CHAPTER l8: How his prayer brought forth water out of the dry land. His life as a hermit
CHAPTER l8
How his prayer brought forth water out of the dry land. His life as a hermit
THE dwelling-place, built on almost solid rock, had no water supply. So one day he summoned the brethren – for he had not yet cut himself off from his visitors – and said:
‘The place I have chosen, as you can see, is without a well. Pray with me, I beseech you, that He who “turns the solid rock into a standing water and the flint into fountains of water” may, “giving glory not unto us but to His Name”, open a spring of water for us on this rocky ground. If we dig in the centre of my little enclosure I believe He will “make us drink from the river of His pleasures”.’
They dug a pit and found it next morning full of water springing up from beneath. Without a doubt it was the prayers of the saint that had brought forth water from ground of the driest, hardest kind. This water, strangely enough, kept its original level, never spilling over on to the ground nor sinking as it was drawn out. God in his bounty willed that there should never be any less, nor any more, than was needed.
Once the brethren had helped him to build the place, he lived completely alone. At first, if they came over to visit him, he would go out and see to their needs; he would, for instance, wash their feet in warm water. Sometimes they made him take off his shoes and let them return the compliment, for care of his own body was so far from his thoughts that he kept his soft leather boots on his feet for months on end without ever removing them. If he put new boots on at Easter they would not come off till the next Easter and then only for the Washing of the Feet in church on Maundy Thursday. The monks found long thick calluses, where the boots had chafed his shins through all his prayers and genuflexions.
But as time went on his zeal for perfection led him to shut himself away from sight within the hermitage, rarely talking to visitors even from inside, and if he did so then only through the window. Thus he learned to live a hermit’s life of prayer and fasting. He used to keep the window open and enjoy seeing his brethren and being seen by them, but in the end he blocked it up and opened it only to give a blessing or for some definite need.