Little by little

A brother fell into temptation, and in his struggle he stopped keeping the monastic rules. When he later tried to start keeping the basics of the rule, he was hampered by his suffering; and he said to himself, “When shall I be as I once was?” In this gloomy state of mind he could not make himself begin the monastic office. So he went to a hermit and told him what had been happening. When the hermit heard of his sufferings, he told him this story by way of example:

A man had a plot of land. Through his carelessness brambles sprang up and it became a wilderness of thistles and thorns. Then he decided to cultivate it. So he said to his son, “Go and clear that ground.”

So the son went to clear it, and saw that the thistles and thorns had multiplied  So his resolve weakened, and he said, “What a lot of time I should need to clear and weed all this.” So he lay down and went to sleep. He did this day after day.

When his father came to see what he had done he found him doing nothing. He said to him, “Why have you done nothing till now?”

The boy said to his father, “I was coming to work, father, when I saw this wilderness of thorn and thistle, and I was too intimidated to start, and so I lay on the ground and went to sleep.”

Then his father said to him, “Son if you had cleared each day the area on which you lay down, your work would have advanced slowly and you would not have lost heart.” So the boy followed his father’s advice and in a short time the plot was cultivated.

The hermit added, “So, brother, do a little work and do not be discouraged, and God will give you grace and bring you back to your proper way of life.” The brother went away and patiently did what the hermit had told him. So he found peace of mind, and made progress with the help of the Lord Christ.

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V