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Rule
St Columbanus, tr. Metlake, 1914; abridged
Chapter 8
1How necessary discretion is to the monk is shown by the errors of many and the ruin of not a few who, beginning their course without discretion, and persisting in it without this guiding knowledge, failed to bring it to a praiseworthy end. For, just as those who journey away from the path must necessarily go astray, so also will those who live without discretion of necessity fall into excess, which is opposed to virtue, for virtue is the mean between two extremes. On the right and the left of the path of discretion the enemy places divers stumbling-blocks and snares. We must therefore pray to God to grant us the light of true discretion to lighten the pathway of our life, surrounded as it is on all sides by the dense darkness of the world.
Discretion comes from the word discernere, which means to separate, to distinguish; it is the faculty by which we distinguish what is good from what is bad, what is mediocre from what is perfect. Just as light and darkness, so also were good and evil divided from the beginning, after evil had entered into the world through the devil, God having enlightened men to distinguish between them. Thus Abel, the God-fearing, chose good; Cain, the godless, evil. All the things that God made were good, but the devil, with deceitful cunning, oversowed evil among the good. What things, then, are good? Those which have remained whole and uncorrupted as they were created, which God, according to the Apostle, “hath prepared that we should walk in them, the good works in which we are created in Christ Jesus”,2 which are, goodness, integrity, piety, justice, truth, mercy, charity, salutary peace, spiritual joy, with the fruit of the Spirit: all these with their fruits are good. The things that are contrary to these are evil, which are, malice, impiety, injustice, lying, avarice, hatred, discord, bitterness, with the manifold fruits born of them. For the fruits of both good and evil are innumerable. . . .
We who have the assistance of God must at all times hold fast to what is good. In prosperity as well as in adversity we must implore the divine help that we may not be puffed up with pride when it goes well with us, nor be cast down with despair when it goes ill with us. True discretion is the inseparable companion of Christian humility and opens the way to perfection to the true soldier of Christ. . . .3 If we weigh all our actions in the just balance of true discretion, we shall never be betrayed into error; if we walk by the divine light of true discretion, we “shall not go aside neither to the right hand, nor to the left”,4 but keep ever on the straight way, chanting with the conquering Psalmist the words: “O my God, enlighten my darkness, for by Thee I shall be delivered from temptation”.5 For “the life of man upon earth is a temptation”.6
Notes
- For this chapter cf. Cassian, Conf., II, 1-5.
- Eph. 2:10.
- St. Benedict, Reg., c. 64, calls discretion “the mother of the virtues.” Bede says of St. Aidan: “He was found to be endued preëminently with the grace of discretion, which is the mother of virtues.” H. E., III, 5.
- Deut. 5:32.
- Ps. 17:29-30.
- Job 7:1.