hidden. ‘For I will honor those who love me,’ he said, ‘and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt.’
“In any case, you should recognize the devil’s savvy cunning for what it is. It’s a hidden pitfall that wretched and reckless people fall into: while he’s promising them better things, he’s stealing the supplies they worked hard to get. More specifically, he’s making the case that they should seek out more distant and desolate wildernesses, and he’s painting a picture of those places in their hearts as if they’re marvelously idyllic. He even fabricates locations that they’ve never heard of, which don’t actually exist, as places that seem familiar and ready and waiting for us to take over and move in without a hitch. He also falsely promises that the inhabitants of these hypothetical places can be easily persuaded and led to the path of salvation.
“So as he dangles the prospect of more fruitful benefits to the soul off over there, he’s using sleight of hand to snatch the gains they’ve already got. And once they’re severed from the companionship of their elders by this empty hope, and deprived of everything that they’d misguidedly imagined for themselves, they will feel like they’ve risen from a deep sleep only to find no sign, once they’re awake, of anything they’d dreamed about.
“Eventually, once a monk has become entangled in the labyrinthine traps and overwhelming forces of this life, the devil doesn’t even give him a moment to catch his breath and think fondly about what he’d been promised. And he doesn’t ever let him go back to those precious spiritual visits from his brothers that he’d avoided in the past—or even to the discipline and ordinary quiet of a hermit’s life. Instead the monk remains tied up, day after day, in the intrusions of laypeople.
“Sure, sometimes your fellow monks will interrupt you by showing up here, but although it might seem like an annoyance you should avoid, such a relaxing and humanizing break is something to be deeply thankful for.
“Bear with me for a minute and think about how beneficial and healthful this is for our body as well as our spirit. If our intense concentration isn’t alleviated by some kind of pleasant change of pace, the mind will slip either into spiritual lukewarmness or at least into some life-threatening physical illness. I would say that this often happens to new monks or weak monks and even to very experienced and perfect monks. For this reason, thoughtful and expert monks should do more than just tolerate the interruptions of their brothers’ frequent visits. They should welcome them with gratitude, for two reasons.
“First: such visits keep up our cravings for solitary retreats. (It might seem like our visitors are holding us back, but actually they enable us to keep going without getting tired. A person who isn’t slowed down by any impediments along the way can’t make it to the end with the same agility he started with.)
“Second: they accommodate our measly body’s need to be restored with human company. A really nice break for our body is much more advantageous than what we could have gained by wearing ourselves out in withholding it completely. Speaking of which, I’ll briefly mention an analogous case from an old story everyone knows.
“It is said that the most blessed monk John was once gently petting a partridge, when suddenly he spotted a philosopher of one persuasion or another coming toward him in full hunting gear. The philosopher was amazed that a man who was so well known and highly regarded was stooping to such a childish and low-class form of amusement.51 He said, ‘Aren’t you the John who is so eminent and famous that even I was lured by an overwhelming desire to get to know you? Why are you busying yourself with such worthless amusements?’
“The blessed John replied, ‘What are you holding in your hand?’
‘A bow,’ the philosopher said.
‘Okay, and why don’t you walk around everywhere with it drawn all the time?’
‘That’s not how it works,’ the philosopher said. ‘If the bow were always bent, the stiff strength it has when it’s relaxed would get too elastic and give out. And when it came time to aim a flurry of arrows at a wild animal, the loss of stiffness caused by excessive and constant tension would make it impossible to shoot for high impact.’
‘Well then, kiddo,’ said the blessed John, ‘don’t take issue with my mind’s relaxation, as small and brief as it is. It takes some sort of release every now and then to lighten and loosen the tautness of the mind’s attention. When duty calls, the spirit won’t be able to step up if relentless force has made its strength go slack.’ ”
And that was how the blessed Abraham addressed the cause and the cure of our delusion. In a way, he opened our eyes to the traps that the diabolic culprit had set for our thoughts. He fired us up with a desire to truly kill all that off. And we believe that many others, once they’ve processed all of this, will be ignited by it, too, even though the writing isn’t polished. The embers of our eloquence convey the blazing insights of the peerless elders with only a faint heat, but we still think that they’ll warm the chill felt by many people—who may want to use the stray cinders of our words to stoke hidden insights to life.
As for you, oh holy brothers: the Lord came to send this fire on the earth, and he longs for it to burn boundlessly. I’m not so spiritually conceited as to presume that in feeding that fire I’ll add any heat to your own ragingly hot resolve. No. I do it so that you’ll influence the next generation more powerfully if you teach not by the dead sound of words but by your own living example, backed up by the advice of the best and most ancient elders.
Until now I’ve been tossed all around in a treacherous storm. Now it’s up to the spiritual breeze of your prayers to sweep me to the safe harbor of silence.