It is said of a man that, being troubled in his mind, he was asked by a brother: “How do people treat you?” And he answered, sighing: “People honor me, but they do not know who I am!”
And the elder who heard this said: “Great is the snare of honor, my son, for it clothes a man in a garment that others have woven from their own needs, not from your truth. Honor does not merely clothe — it deforms: it places upon your face a mask which, if you wear it too long, you come to mistake for your own countenance. A man looks at you and sees what he needs to see — a support, an authority, a comforting face — and you, receiving his gaze, begin to believe that you are exactly what he has fashioned.”
Thus many have been lost not in the world’s contempt but in its praise, for contempt drives you out of the city, but praise seats you upon a foreign throne in which there is no longer room for you, but only for the shadow that others feed with their expectations. Honor is a mirror that shows not the face but the mask; and the man who gazes too long into the mirror of others comes to forget his own face.
The ancient one said: “Know thyself” — and this was not only a saying of the philosophers, but also the secret of the desert fathers, for Abba Isaac said that the man who does not know his own poverty is like a broken vessel which others fill with water, supposing it holds, until all the water has drained away and only dust remains. Self-knowledge is not an examination of thoughts, but a seeing of one’s own helplessness in the light of God. So it is with honor without knowledge: it fills a vessel that does not hold.
Therefore, when people honor you and you feel in your heart this trouble — it is not a temptation from the enemy, but the voice of a conscience that will not be deceived, the voice of God, Who knocks gently at the door of the soul and asks you, as once He asked Adam in paradise: “Where art thou?” He does not ask where you are in the eyes of men, but where you are in your truth, beneath all the garments others have laid upon your shoulders.
And Saint Isaac the Syrian also said: “Blessed is the man who knows himself, for this knowledge is the foundation and root of all good things.” So do not flee from this trouble, but enter into it as into a narrow cell, and there, in the darkness, wait for a lamp to be kindled — not the light that others give you, but the light from within, which does not go out when the world abandons you.
For it is better to know yourself poor than to be honored by all while known by none.
