Those who have reached perfection are gentle, humble, and always maintain their composure. Pride and vanity are the biggest obstacles… Impossible without God’s grace.
‘Gather Virtue!’ This theme may sound a bit awkward. It contains the meanings of ‘accumulating virtue,’ ‘acquiring virtue,’ and ‘cultivating virtue.’ The expression ‘gather’ is inspired by the concept of a ‘wise bee.’ Virtue is called ‘virtus’ in Latin, which means ‘power’ or ‘courage’ to do good. It can be said to be ‘good habits’ as the opposite of ‘vice’ (vitio), which means ‘bad habits’. The life of asceticism is the process of eliminating vices and planting virtues.
Therefore, it involves efforts to acquire virtues while combating vices. Victory over vices brings about the acquisition of corresponding virtues. Cassianus states that vices and their corresponding virtues cannot coexist in a person simultaneously. It is up to the persons themself to decide, according to their conscience, where to focus their attention.
The desert monks struggled to acquire virtue, and they believed that it was God’s grace that enabled them to advance in virtue and eliminate vices.
Athanasius, in his Life of Antony, compares Antony to a wise bee and testifies: “At first Antony also began to live near his own village. As soon as he heard of a certain man full of zeal, he went to him like a wise bee (cf. Septuagint Psalm 6:8). Antony did not return home until he had seen him and had received some food for his way in virtue.”
As a bee collects honey from various flowers, Antony tried to collect virtue from various people. This is because one cannot find all the virtues in one person. Therefore, one must imitate each of the virtues in various people. And he must actively seek out virtue and try to imitate it, just as a bee diligently searches for honey.
Cassianus explains this in detail. “We should not look for all the virtues in one person, however excellent he may be. In fact, some are adorned with the flowers of knowledge, others with the art of discernment, some with the weight of patience, some with the virtue of humility, some with the virtue of self-denial. Still others with the grace of simplicity. One surpasses the others by generosity, another by charity, by vigilance, by silence, by labor.
For this reason, a monk who wants to collect spiritual honey, like a wise bee, should collect each virtue from those who have advanced in some virtue, and carefully gather it into his own vessel. He should not worry about the virtues that the other person lacks, but should only focus on acquiring the virtues that he has. For if we were to acquire all the virtues from one person, we would hardly find a model to imitate.
This is a reasonable and helpful teaching. We humans are not perfect, so we cannot possess all the virtues. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses. When we, like the wise bees, try to find and emulate the good in others, our spiritual life will progress even further.
The desert monks struggled to acquire virtue. Abba Isidore explains why: “Evil separates people from God and separates them from one another. Therefore, we must quickly turn away from evil and pursue virtue. Virtue leads us to God and unites us with one another.” Just as there are many vices, there are also many virtues that are their counterparts.
They tried to acquire as many virtues as possible. The following two maxims from Abba Poemen illustrate this well: ‘Can a man rely on only one act?’ The elder answered, ‘I would rather have a little of all the virtues'. “When someone prepares to build a house, he gathers together everything he needs for the construction, and he collects various kinds of materials. So too, let us have a little of all the virtues.”
The story of two brothers who lived together in harmony in the desert for many years illustrates their remarkable pursuit of virtue. They competed with each other in patience and humility. Then one day, God revealed to one brother the virtues of the other brother in a special way. The brother recognized the superiority of the other brother and, from that moment on, he called him master, not brother, and treated him as his elder. Here, we see extreme humility, not pride or jealousy, which can easily give rise to spiritual competition. If we were in this situation, we might be consumed by jealousy, anger, and pride.
The Desert Fathers regarded pride and vanity as the most significant obstacles to cultivating virtue. Pride mercilessly robs the soul of all its virtues. Cassianus says: “How dangerous and serious is the disease of pride! So much justice and virtue, so great faith and devotion, are destroyed by vanity, that they change the very nature and laws of the world, and all these virtues disappear into oblivion as if they had never existed.”
And “there is no vice that so removes all virtue, and strips and strips a man of all righteousness and holiness, as the evil of pride. Pride is like a contagious disease that spreads throughout the whole body, and not only infects one part, but also injures the whole body, and seeks to completely destroy and crush those who have already reached the height of virtue.”
That is why they were most wary of pride. One of the elders received a revelation that there were worldly people who were very virtuous. Great elders who had reached the height of perfection were afraid of thinking that they were superior to others. God often made them aware that there were laymen who were just as virtuous as they were, in order to protect them from pride. A certain monk, who is taught by an angel that he is not as holy as a lay farmer, meets him and is impressed by his words.
The first of all virtues is humility. Humility was the essence of the daily life of the desert monks. They believed that it was the grace of God that made it possible to advance in all virtues and to eliminate all vices. The teaching of the Desert Fathers is that no one can attain perfection by human effort alone without the grace of God. A person who has attained perfection is someone who is meek and humble like Jesus and who always maintains a constant sense of equanimity. Meekness, humility, and equanimity are the marks of a virtuous person.
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