Category: Quotation

A brother asked Pambo, “Why does the enemy prevent me doing good to my neighbour?”

He said, “Do not talk like that, or you will make God a liar. Say, ‘It is I myself do not want to be kind to others.’ For God came down to us and said, ‘I have given you the power of treading upon scorpions and snakes’ (Luke 10:19), and so you are beyond the power of the enemy. Why then do you not tread down these evil spirits?”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

The same monk said, “Experience is good. By experience men are tested.” He also said, “If a man preaches but does not practise what he preaches, he is like a well of water where everyone can quench their thirst and wash off their dirt, but which cannot clean away the filth and dung around it”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

A brother asked a hermit, “What can I do? My mind is always thinking about fornication; and does not let me rest even for an hour, and my heart is suffering.”

So the hermit said to him, “When the demons sow thoughts in your heart, and you feel this, don’t listen to your heart, for that is the demons’ suggestion. Though the demons are careful to send thoughts to you, they do not force you to accept them. It is up to you to receive or reject them. Do you know what the Midianites did? They decked their daughters and set them where the Israelites could see them: but they did not force them to intermingle; it was as each one wished. Others were wrathful and uttered threats, and avenged the act of whoredom with the death of those who had dared do it. This is what should be done Israelites the lust that rises in us.”

But the brother replied “What am I to do, if I am weak, and this passion masters me?”

The hermit said, “This is the way to be strong: when temptations start to speak in your do not answer them but get up, pray, do penance, and say ‘Son of God, have mercy upon me'”

But the brother said “Look here, abba, I meditate on such words, but they do not help me to be penitent, for I do not know the meaning of the words on which I am meditating.”

The hermit said, “Well, go on meditating. I have heard that Poemen and other monks said that a snake-charmer does not know the meaning of his words: but the snake hears them, and knows their meaning, and obeys the charmer and lies down. So though we do not know the meaning of the words, the demons hear, and are afraid and flee”.

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

He also said “It is better to eat meat and drink wine than to eat the flesh of the brothers by disparaging them.”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

“Do not let your mouth speak an evil word: the vine does not bear thorns”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

Poemen said, “If a man sins and denies it, saying, ‘I have not sinned,’ do not correct him, or you will destroy any intention he might have of changing. If you say, ‘Do not be cast down, my brother, but be careful about that in future,’ you will move his heart to repent”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

[Syncletica] also said, “The same thing cannot at once be seed and a full-grown bush. So men with a worldly reputation cannot bear heavenly fruit.”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V