[A young monk], who was not the laziest of young men, had gone to an old man and had candidly confessed that he was troubled by carnal appetites and the spirit of fornication. He had hoped to receive from the old man’s words consolation for his efforts, and a cure for the wounds inflicted on him. The old man attacked him, calling him a miserable and disgraceful creature, and unworthy of the name of monk. So instead of helping him, he injured him by his reproaches that left the young man in a state of hopeless despair and deadly despondency.
The young monk was plunged in deep thought and no longer sought to cure his passion, but how to gratify it. Abbot Apollos met him, and seeing by his gloominess the violence of the assault which he was within his heart, asked him the reason why he was upset. When he did not answer the Abbot’s gentle inquiry, Apollos asked him even more earnestly the reasons for his hidden grief. The young monk confessed that he was on his way to a village to take a wife, and leave the monastery and return to the world. The old man had told him he could not be a monk if he was unable to control the desires of the flesh and to cure his passion.
Then Abbot Apollos calmed the young man down. He told him that he himself was daily tried by the same pricks of desire and lust. He, therefore, ought not to give way to despair, nor be surprised at the violence of the attack — an attack he could not win by himself but only by the mercy and grace of the Lord. Abbot Apollos begged him to put off his intention just for one day and, having implored him to return to his cell, went as fast as he could to the monastery of the above mentioned old man.
When he had drawn near to him he stretched forth his hands and prayed with tears, and said “O Lord, who alone are the righteous judge and unseen Physician of secret strength and human weakness, turn the assault from the young man upon the old one, that he may learn to sympathize, even in old age, with the frailties of youth.” When he had ended his prayer with tears, he saw a demon aiming fiery darts at the old man, who came out of his cell and ran about like a lunatic or a drunken man. Unable to withstand the demon’s arrows he began to hurry off in the same direction in which the young man had gone.
When Abbot Apollos saw him like a madman driven wild by the furies, he came up to him asking “Where are you going? What has made you forget the gravity of years and disturbed you in this childish way?” The old man did not venture to answer. “Return,” said Abbot Apollos, “to your cell, and at last recognize the fact that till now you have been ignored or despised by the devil, and not counted in the number of those with whom he is daily roused to fight and struggle against their efforts and earnestness. You could not even postpone for one day, a single dart of his aimed at you after so many years spent in this profession of yours. The Lord has suffered you to be wounded that you may at least learn in your old age to sympathize with infirmities and the frailties of the young. When you received a young man troubled by an attack from the devil, you did not encourage but gave him up to dejection and destructive despair to be miserably destroyed by him. But the enemy would certainly never have attacked him with so fierce an onslaught unless, in his jealousy at the progress he was to make, he had endeavoured to get the better of that virtue which he saw lay in his heart. So learn from your own experience to sympathize with those in trouble, and never to terrify with destructive despair those who are in danger, nor harden them with severe speeches. Rather restore them with gentle and kindly consolations.
John Cassian
Conference 2, XIII
