The Teaching of Saint Pimen the Great on Weeping

The Alphabetical Patericon, letters P and A.

A brother asked Abba Pimen what a monk’s occupation should be. The Abba replied: “When Abraham came to the Promised Land, he bought for himself a tomb, and it was with a tomb that he began to take possession of the Promised Land.” The brother asked: what is the meaning of “the tomb”? The Abba replied: “It is the place of weeping and mourning.”

The following saying also belongs to Abba Pimen: “Weeping is twofold: it both makes and preserves.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “What am I to do with my passions that trouble me?” The elder said to him: “Let us weep with all our might before the goodness of God until it has mercy upon us.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “What am I to do about my sins?” The elder said: “He who desires to be freed from the sins dwelling in him is freed from them through weeping, and he who desires not to fall into sins again avoids falling into them through weeping. This is the path of repentance handed down to us by Scripture and the Fathers, who have said: weep! There is no other path besides weeping.”

Once Abba Pimen, passing through Egypt, saw a woman sitting at a grave and weeping bitterly. At this he said: “If all the comforters in the world were to come to her, they would not draw her soul away from weeping. So also must a monk constantly have weeping within himself.”

Once the Venerable Pimen was walking with Abba Anuv in the environs of the city of Diolcos. There they saw a woman in anguish, weeping bitterly at a grave, and they stopped to listen to her. Then, having moved a little way off, they met a passerby, and Saint Pimen asked him: “What has happened to this woman? She weeps so bitterly.” The passerby answered: “Her husband, son, and brother have died.” Then Abba Pimen, turning to Abba Anuv, said: “I tell you: if a man does not put to death all the desires of the flesh and does not acquire such weeping, he cannot be a monk. The whole life of a monk is weeping.”

An elder said: “Weeping constitutes the spiritual exercise—the inner discipline, the inner ascetic struggle—of the monk. Without weeping it is impossible to preserve oneself from disorder and confusion.” I replied: “When I am in my cell, weeping remains with me; but if someone comes to me, or if I go out of the cell, I no longer find it.” To this the elder said: “That is because weeping has not yet become properly yours, but is as it were lent to you.” I asked him to explain these words. The elder said: “If a man labors with all his might to acquire weeping, he will find it at his service whenever he wishes.”

A brother asked Abba Pimen: “To what ought the attention of one who keeps silence in his cell be directed?” The elder replied: “I am like a man sunk in a bog up to his neck, with a burden on his neck, who cries out to God: have mercy on me!” “Have mercy on me”—this is the expression of weeping that has taken deep root in the soul. Weeping, when it reaches full development, cannot clothe itself in much thought or many words: it is satisfied, in order to express a boundless spiritual feeling, with the briefest prayer.

A brother asked Abba Pimen about the monastic occupation. The elder said: “When God visits us with a summons into eternity: what will concern us then?” The brother replied: “Our sins.” The elder said: “So let us! Let us enter into our cells; in solitude let us call our sins to mind, and the Lord will hear us.” Here we should understand not a superficial, cold recollection of sins and one’s sinfulness, but a recollection joined to repentance and weeping.

When Arsenius the Great fell asleep, and Saint Pimen received news of his falling asleep, he wept and said: “Blessed are you, Abba Arsenius! For you wept over yourself in this life. He who does not weep here will weep forever. It is impossible not to weep—either here voluntarily, or there involuntarily, in torment.”