Abba Dioscorus said: “If we put on the heavenly garment, we shall not be found naked. But if we are not found wearing that garment, what shall we do, brothers? Shall we too hear that voice saying, ‘Cast him into the outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’? Great will be our shame if, after so many years of wearing the monastic habit, we are found in that hour of judgment without a wedding garment! Oh, what remorse will seize us then! Oh, what darkness will engulf us before our fathers and brothers as they see us condemned by the angels of punishment! What sorrow will overcome Abba Anthony and Abba Ammun of Nitria, Abba Paul of Phthea, Abba Ammun of Egyptian Arabia, Abba Mios of the Thebaid, Abba Macarius the Alexandrian, Abba Paphnutius of Sidonia, Abba Orsisius of Tychonia, Abba Ammonius the Hennevorite, and all the righteous who will be received into the Kingdom of Heaven, while we are cast into the outer darkness!”
Abba Dioscorus speaks neither of pagans nor of others. He says „we” and he says „brothers,” addressing monks who have worn the schema for years. His fear concerns the one who already has the form, not the one who has not yet heard of it.
Here lies the dogmatic core. The garment is not a quality a person manufactures; it is Christ Himself: „as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27); „put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14). The Fathers’ tradition sees in it the garment of glory Adam lost in Eden, when he said „I was naked” (Gen. 3:10). That nakedness was not of the body but of a being left without the light it had received. On Tabor, „His raiment became white as the light” (Matt. 17:2): the wedding garment is the uncreated light God gives, and man can receive it or refuse it.
The parable of the wedding feast (Matt. 22:11-13) has a detail that should trouble anyone who knows himself to be „inside.” The man without the wedding garment entered the hall, was called, sat at the table. He was not cast out for being uninvited, but for remaining as he was. And when the Master asks him, „he was speechless.” Self-justification, his only defense, has nothing left to say.
For modern man, the „schema” has many names. It is the label „believer,” the job, the title, the spiritual lifestyle, theological knowledge, the manner of speaking about the spiritual life. Psychology has exact words for this. Jung calls persona the social mask through which a person presents himself to the world and comes to take for his face. Winnicott speaks of the false self, which develops to protect and ends by standing in for the person. Many live for years in this costume, and the moment it comes apart, through illness, loss, silence or death, feels like being undressed. And shame, researchers say, is exactly this: not the sense of having done wrong, but the sense of being seen as you are.
Philosophy has long known the difference. In the Republic, Glaucon asks for a cruel test: let the just man be judged unjust and the unjust man praised as just, so that we may see what remains of justice when reputation is gone. St. Paul names the same danger: „having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5). And the Latin word habitus, which means both „garment” and „settled state of the soul,” says something important about Aristotle: virtue is a hexis, a disposition acquired by repeated acts, and cannot be borrowed at the last minute. The Fathers add what Aristotle did not know: the weaving is done together with grace, and the thread is repentance.
Dioscorus then pictures a scene that is not of torture but of shame before the fathers and brothers, with the names of Anthony, Ammun, Macarius set before us. The meaning is that the saints are not indifferent and that those who stand in the light do not rejoice at another’s loss. More deeply, it shows that judgment is not a secret procedure but the disclosure of truth before all. St. Basil the Great says darkness is not a creature but the absence of light. „The outer darkness” is not kindled by God; it is the place of the one who has remained in what he chose, when the light is present.
But Dioscorus’ saying is a question, not a sentence: „what shall we do, brothers?” The answer is not despair but the present time. The prodigal does not make his own robe; the Father commands: „Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him” (Luke 15:22). And in Revelation, Christ counsels the one who thinks himself rich: „knowest not that thou art… naked… I counsel thee to buy of Me… white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear” (Rev. 3:17-18). The garment is given to the one who admits his nakedness, not to the one who defends his costume.
The question remains that no one can ask in another’s place: beneath the form one wears, who would be found in the hour when the form no longer has spectators?
