Along with continence of the tongue and belly, along with silence and fasting, humility is also described in many other sayings of the fathers as the royal road to God. For the monks humility is considered “the greatest virtue, for it lets a person rise up from the abyss, even when the sinner is like a demon.”
The third practice consists in the interesting advice not to be sorry for something that is past. In my classes on confession I always stress the importance of repentance for sin. Only those who repent can find forgiveness. This is surely correct. But sometimes we think that we please God by being as contrite as possible, by running ourselves down and accusing ourselves. Here Anthony has different advice: what is over is over. This applies to past events; we shouldn’t be forever ruminating over our past. But it also refers to our mistakes and sins. We shouldn’t mourn for them either; they are over. We should not pay more attention to ourselves and our failures than to God: “For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20). God knows about our failures. And we will sin again; we can’t put up any guarantee for ourselves. But we should give sin no power over us. One way to deprive sin of such power is to let the past be, to give up thinking about it. We hold it out to God and pass it on to God. But then it’s over and done with; we shouldn’t worry about it anymore.
This advice from Anthony expresses great confidence in the grace and compassion of God, who knows and understands our heart.
Father Paul of Galatia says of himself and his daily exercises: “I always have these three things in mind: silence, mental humility, and telling myself that I have no cares.” Once again we find the monks advising silence and humility as the basic attitude of the religious person. One father could even say: “Where humility is missing, God is missing too.” Humility is the necessary prelude to experiencing God. Without humility we are in danger of pocketing God for our own purposes, of subordinating God to our thoughts and desires.
The third exercise consists in freedom from care. The monk practices this by always telling himself: “I have no cares.” Evidently he has to keep prompting himself with this line, because thoughts of care will come up. No human being, of course, is exempt from care. Indeed, Martin Heidegger thought that care is the most basic feature of human existence. A person is essentially someone who cares (or worries). Still, by aiming the phrase, “I have no cares” at this care, the feeling can change, and I can find my trust in God’s nearness growing. And so we have a way pointed out to us for practicing our trust in God. I’m not artificially talking myself into anything here; I’m not manipulating my ideas; I’m taking into account the fact that I have cares. But I try to practice concretely the biblical message of trust in God, who takes care of us, by continuously telling myself, “I have no cares.”
~Anselm Gruen, Heaven Begins Within You: Wisdom from the Desert Fathers
