The disciple said to the abba: “Father, my friends often ask me if I am well, and I do not know what to answer them. For if they ask of my body, I am healthy; if they ask of my days, they are peaceful. But this is not what I think of when I hear the question — it is something else, which I cannot put into fitting words. Teach me, father, what I should answer them.”
The abba said: “Tell me, child, what do you think of when they ask you?”
The disciple said: “I think of whether I am nearer to Christ or farther from Him than I was yesterday. For this I hold to be the true good, and not the ease of the body, nor the absence of troubles.”
The abba said: “You have thought well, child, but you have not spoken well of your silence. For union with Christ is not a place you enter once and remain, but a path you walk as long as you live, rising or descending with every thought, deed, and moment. And for this reason you cannot say ‘I am well’ with full assurance, for you do not know what the hour to come will bring, nor how you will finish the journey.”
The disciple said again: “Then, father, how shall I answer them, that I neither lie to them, nor burden them with my unclear silence?”
The abba said: “Say to them thus: ‘I am well insofar as I am near to Christ, but this will be known fully only at my end, for eternity is not a place one arrives at, but a union that grows or thins with every hour.’ And if they ask you further, tell them that your good does not depend on smooth days, but on nearness to the Lord, who alone remains after all else has passed.”
And the abba added: “And if they still do not understand you, do not be grieved, child, for not even the clearest word can give another what only living itself can teach.”
