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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 10: Should All Who Come Be Received? Or If Not, Which Persons? And Should They Be…

Since our loving God and Saviour Jesus Christ proclaims: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,”² it is perilous to reject those that come to the Lord through us and wish to take upon them His kindly yoke and the burden of His commandments that raises us to heaven. Yet we must not allow any to tread the hallowed ground of these precepts with unwashed feet. But just as our Lord Jesus Christ asked the young man that came to Him about his former life, and having learned that it was good, bade him fulfil what was still lacking to perfection and then allowed him to follow, so, obviously, it befits us to learn the former life of applicants. If they have already led a good life we shall deliver to them the more perfect precepts; but when they are turning from an evil life or have set out from a state of indifference towards the strict life of the knowledge of God, then we must examine their characters, whether they are unstable and prone to sudden decisions.

For we must suspect the shiftiness of such men as these, who in addition to their failing to benefit themselves actually cause harm to others, by producing reproaches and falsehoods and slanders about our work. But since all things are rectified by care and the fear of God masters every defect of the soul, we must not despair straightway even of these, but induce them to submit to an appropriate course of training, testing their decision by time and laborious exercises, so that we may accept them safely if we find in them stedfastness, and otherwise send them away while they are still outside the community; the test will then involve no risk to the brotherhood. We must find out whether a man who has been involved in sins confesses the hidden things of shame despising the same, and becomes his own accuser; by which he both puts to shame and renounces his companions in evil doing, according to the words of the Psalmist, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity,”³ and makes his future life secure from a further fall into like sins. One method of testing may be applied to all, whether they are completely humble and devoid of false shame, so as to accept the lowliest tasks, if it be reasonably decided that their work at such tasks would be useful. And when each man, after full examination by those who are competent to make skilful investigation, has been accepted as a vessel serviceable unto the Master and ready for every good work,⁴ then let him be numbered with those who have dedicated themselves to the Lord.⁵ When a man from the higher ranks of society aspires to humility after the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is especially necessary to prescribe some task which is distasteful to worldlings, and to watch whether with full conviction he presents himself to God as a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.

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