Trial and Salvation

As today is the last of the Desert Father quotations I’m going to be doing for a while, I’m going to end with my favourite, the Desert Mother Syncletica:

Metal Refining

[Syncletica] also said, “When the devil does not use the goad of poverty to tempt us, he uses wealth for the same purpose. When he cannot win by scorn and mockery, he tries praise and flattery. If he cannot win by giving health, he tries illness. If he cannot win by comfort, he tries to ruin the soul by vexations that lead us to act against our monastic vows. He inflicts severe illness on people whom he wants to tempt and so makes them weak, and thereby shakes the love they feel towards God…

Iron is cleaned of rust by fire. If you are righteous and suffer, you grow to a higher sanctity. Gold is tested by fire.

When a messenger from Satan is given to you to be a thorn in your flesh, lift up your heart, for you have received a gift like that of St. Paul.

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

Perfect Obedience

Monk Writing

They said that Silvanus had a disciple in Scetis called Mark, who possessed the virtue of obedience in large measure. He was a copyist of old manuscripts: and the hermit loved them for his obedience. He had seven other disciples, and they were sad that he loved Mark more than them. 

When the nearby hermits heard that he loved Mark above the others, they took it badly. One day when they visited him, Silvanus took them with him out of his cell, and began to knock on the door of each of his disciples, saying, “Brother, come out, I have work for you.” Not one of them appeared immediately. When he came to Mark’s cell, he knocked, saying, “Mark,” and as soon as Mark heard the voice of the hermit he came out and Silvanus sent him on some errand.

So he said to the other hermits, “Where are the other brothers?” He went into Mark’s cell, and found a book which he had just begun to copy, and he was making the letter O, but when he had heard the hermit’s voice, he had not finished the line of the O. The visitors said, “You are right, abba, and we also love the one whom you love, for God loves him too.”

– De vitis Patrum, Sive Verba Seniorum, Liber V

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