101. To Helinand.
The Letters of St. Anselm
101. TO HELINAND.
Anselm praises Helinand for having chosen the monastic way of life and warns him of the various traps of the devil which might lead him to desert his vow to despise the world. He extols the monastic way of life to encourage Helinand to persevere.
THE SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD DWELLING TOGETHER IN
THE MONASTERY OF BEC, BROTHER ANSELM: TO HIS BELOVED
BROTHER, HIS LONGED-FOR SON HELINAND, WISHING THAT HE
MAY HAPPILY COMPLETE WHAT HE BEGAN WELL.1
BLESSED BE GOD from whom comes every good gift and every perfect gift,2 who turns your eyes away from beholding vanity3 and raises your soul to follow truth. It is up to you, therefore, my longed-for friend, to ponder with assiduous care that no man, putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.4 For the ancient enemy will certainly not cease assailing you more rigorously with all kinds of tricks once he sees you anxiously trying to avoid his snares.
Frequently he will recall to your mind's eye how delight ful were those things you used to enjoy and thus continu ally insinuate how difficult it will be to avoid the pleasures you were accustomed to, how impossible it will be for you to persevere in that austere rigor and rigorous austerity throughout your whole life, wherefore, at the memory of accustomed delights, your soul may be more horrified at the temperance of a more sublime way of life. Someday under the guise of wisdom, he will feign giving you better advice than what you yourself propose; that, for example, by deserting depravity with the intention of embracing the life of a cleric you want to continue living religiously. And that you can save your soul by the improvement of your life without imprudently taking on a burden you cannot bear. But if he realizes that there is no way he can turn you from your intention of [living] a more perfect life, he will pretend to agree with you, as if approving your plan, and
The Letters of St. Anselm
he will not stop laying various snares along your path. At some other time, having offered you the opportunity of sin ning here and urging temptation on you there, this sly fel low will add eloquence of this kind: 'What you have determined to do is so good that it can destroy any amount of maliciousness. Therefore, why hesitate to satisfy your will in the meantime since—whether your sins are many or few—you do not doubt they can quickly be wiped out the same way?7 Yet another time he will try to deceive you thus: 'Indeed what you want to do is good but the time is not opportune, for only when the wantonness of youth which cannot stand the burden of that regular discipline has cooled down, can the maturity of age accept religious severity'. If he sees that you are so foolish as to let your intention be obstructed if made public, he will try anything by any means to noise this about to those by whom you can be held back either by force, or by love or by any other persuasion. He will promise, too, that if you are willing to delay the good you propose for a little while, you will be able to do it much more fruitfully and profitably, both for the salvation of the many whom you will draw along with you and for the advantage of the future monastery, for which you will have collected money from all around. And what if he attempts to accuse you of having acted with fri volity and unreflected haste in wanting to bind yourself not only by making a promise but also by arranging in advance a pledge by indissoluble vow, when you could carry out that same intention no less well, and perhaps even better, by your own free will?
My dearest friend, I would write a lot more elaborately about what should be replied to all these traps, did the law of letter-writing not force me not to overstep conciseness.
Accept, in a few words, therefore, the sincere advice of your friend against this plot.
Anyone who imagines that foregoing the pleasures of the world and persevering in the exercise of virtue is extremely hard, even impossible, has never experienced how praise-
The Letters of St. Anselm worthy and delightful it is not to submit to but to command one's vices through love and the hope of the heavenly king dom. Anyone who imagines that it is better for him to live piously in the habit of a cleric than to submit to the insup portable burden of monastic life should consider with how much joy that burden is celebrated throughout the entire world by both sexes, by persons of all ages and conditions.
He should also know that it is far more difficult to preserve holiness of life by one's free will in the midst of worldlings than under discipline within the monks' cloister. Now I would not say that the intended way of life, among all the other ways, reaches a higher level of humility which is fol lowed by a higher level of exaltation, if it were not true that nobody abandons the monk's intention in order to live a better life and that all kinds of people flock eagerly to monas tic life in order to draw nearer to God.
Someone who heaps sin upon sin because he expects the remission of all his sins proves by loving sin that he does not love at all and therefore does not deserve the absolu tion of his sins. Someone who puts off correcting his life to a future date, perhaps to a time that may never come, is abandoning a certain for a doubtful good and by despis ing what he has lost shows that he does not love what he expects and does not deserve to receive it. Someone who is not sure that his constancy is firm enough not to be deflected from its good intention by any means should con ceal his goodwill completely and not let it become public until he has carried it out. Someone who puts off doing the good he plans to do with the intention of doing it better, is good, as long as the better thing is assured. But if achiev ing the greater good is uncertain, abandoning the lesser good is exceedingly ruinous and irreparable. It is advisable to hasten to do the lesser good for fear that by expecting more from the greater good neither the greater nor the lesser good be achieved. Someone who judges it a light-hearted matter so to bind himself by a vow to do something good that he is no longer free not to do it would consider light-
The Letters of St. Anselm
hearted that teacher who says: make your vow and fulfil it.5
For someone who vows what is good should in no way be censured; only someone who does not fulfill what he vowed. Indeed it is certain that anyone who makes a good vow pleases God by this vow. Therefore someone who vows something good will not regret having done it to please God, but will hasten to fulfil what he vowed in order to please him even more.
This advice and these consolations, dearest son, I have considered most necessary for you at present. Not because of my position but by your own free will, have I, whom you chose as your father and advisor, dictated them out of paternal solicitude. Do not meanwhile cease reminding yourself of it until, by God's help, you have carried out what you vowed by his inspiration. Farewell, desired friend of my heart, and hasten to satisfy my desire for you; oh that it may please almighty God to do this! Amen. c. 1079/93.
NOTES 1. Helinand was a secular cleric who had recently become a monk. This is a typical Anselmian Tettre de vocation'; see also Ep 2, 37, 56, 95, 101.
2. Jm 1:17.
3. Ps 118:37.
4. Lk 9:62.
5. Ps 75:12.
256 The Letters of St. Anselm
102. FROM POPE GREGORY.
Pope Gregory VII entreats Anselm to persevere in praying for him and for the Church and asks him to remedy a complaint against one of his monks.
GREGORY,1 BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD: TO
ANSELM, THE VENERABLE ABBOT OF BEC, GREETINGS AND
APOSTOLIC BLESSING.
WHEREAS THE GOOD SCENT of your fruits has wafted as far as us, for which we give due thanks to God and em brace you heartily in the love of Christ, believing with cer tainty that by the example of your endeavors the Church of God has been advanced towards virtue and that by your prayers and those of others like you, it may, by the help of Christ's mercy, be rescued from impending perils. You know, brother, if the prayer of one just person prevails with God,2 what will that of many just persons do? Indeed it will prevail and without doubt will procure what it requests.3
We are obliged on the authority of Truth himself to ac knowledge this: Knock he says, and it will be opened to you, ask and you shall received Knock simply, ask simply even for those things pleasing to him. The door is simple, the Giver is simple. He wants to be asked for simple things and those which are appropriate to him. In this way it will be opened to you, in this way you will receive, in this way the prayer of the just will be heard. Wherefore we desire that your fraternity and your monks pray fervently to God that his
Church and we who, though unworthy, preside over it, may be rescued from the impending oppression of heretics and that, once they have renounced their error, he may lead them back into the way of truth.
Some pilgrim has lodged a complaint with us about one of your brethren. The Lord is just and loves justice; His coun tenance beholds the righteous.5 Imitate your Lord, imitate the Master from whom you have the doctrine of life. We also admonish you to do justice in his sight to Hubert,6 our be loved son and—as we know—your friend. c. 1079.