Глава 33. О том, что настоятели не должны давать воли подвижникам, оставляющим свое собрание, и принимать их в общежитие

Those in charge of spiritual societies must act in a spirit of mutual goodwill and, caring for each other, not destroy what others have built, and not simply, indiscriminately, accept those who leave other brotherhoods. For this is complete confusion, disorder and destruction of spiritual affairs. Thus, the most intelligent of the brethren remain firmly in goodness, held together by the fear of God, while the lazy and careless are led and directed towards goodness by human shame and need imposed by people; Therefore, if a careless person sees that he can, without fear, run away from the labors assigned to him in the society he has once chosen, move to another monastery and live there without fear and incontinence, then he will easily break away from the union, and the one who hastily accepts it will be guilty of his death. And when this evil multiplies, then the well-living will often be seduced from the straight and right path, and the destruction of all of them will be gathered at the head of the one who gives rise to such attempts. So, to prevent this from happening, let us admonish those who are apostatizing from their brethren and return them to where they came from. If they do not listen to us, let us beware and turn away from them, avoid meeting them and instill the same in all the brethren, so that either they themselves, chastened by such aversion, will again enter their fence and be grazed by the shepherd placed over them, or if they remain stubborn in their renunciation of spiritual communication, then at least others, seeing how they are abhorred by them, would become chaste their example and, avoiding shame, would be afraid to imitate them. And in order to show that these are not my words, but the clear laws of the Spirit, I will offer you the verbs of Paul, with which he denounced those who live intemperately, subjecting to punishment, together with others, both drunkards and slanderers: “if,” he says, “...there be a fornicator, or a molester, or a drunkard,... with such is below the level of food” (1 Cor. 5:11). And in another place, pointing to “nothing.” who work, but walk around deceitfully” (2 Thess. 3:11), says: “Sign of this man, and do not mix with him” (2 Thess. 3:14). And that he who violates the vows given to the Holy Spirit acts worse than the annoying, drunkards and those who spend their lives in idleness, this is obvious to everyone. So, reason itself rightly convinces us to prohibit those people who ruin spiritual decency. to block all communications with those who keep it. The absence of a brother from the monastery only remains reprehensible when it happens by determination of the abbot for the organization of the affairs of the monastery. You might be interested in: