"Let us be even more vigilant, in the knowledge that God has granted us, through our father Pachomius, the great grace to renounce the world and consider as nothing all the worries of the world and the cares of worldly affairs. What opportunity has been left to us to have anything as our own, “from a thread to a shoe strap” (Gen. 14:23), since we have masters who “with fear and trembling” (1 Cor. 2:3) are so solicitous on our behalf both for food and clothing and during ill health, if it should occur, that we need not worry about anything and thereby lose the soul's benefits for the sake of the flesh? We are free; we have cast from our necks the yoke of enslavement to the world. And let us think of the traditions of our father as a ladder which leads to the kingdom of heaven."
January 1, 1970