Chapter XXXV.
A rebuke of the same old man, when he had come to my
cell in the middle of the night.
The
same Theodore came
unexpectedly to my cell in the dead of night, with paternal
inquisitiveness seeking what I—an unformed anchorite as I
was—might be doing by myself; and when he had found me there
already, as I had finished my vesper office, beginning to refresh my
wearied body, and lying down on a mat, he sighed from the bottom of his
heart, and calling me by name, said, “How many, O John, are at
this hour communing with God, and embracing Him, and detaining Him with
them, while you are deprived of so great light, enfeebled as you are
with lazy sleep!”
And since the virtues of the fathers and the grace given
to them have tempted us to turn aside to a story like this, I think it
well to record in this volume a noteworthy deed of charity, which we
experienced from the kindness of that most excellent man Archebius,
that the purity of continence grafted on to a work of charity may more
readily shine forth, being embellished with a pleasing variety.
For the duty of fasting is then
rendered acceptable to God, when it is made perfect by the fruits of
charity.