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Chapter 17Imit.1.17

De monastica vita.

The Call to Self-Breaking and Pilgrimage

To live in peace within community one must break the self, persevere faithfully, embrace exile for Christ, and become a fool for His sake.

You need to learn to break yourself in many things, if you want to hold on to peace and harmony with others.1 It is no small thing to live in a monastery or in community, to conduct yourself there without complaint, and to persevere faithfully all the way to death. Blessed is the one who lived well there and came to a happy end. If you want to stand firm and make progress, consider yourself an exile and a stranger on the earth.✦✦2 You must become a fool for Christ's sake if you want to lead a religious life.✦3

True Devotion Beyond Outward Forms

External religious signs avail little without inner transformation; only those who seek God alone and embrace the lowest place find lasting peace.

Habit and tonsure accomplish little; what makes a person truly devout is a change of character and the complete putting to death of the passions. Whoever seeks anything other than God alone and the salvation of their own soul will find nothing but trouble and sorrow. No one can remain at peace for long who does not strive to be the least of all and subject to everyone.

Service, Suffering, and the Furnace of Testing

The monastic vocation is one of humble service and labor, not rule or idleness, and only those who wholly humble themselves before God can endure its refining trials.

You have come to serve, not to rule; to suffer and to labor, not to be idle or to gossip. Here, then, people are tested like gold in a furnace. Here no one can stand firm unless they are willing to humble themselves before God with their whole heart.

Read the original Latin

Oportet ut discas te ipsum in multis frangere, si vis pacem et concordiam cum aliis tenere. Non est parvum in monasteriis, vel in congregatione habitare, et in illis sine querela conversari, et usque ad mortem fidelis perseverare. Beatus qui ibidem bene vixit, et feliciter consummavit. Si vis debite stare et proficere, teneas te tanquam exulem et peregrinum super terram. Oportet te stultum fieri propter Christum, si vis religiosam ducere vitam.

Habitus et tonsura modicum faciunt, sed mutatio morum et integra mortificatio passionum verum faciunt religiosum. Qui aliud quærit, quam pure Deum, et animæ suæ salutem, non inveniet nisi tribulationem et dolorem. Non potest etiam diu stare pacificus, qui non nititur esse minimus, et omnibus subjectus. Ad serviendum venisti, non ad regendum, ad paciendum et laborandum scias te vocatum, non ad otiandum, vel fabulandum. Hic ergo probantur homines sicut aurum in fornace. Hic nemo potest stare nisi ex toto corde si voluerit propter Deum humiliare.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Heb.11.13 — By faith these all died, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar and having greeted them, and having confessed that they are strangers and exiles on the earth.
  2. ↩Gen.23.4 — I am a foreigner and settler among you. Grant me a burial site among you, so that I may bury my dead out of my sight.
  3. ↩1Cor.4.10 — We are fools for Christ, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we are without honor.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩frangere rendered 'to break' in the sense of self-humbling, not literal destruction.
  2. 2 ↩exulem et peregrinum super terram echoes the patriarchal self-description in Hebrews 11:13 and Genesis 23:4; candidate status pending Moses resolution.
  3. 3 ↩stultum fieri propter Christum echoes 1 Corinthians 4:10 ('We are fools for Christ's sake') and the broader Pauline theme of the cross as foolishness; candidate status pending Moses resolution.