John Climacus also said about the benefits of non-acquisitiveness:

"Nothing humbles the soul so much as being in poverty and living on alms. For then we appear most of all to be wise and God-loving, when, having the means to exalt ourselves, we flee from it irrevocably."15

IV. Examples of True Non-Acquisitiveness

St. Symeon the New Theologian defines its boundaries in the following way: "Show God, or rather, let Him Himself see your poverty, and your lack of acquisitiveness, and your uncovetous disposition, so that even if the wealth of the whole world flows to you like a river from somewhere, or if you find an immeasurable amount of gold thrown at you (for this also happens through the wiles of the devil and his minions), you would not want to look even with one eye at it, With all the fact that I can't imagine what to take,

-10-

would be a sin, under a plausible pretext to distribute to the poor."

17

The civilized world, or, more precisely, the atheists, reproach the monks and clergy for being capitalists, and from this they draw the conclusion that this is ridiculous logic! — that there is no God, and that religion is an invention of priests. But those whom they call monks and whom they attack, according to the canons of the Church, are not monks; the Church herself, as we have seen above, attacks such people and prescribes them the laws of non-acquisitiveness. And God has nothing to do with it, and neither does religion.

Traveling through the ancient Egyptian coenobia of the IV century, St. St. John Cassian of Rome says the following about the life of the monks of that time, who fulfilled the commandments of Christ in practice, and did not keep them only on the church throne in bindings with gold lids studded with precious stones (although such a reverent attitude is also commendable in itself, but not enough for salvation):

"I consider it superfluous to mention their rule that no one should have his own box, basket and anything that should be locked up as property. We know that they live in such poverty that they have nothing but a shirt, a small cloth, ankle boots, a mantle and a matting. And in other monasteries this rule is so strictly observed that no one dares to call anything his own, and it is considered a great crime for a monk to say: this is my book, my writing board, my slate, my clothes, my ankle boots. For this he must repent if by chance, through negligence or ignorance, he utters such a word."18

Abba Isaac, a presbyter from Cells,19 said to the brethren:

"Our fathers and Abba Pambo wore old clothes with many patches, as well as palm [i.e., matting] clothes, but now you wear expensive clothes. Go away from here, because of you these places are desolate."

He also said that Abba Pambo said:

"A monk must wear clothes that no one would take if he threw them out of his cell [for three whole days]."20