“Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”
Abba Moses said to Abba Makarios at Scetis, ‘I should like to live in quiet prayer and the brethren do not let me.’ Abba Makarios said to him, ‘I see that you are a sensitive man and incapable of sending a brother away. Well, if you want to live in peace, go to the interior desert, to Petra, and there you will be at peace.’ And so he found peace.
When a certain brother in Scete was going to the harvest, he went to Abba Moses the Ethiopian, and said unto him, “Father, tell me what I shall do; shall I go to the harvest?” and Abba Moses said unto him, “If I tell you, will you be persuaded to do as I say?” And the brother said unto him, “Yes, I will hearken unto you.” The old man said unto him, “If you will be persuaded by me, rise up, go, and release yourself from going to the harvest, and come unto me, and I will tell you what you shall do.” The brother therefore departed and obtained his release from his companions, as the old man had told him, and then he came to him. And the old man said unto him, “Go into your cell and keep Pentecost, and you shall eat dry bread and salt once a day, and after you have done this I will tell you something else to do later on.” And he went and did as the old man had told him, and then came to him again. Now when the old man saw that he was one who worked with his hands, he showed him the proper way to live in his cell; and the brother went to his cell, and fell on his face upon the ground, and for three whole days and nights he wept before God. And after these things, when his thoughts were saying unto him, “You are now an exalted person, and you have become a great man,” he used to contradict them, and set before his eyes his former shortcomings, and say, “Thus were all your offenses.” And again, when they used to say to him, “You have performed many things negligently,” he would say, “Nevertheless I do small services for God, and He shows His Mercy upon me.” And when by such means as these the spirits had been overcome, they appeared unto him in the form of corporeal creatures, and said unto him, “We have been vanquished by you”; and he said unto them, “Why?” and they said unto him, “If we humble you, we are raised up by you to an exalted position, and if we exalt you we are accounted by you for humility.”
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