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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

Rule 42: The Aim and Intention with Which the Workers Must Work

You should know this, that he who works should do so, not to minister to his own needs by his works but to fulfil the commandment of the Lord Who said: “I was an hungred and ye gave me meat, etc.”¹ For to be anxious for one’s self is absolutely forbidden by the Lord, when He says: “Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on,”² and added: “For after all these things do the Gentiles seek.”³ Each therefore should put before himself as the aim in his work the service of those in want, not his own need. For thus he will both escape the charge of self-love and will receive the blessing bestowed on love of the brethren by the Lord —“Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.”⁴ And let no one think that the apostle’s words are opposed to ours—“that working they eat their own bread.”⁵ For this is addressed to the unruly and idle, meaning that for each to minister at least to himself and not to be burdensome to others is preferable to a life of idleness. “For we hear of some,” he says, “that walk among you disorderly, that work not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort that with quietness they work and eat their own bread.”⁶ And “working night and day, that we might not burden any one”⁷ has the same meaning, since the apostle for the sake of brotherly love and to exclude the disorderly submits himself to labours above what were prescribed to him. But it befits him who strives after perfection to work night and day, that he may have to give to him that is in need.

He who puts his trust in himself or in the man who has been entrusted with the charge of his needs, and considers his own work or that of his comrade a sufficient basis for his living, inasmuch as he has set his hope on man, is in danger of incurring the curse which says: “Cursed is the man that putteth his hope in man and will stablish the flesh of his arm, and his heart would depart from the Lord.”⁸ The Scripture by “who putteth his hope in man” forbids, that is, putting trust in another, and by “will stablish the arm of his flesh” forbids self-confidence. Each of these it calls apostasy from the Lord and it adds the doom of both that “He shall be as the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh.”⁹ So Scripture shows that to put trust in one’s self or any one else is to apostatise from the Lord.

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