Letter 45

45. To a monk who had fallen away.

A twofold fear has darted into the recesses of my mind out of your case. For either some unfeeling manner, taking the lead, casts me into the charge of misanthropy, or again, if I am willing to feel with you and to grow soft toward the passions, it shifts me wrongly. Wherefore, as I am about to trace out this letter of mine, I have nerved my hand, which had grown numb at the thought; but my face, perplexed from dejection over you, I had not strength to change, so great a shame being poured over me on your account, that the very closing of my mouth fails at once, my lips turning aside to weeping. Alas, what shall I write, or what shall I think, caught at the crossroads?

If I come to the memory of your former vain conduct, when wealth and the low-creeping bit of glory flowed about you, I shudder; when there followed you a crowd of flatterers and the temporary enjoyment of luxury, with manifest danger and unjust gains; and when on the one hand the fears of the magistrates fanned away your thought of salvation, and on the other the tumults of the public revenues shook your hearth, and the press of evils dashed your mind away from him who was able to help you; when little by little you began to look about for the Saviour, who brought your fears for your benefit and rescued and sheltered you, while you played against him in your times of security; when you trained yourself for a change to a holy manner of life, casting off as refuse your perilous abundance, and renouncing the service of a household and the company of a wife. And, wholly lifted up, like a stranger and a wanderer, exchanging fields and cities, you ran down to Jerusalem, where I too, dwelling with you, counted you blessed for your athletic toils, when, continuing fasting through the weekly cycles, you pursued the love of wisdom toward God; at the same time fleeing, by the discipline of change, the company of men, and, having fitted to yourself quiet and the solitary way, you turned aside from the tumults of the city. Piercing your body with rough sackcloth, and girding your loins with a hard belt, you patiently crushed your bones. Hollowing out your flanks with privations as far as the parts of the back, you renounced even the use of soft swaddling-bands, and, drawing in your sides from within, like a cupping-glass, you forced them to cleave to the regions of the kidneys; and, having emptied all the fat of the flesh, you nobly dried up the channels of the lower belly, and, having contracted the belly itself with fastings, you shadowed the parts of the ribs, like the jutting of a roof, over the members of the navel; and, with the whole instrument of the body drawn in, in the hours of the night confessing to God, you smoothed your beard, drenched, with the channels of your tears. And what need is there for me to recount each thing? Remember how many mouths of the saints you kissed in greeting, how many sacred bodies you embraced, how many cherished your hands as undefiled, how many servants of God, like worshippers, ran beneath your knees, clinging to them.

And what is the end of these things? The slander of an adulterous report, flying swifter than an arrow, wounds our ears, piercing our inward parts with a sharper sting. What so artful versatility of the deceiver led you round into so deadly a tripping-up? What manifold nets of the devil, having girt you about, have proved the workings of virtue motionless? Where, for me, are the tales of your toils? They are gone. For is it right to disbelieve? And how shall we not, from the things that are evident, accept also for belief what was hitherto unseen? — if you shut up with dreadful oaths the souls that had fled for refuge to God; whereas, by careful watching, the surplus beyond the Yes and the No is assigned to the devil.

At one and the same time, then, you have become surety for a deadly perjury, and, having debased the stamp of asceticism, you have sent up the shame as far as the apostles and the Lord himself. You have shamed the boast of chastity, you have blamed the profession of self-control; we have become a tragedy for captives, our affairs are made a drama for Jews and Greeks. You have cut asunder the resolve of monks; the more exact you have led into fear and cowardice, still marvelling at the power of the devil; the indifferent you have turned over to a zeal for licentiousness; you have loosed, so far as in you lay, the boast of Christ, who says, "Take courage, I have overcome the world and the ruler of it"; you have mixed for your country a bowl of evil report. Truly you have brought to deed the saying of the Proverb: "As a deer shot through to the liver."

But what now? The tower of strength has not fallen, brother; the remedies of conversion have not been blamed; the city of refuge has not been shut off. Do not remain behind in the depth of evils. Do not give yourself over to the manslayer. The Lord knows how to set upright those who have been cast down. Flee — not far off, but run back to us. Take up again your youthful toils, dissolving by a second course of right deeds the ground-creeping and filthy pleasure. Look up to the day of the end, which has so drawn near to our life; and learn how the children of Jews and Greeks are now being driven together toward the worship of God; and do not, once and for all, deny the Saviour of the world, lest that most terrible sentence overtake you: "I do not know you, who you are."