“Lord, father and God of my life, do not let my eyes be proud; turn envy away from me, do not let gluttony and lust grip me, do not leave me a prey to shameless desire.“
Ecclesiasticus (Jesus ben Sirach) 23: 4-6
Who was Abba Chaeremon?
Saint John Cassian and his friend Germanus encounter “three very aged hermits named Chaeremon, Nestor and Joseph“ in the wilderness near the city of Panephysis, Egypt, by being introduced to them through the region’s bishop Archebius. The second part of Cassian‘s Collations is filled with recalling the teachings received from these three men. Abba Chaeremon is described thus:
“He had passed his hundredth year with his mind alone still alert, for his back was so bent with age and long prayers that he was virtually reduced to infancy again, and had to walk on his hands and feet. We gazed with admiration both at his countenance, and at his gait, for indeed though his whole body was frail and all but dead, he had never lost the composure of his previous austerity.“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 243
A miracle of God‘s grace, and the pathway to come closer to it
Saint John Cassian reports Abba Chaeremon‘s teachings on the virtue of chastity – an integrity that “is a gift granted only by God‘s grace“ (ibid., p. 261), not by discipline alone.
“Chastity does not consist in strict discipline as you imagine, but in delight in our own purity for its own sake. When there is still some element of lust resisting it, we do not call it chastity but continence. (…) Perfect chastity is therefore to be distinguished from the laborious strife after continence by its lasting tranquility.“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 270-271
Nevertheless, though chastity of that sort, higher and more perfect than mere continence, “is a miracle“, a “work of God“ (ibid., p. 275) and not of a man‘s own effort, Abba Chaemeron insists that “it is clear that…
“… no one can advance to take sure possession of the land (i.e. the territory of his body) unless he has kept to the stony way of the Lord, and observed his precepts, through mild and unshakable patience (…).“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 263
“The only reason why we have to continue tirelessly in our exercises, is to win the mercy of the Lord through these hardships, until through God‘s kindness we are ready to be set free from the urgings of the flesh and the domination of our prevailing vices.“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 261
At the very end of his discourse on chastity, Abba Chaeremon grants the two young men inquiring of him, Cassian and Germanus, the following description of a path that may lead them to “grasping the actual possibility of such chastity“ (ibid., p. 276), meaning that they may find it possible then, rather than impossible, that they can gradually attain to perfect chastity with the aid of God‘s grace:
“If one refrains from all idle conversation, quenches the emotion of anger and anxiety, and material cares, is content with a daily ration of two buns, and does not drink water to excess, if he limits his time of sleep to three hours (some allow four), and if he believes that he will not gain anything through the merits of this discipline and self-restraint but only through the mercy of God (since all human effort is futile without faith of that sort), then in no more than six months he may come to believe that this sort of perfection is not impossible. It is indeed evidence that purity is near when he begins to cease hoping in his own efforts. (…) It will follow that he will not be proud of the merits of his purity since he knows that it has been achieved by the mercy of the Lord rather than his own care, nor will he be harsh and strict towards others, knowing that human virtue achieves nothing without the aid of God‘s grace.“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 276
It is interesting to note that Abba Chaeremon mentions, besides the training of the body through physical hardships of some sort, the necessity to quench “the emotion of anger and anxiety“ in order to make progress in the virtue of chastity, thereby implying a connection between these emotions and the rising of temptations that might lead to unchaste behavior, or maybe between anger and anxiety and an inner weakness of the soul losing its ability to calmly and patiently resist such temptations.
“The more placid and patient your heart is, the more easily you will advance in physical purity; the longer you admit the emotion of anger, the more difficult it will be for you to attain chastity.“
John Cassian, Abbot of Marseilles: The Collations. Being a Collection of Twenty-Four Conferences Divided into Three Parts, translated by a Father of the Oxford Oratory, Gracewing 2015, p. 263
Saint John Cassian, pray for us!