Vigils Reading

HUMILITY AND PATIENCE

From “The Institutes” of John Cassian

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Whoever seeks to be received into the discipline of the cenobium is never

admitted until, by lying outside for ten days or more, he has given an indication

of his perseverance and desire, as well as of his humility and patience.

When a person has been admitted, has been tested in the perseverance

about which we have spoken, and has put aside his own garments and been

clothed in the monastic habit, he is not permitted to join the community of the

brothers immediately but is assigned to an elder who dwells not very far from

the entrance of the monastery and is responsible for being hospitable to trav-

ellers and strangers. And when he has served for a full year there and has

without any complaining waited upon travellers, having in this way been

exposed to his first training in humility and patience, and he is about to be

admitted from this to the community of the brothers, he is given over to another

elder who is responsible for ten younger men, who have been entrusted to him

by the Abba…

The chief concern and instruction of this man, whereby the young man

who was brought to him may be able to ascend even to the loftiest heights of

perfection, will be, first of all, to teach him to conquer his desires. In order to

exercise him assiduously and diligently in this respect, he will purposely see to it

that he always demands of him things that he would consider repulsive. For,

taught by numerous experiences, they declare that a monk, and especially the

younger men, cannot restrain their yearning for pleasure unless they have first

learned to mortify their desires through obedience. And so they assert that

someone who has not first learned to overcome his desires can never extinguish

anger or sadness or the spirit of fornication, nor can he maintain true humility

of heart or unbroken unity with his brothers or a solid and enduring peace, nor

can he even stay in the cenobium for any length of time.

With these institutes, then, as with the rudiments of the alphabet, they

initiate those whom they strive to direct toward perfection. In this way they

discern clearly whether they are grounded in a humility that is deceptive and

imaginary or in one that is real. In order to be able to arrive easily at this, they

are then taught never, through a hurtful shame, to hide any of the wanton

thoughts in their hearts but to reveal them to their elder as soon as they surface,

nor to judge them in accordance with their own discretion but to credit them

with badness or goodness as the elder’s examination discloses and makes clear.

Thus the clever foe is never able to get the better of a young man when he

sees that he is protected not by his own but by his elder’s discretion. Indeed, the

devil in all his slyness will not be able to deceive or cast down a young man

unless he induces him, either by haughtiness or by embarrassment, to cover up

his thoughts. For they declare that it is an invariable and clear sign that a

thought is from the devil if we are ashamed to disclose it to an elder.