A brother asked an elder: “How is it that this generation cannot maintain the discipline [askêsis] of the fathers?” The elder said: “Because it neither loves God nor flees from men nor hates the material goods of the world. Sorrow for sin and spiritual discipline come naturally to the man who flees from human company and from material goods. For just as one who wants to put out a fire burning in his field will not extinguish it unless he gets ahead of the fire and cuts away the brush in front of it; so too, unless a man go to a place where he gains his very bread with toil, he cannot attain spiritual discipline; for if the soul cannot see, neither does it speedily desire.”
Anonymous sayings of desert fathers
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