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| Tabula |
Friday January 09 2026, 04H45
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The brothers said, 'An old man said, ' If you see a young man who, in his desire, ascends to heaven, take hold of his foot and sweep him hence, for in this way you will help him; what is the meaning of the words, ' Who in his desire ascends to heaven?'' The old man said, This resembles that which Isaiah spake, ' If the mind seeks to ascend to the Cross before the feelings cease from feebleness, the wrath of God will come upon him because he has begun to do something which is beyond his capacity, without having first of all cured his feelings.' Now certain of the beginners in the ascetic life are so silly and bold as to dare to undertake things which are far above their capacity and their strength; they do not wish to learn, and they will not be persuaded by the commands of their Fathers, but, without having lived the proper period of time in the coenobium, they dare to enter the cell, even as it is written concerning one of the brothers in the Book of Paradise, for immediately he had received the garb of the monk, he went and shut himself up as a solitary recluse, saying, ' I am a monk of the desert'; and the Fathers went and brought him out into the monastery [again]. There are others, too, who seek to shut themselves up for a week at a time, and it in no wise helps them; and there are others, the children of this world, who at the beginning of their careers imitate the exalted rule of life of the Fathers, and who imagine that they can imitate the rule of the mind, that is to say, of the spirit, when as yet they have not fulfilled the rule of the body. Therefore their lives and works are not open to the Fathers, and they will not receive correction, but they live according to their own desire, and they are delivered over into the hands of the devils who make a mock of them.'
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