Find the best models to imitate, Church Fathers: Day 354

Find the best models to imitate

A bit of practical advice for monks, but also for anyone else, from St. John Cas­sian: if you’re looking for virtues to imitate, don’t expect to find all the virtues in one model. We all have different strengths.

It is an ancient and excellent saying of the blessed Anthony that when a monk is trying through the monastic life to reach the heights of a more advanced perfection, and, having learned the consideration of discretion, is able now to stand in his own judgment, and to arrive at the very summit of the anchorite’s life, he ought by no means to seek for all kinds of virtues from one man however excellent.

For one is adorned with flowers of knowledge, another is more strongly forti­fied with methods of discretion, another is established in the dignity of patience, another excels in the virtue of humility, another in that of continence, another is decked with the grace of simplicity. This one excels all others in generosity, that one in pity, another in vigils, another in silence, another in earnestness of work.

And therefore the monk who desires to gather spiritual honey ought, like a most careful bee, to draw the virtue from those who specially possess it, and should diligently store it up in the vessel of his own heart; nor should he investigate what any one is lacking in, but only regard and gather whatever virtue he has. For if we want to gain all virtues from some one person, we shall with great difficulty or perhaps never at all find suitable examples for us to imitate.

–St. John Cassian, Institutes, 5.4

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

When I think of virtues like humility, generosity, continence, who among the people I know most exemplifies each virtue?

What could I learn from each of those people?

CLOSING PRAYER

Father, fill me with your Spirit that filled the lives of your saints, so that I may share their joy in your Kingdom.

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