On Humility and Obedience, and the Treading Down of Pride

We speak in the Church one way to worldly people, another way we ought to speak to you. To them we sometimes speak things which have sound but do not have power, for like the weak they delight in the sound of words, not in the power of God. But you, in the name of Christ, do not delight in this; rather you wish to hear the word of salvation, in which you have been called; and you have put on these mourning garments in the world, awaiting better things with God. You already know and understand. For a long time now you have known whom you are struggling against; your adversary is not outside, but is within, in the very bowels: and in our very members we have one who wrestles against us. For if the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do the things we wish; you see that this adversary is within.

But this adversary is not conquered except by humility and charity: for our Lord Jesus Christ himself would not have conquered the devil, had he not been humbled; yet he was humbled not by necessity, but by charity. For if he had not loved, he would not have been made humble. For love of us he was made humble. If, then, he who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them, the Lord of all the angels, who created all things, was made humble for us; why do we, for our own sake, refuse humility? The way of salvation, then, is not open to us except by being humbled. When you have begun humility, seek it for God's sake, and endure it for the sake of the congregation itself. And in that very congregation, although you are equals, each one ought to esteem the other as superior to himself, even though he is not superior. No one does this except one who has humility.

No other reward is necessary for the servants of God than humility: for humility, if it is in a man, makes him obedient. But whoever is obedient, or who follows after obedience, obeys not men, but God. For thus the Lord says: He who hears you hears me: he who hears me, hears him who sent me. The abbot is a father, and the brothers who follow him are fathers among you. And whoever else among you, who perhaps has a good life, better continence, better vigils, better guard of the body, he too, for the sake of imitation, is a father. Do this among yourselves, then: that first you keep humility, not that you may appear humble to men, but to God. That is true humility which is shown to God, not to men. For humility which is shown to men is a pretense, not humility, which ought to be altogether foreign to the servants of God. I do not indeed think that such are among you; but lest such a disease creep in, I give warning.

For we are men, and we speak to men. Therefore you ought first to show humility to your brothers for the sake of imitation; so that humility itself may be founded within, in the heart, according to God. For when humility has been founded in your heart for God's sake, then God grants to him, that is, to your brother, that he may understand and imitate your humility. But if humility has not been founded in your heart, God shows your brother that your humility is feigned. This, then, is the first way of salvation: to hold humility simply for God's sake, not for man's; not to please men thereby, but to please God. Let obedience follow humility, and obey one another, just as the members obey each other. Do the members obey by deliberation, and not by natural affection? If the foot stumbles, the hand comes to its aid, lest the whole body be hurt, lest it fall. As the Apostle says: If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.

Whence then, if not from charity? If, then, you love one another, there will be no disturbance. Let no one suffer scandals; not on account of food, not on account of drink, not on account of clothing, not on account of vigils, not on account of works, not on account of the kitchen, not on account of service. Now when you love one another, if someone does something he ought not; that charity does not permit you to take offense. Have, then, brothers, humility and obedience, which peace follows, that you may be children of peace: for charity, as the Apostle says, is the bond of perfection. When someone has humility, he imitates Christ, who was made humble for us. When someone has obedience, he imitates Christ, who was made obedient even unto death. When someone has charity, he imitates Christ: for God is charity. But first labor to conquer your vices within.

Let peace first be made between the soul and the heart with the precept of God; so that against the habit and frailty of the body there may be two victors, the precept of God, and your own consent. For the case is like this: a physician, a sick man, and the sickness. If that sick man gives himself over with the sickness, the physician is defeated; two are made against one, and the physician is overcome. If, then, the sick man gives himself over with the physician, the sickness is defeated. Christ is the physician; we are the sick; the disease of sickness is the habit of sin. Now whoever has in part renounced the world, though he lives in the world, let him take heed to which he ought to cling; whether to the sickness or to the physician. If he does not cling to the physician, the physician labors in vain. Therefore the Gospel cries out to us in the world and says: Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the way.

It does not teach us to be in agreement with our adversary the devil; but it teaches us to be in agreement with the adversary, the divine precept, which is opposed to our evils, and opposed to our habit, opposed to our iniquities. If we agree, we are made concordant with the precept of God, and we receive, as it were, the yoke of God; on account of which the Lord says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke, for it is light, and my burden is light. Behold, what is so light? Consider, then, how those who have something in this world fear lest it be snatched away. How they fear lest they lose what they have acquired? By what means are they tormented, as though bearing anxiety under a most heavy weight? But you labor for nothing else than to do what the abbot commands.

Now you are under the yoke: you do not think about where you live; for you ought not to think about it. There is one who rules you: there is one who bears care for you. The thought of food and clothing ought not to concern you at all. What the abbot gives, consider it as though God had given it: for this is true humility. But perhaps one has more, and another less; and hold this as done by God. But one sits at a different table; if the abbot so orders, if he has so judged best, hold it as though God had commanded it. I do not wish you to ask about this, so as to say: tomorrow I shall sit there. I do not wish you to make it a habit to claim this necessity for yourself. If perhaps there is nothing to be given, or it does not seem fitting to be given; consider it thus, either that there is nothing to give, or that it seemed inexpedient to give it.

These things, brothers, if you keep, you will certainly have eternal life. Do not allow yourselves to be moved by evil words. If perchance some weak one falls, so as to speak perverse things; restrain him at once: say at once, Do not do it, do not, brother, you sin. For you ought, since you are one, and have one abbot, to be abbots to one another. Can one man, the abbot, hear everyone or see everyone simply because he has two eyes and two ears? Or does he not have need to go out somewhere and provide for something? Be abbots to one another; and just as you have feared the abbot when present, fear him also when absent, because God is present. Fear this above all, dread this, because God is always present. And if one bears care for so many: how much more ought all of you to bear it; lest he find cause for anger, cause for grief, cause for offense, cause for groaning, cause to think that the labor of so much time will perish?

For these things will then be able to profit us, if we have humility, obedience, and charity. There is no other way to God, except humility, obedience, and charity. He himself is the way, the truth, and the life. For to be afflicted, to fast two days, three days, four days, to keep whole weeks often, from this the brothers grow proud, thinking that what they themselves do, another cannot do: they think no one else can do what they do; or one walks barefoot, and thinks that he alone can do this; or perhaps he does not drink even watered wine; this is temporal exercise, because he cannot always do it. But let him rather think of humility, think of piety, charity, obedience. For, in order to break the strength of the body, in order to subdue blood and flesh, he ought to take up these things like a good athlete; but let him not boast of it, lest he lose what he has done.

For that Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray, were the works which he counted small? They were immense; to fast twice in the week; to give tithes of all his goods to the poor; to commit no fraud and no adultery are great things: but because he boasted of it in pride, all that he did was pride. Therefore David says: Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There have all who work iniquity fallen. Where have they fallen? In the fall of pride. For thence the devil fell, he fell through pride. Let pride, then, be altogether not admitted to the servants of God. Whoever, then, now lives otherwise, and has ordered his life better, let him not be like that Pharisee. But the publican, humbled, does not dare even to lift his eyes to heaven, and by the sentence of the Lord returns to his house praised and justified more than that Pharisee.

For we have experience, both in the holy Scriptures themselves, and in our brothers, that whoever has held to the way of humility, prospers, and does not perish.