On The Dangers of the Solitary Life

Extract

I am convinced that a life lived together with others is much more profitable than the life of a solitary. In the first place, we are none of us self-sufficient as regards the needs of the body, but depend on each other for its necessities. For just as the foot possesses one capacity but not another, and cannot exercise its own office without the help of the other members of the body, nor supply what it lacks out of its own resources—so also in the solitary life even what we have becomes useless, because what we lack becomes unobtainable. For God the Creator has ordained that we should have need of one another as it is written, therefore we are closely linked to each other.

But apart from that, the love of Christ itself does not suffer that each of us should look only to himself. Charity, as St Paul says, seeketh not its own. The eremitical life, however, aims precisely at this, that everyone should look after his own needs. This, however, clearly militates against the law of charity which the Apostle himself fulfilled, who did not seek his own profit, but the salvation of many.