The Christian, then, must be on guard against doctrines and scriptural interpretations that lead to ruin-she must develop discernment to see such ideas for what they are. But perhaps even more pressing, according to the Conferences, is the need to develop discretion. According to the fathers of the Conferences, discretion is an intellectual virtue much like discernment, except a Christian applies discretion when considering not which ideas, doctrines, and scriptural interpretations to embrace, but when considering herself and her inner state, and deciding which practices to carry out, which things to say, and what to do in a given situation. All of the second conference, again delivered by Abba Moses, is dedicated to a discussion of the virtue of discretion. He reports that the great founder of the Orthodox desert monastic tradition, St Anthony, taught that discretion is the greatest of all the virtues. According to Anthony, discretion is what is meant by Christ when he talks of the eye being the light of the body in Matthew 6.22-23. The speaker in the following quotation is St Anthony.
For this is discretion, which is termed in the gospel the “eye,” “and light of the body,” according to the Savior’s saying: “the light of your body is your eye. If the eye is single, the whole body will be full of light, but if his eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness” [Mt 6.22-23]. This is because [ the eye–discretion] considers every thought and action of a person; it oversees-surveys-all that must be done.29
Discretion, according to St Anthony and Abba Moses, is thus the virtue marked by a Christian’s capacity to scrutinize all that he thinks, feels, and does, and hold it up against the standards of the truth. If a person’s discretion, like the eye of the body, is in working order, all things are illuminated for him. Indeed, it is for this reason that Abba Moses says that “the birth-giver of all the virtues-the guardian and director of them-is discretion.”30 After all, one cannot possibly practice virtue without first recognizing through discretion whether one is acting, speaking, or thinking out of virtue or vice in a particular instance.
Much like the virtue of discernment, in order to develop discretion a monk must establish a correct relationship with the best teachers around him. As in the case of discernment, the monk must have a healthy distrust for his own judgment, and live in accordance with the wisdom of the elders. Abba Moses tells a brief story of a monk who worked harder in asceticism than any other, but still fell into error.
[This monk] had lived for fifty years in this desert, keeping an exceptionally severe form of abstinence, and loved the isolation of solitude with particular enthusiasm. By what method, then, was he deluded by the deceiver after so many labors? … Was it not that, lacking the virtue of discretion, he preferred to be guided by his own judgment rather than to obey the counsels and conference of the brothers and the regulations of the elders?31
This particular monk, Abba Moses goes on to report, fell into error by becoming so overzealous for asceticism that he refused even to celebrate Pascha with the other monks in the desert, and finally came to the point of accepting Satan who appeared to him as an angel of light. He then literally threw himself into a well, an act of delusion that ultimately killed him.32 His essential problem was in trusting himself too much, and placing his own judgments in such absurdly high esteem that he ceased seeking out the opinions of other elders on spiritual questions. Had he merely worked to develop a little discretion with the help of the counsel of others, he would never have been tricked by demonic appearances.
It is critical that Christians develop discretion in the face of whatever might tempt us in life. Whether inclined to over-reach in the practice of religion, like the monk above, or to forsake such practice and embrace a life of pleasures, whether prone to anger or to laxity, whether likely to fall into materialism or neglect of love, the Christian must exercise discretion by examining herself and what she does in light of the teachings of the spiritual masters of the Church. What is more, exercising discretion is the only means by which the Christian can begin to utilize her spiritual shortcomings as actual tools in the pursuit of purity of heart. If we do not see our own moments of failure, understand their nature, and recognize the path back to purity of heart, then life in the world will be more or less hopeless for us.
~Daniel G. Opperwall, A Layman in the Desert
29 Conf. 2.II.5. Translation adapted from Gibson.
30 Conf. 2.IV.4.
31 Conf. 2.V.l-2.
32 Conf. 2.V.2-3.
