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Shorter Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

121. Rule 121: Is It Lawful to Refuse the Heavier Tasks? (R. 82)

He who lives truly in love towards God and is firm in his conviction of the reward to be received from the Lord is not content with things as they are but is always seeking to add to them and longing for something more. Though he should seem to be working beyond his strength he is not free from anxiety, as if he had fulfilled all that was required; but he is always striving as one who falls short of what is due from him, hearing the Lord’s commands: “When ye have done all the things that are commanded you, then say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.”¹ He hears too the apostle to whom the world was crucified, and he unto the world, not ashamed to say: “I count not myself yet to have apprehended. But one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things that are before, I press on towards the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”² C It was he who, though he had the right since he preached the Gospel to live of the Gospel, said: In labour and travail, working night and day, not because we have not the right, but to make ourselves an example unto you, that ye should imitate us.”³ Who then is so senseless and unbelieving as ever to be content with things as they now are and to refuse any work as too heavy, or as toilsome?

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