Cassian said that Syncleticus renounced the world, and divided his property among the poor. But he kept some for his own use, and so he showed that he was unwilling to accept either the poverty of those who renounce everything or the normal rule of monasteries. Basil of blessed memory said to him, ‘You have stopped being a senator, but you have not become a monk.’
Ward, The Desert Fathers, p. 55
Read a few stories the desert fathers and you’ll quickly see the importance not simply of voluntary renunciation but of accepting involuntary loss. It is on these two that Abba Syncleticus fails.
Yes, he was certainly willing to be generous with his wealth. After renouncing “the world,” he “divided his property among the poor” and went to the desert. Again, while his renunciation is generous, it also conceals his fundamental mistrust of Divine Providence.
Rather than giving himself over without reservation to God, he holds something back. What he holds back is not simply material good but himself; in clinging to gold, he is also clinging to his own will.
Symptomatic of the former is he kept some of his property “for his own use.” As for the latter—which is the actual sin—we see this in his “unwilling to accept … the normal rule of monasteries” which would require he be obedient to not only the abbot but the common life of the brotherhood as well.
Ironically, it is because Syncleticus holds to his own will rather than the will of God that Basil says that “You have stopped being a senator, but you have not become a monk.” Through willfulness, he has lost both the glory he had in the world and the consolations and blessings of monastic life.
And so Cassian says Syncleticus’s poverty is incomplete. The senator dies but the monk is stillborn.
Demanding as this standard is for monastics, it seems wholly outside the realm of possibility for those of us who live in the world. Whether I am a priest or a layperson, young or old, man or woman, how can I hope to live up to examples such as this:
When Macarius was living in Egypt, one day he came across a man who had brought a donkey to his cell and was stealing his possessions. As though he was a passer-by who did not live there, he went up to the thief and helped him to load the beast, and sent him peaceably on his way, saying to himself, ‘We brought nothing into this world (1 Tim. 6:7) but the Lord gave; as He willed, so it is done: blessed be the Lord in all things.’1
If I understand this in a moralizing fashion, all hope is lost! Seen as a moral imperative, Macarius gives license not simply for the strong to exploit the weak but he demands the weak allow themselves to be abused. Can we imagine anything more destructive to human flourishing, to civil society, or the bonds of charity that unite the Church?
But all is not lost! We get a hint on how we are to understand a life of renunciation. “We brought nothing into this world (1 Tim. 6:7).” St. Paul alludes here to the words of the Patriarch Job:
And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; Blessed be the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong (Job 1:21-22, NKJV).
Job, in turn, points us back to the creation of our First Parents: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:25).
To practice renunciation doesn’t mean I must turn a blind eye to injustice. Doing so represents a basic misunderstanding of what God is asked of me.
What renunciation does mean is that I embrace with gratitude my status as a creature dependent (in an absolute sense) on God and (in a relative sense) other human beings. Additionally, it means accepting that I can only find my identity within the limited and limiting social and material structures of creation.
Syncleticus goes wrong not in planning for his future but in clinging to his own will; he isn’t attached to gold but his own fantasies about a future that does not exist. As a result, he fails to entrust himself to God as either a hermit or a member of a monastic brotherhood. For Syncleticus, monastic life is not a life of renunciation but—to use a contemporary phrase—a “platform” for self-expression.
Macarius, on the other hand, has like Job given himself over wholly to God. He embraces without reservation a life of radical dependence on God and vulnerability to the actions of others. In this, he imitates the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the Garden before the Fall.
Like our First Parents, Macarius stands defenseless before God and neighbor. And Syncleticus? He hides from God. His attachment to his own will causes him to fear for his own future. In his fear—and so our First Parents after the Fall—he clothes himself in gold; unrepentant of his own sinfulness, again like Adam and Eve, he flees from the demands of obedience to an abbot.
Yes, the particulars of our Christian life are different but whether our state of life, we are all called to give ourselves over wholly to God. That is to say, to embrace a life of renunciation.
And yes, this can be—and is—hard! But God is patient and leads us gently and slowly to that moment when we can finally and definitively say “Into your hands Lord, I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
Ward, The Desert Fathers, p. 172.
First, I am long overdue to read St. John Cassian’s Institutes and Conferences. Yes, what are the sins, ideas, and attachments (those garments) that I still wear that would prevent me from entering into the King’s chamber for the feast? What have I not renounced to be true to my vocation & calling? May Our Lord Have Mercy On Us. Thank You, Fr. Gregory -Adam ( Benedict)