Cabbages

Mark asked Arsenius, "It is right, isn't it, to have nothing unnecessary in one's cell? I saw a brother who had nothing but a few cabbages, and he was rooting them out."

Arsenius said, "It is right, but each should do what is right for his own way of life. If he is not strong enough to endure without the cabbages, he will plant them again."

~~Cabbages by Elizabeth Brandon

Deference

Once Mark's mother came to see him with many attendants. When the hermit went out to receive her, she said, "Abba, tell my son to come here to me, so that I can see him."

The hermit went to Mark's cell, and said to him, "Go on, your mother wants to see you."

Mark was dressed in a torn piece of sackcloth patched with rags, and his head and face were dirty from the smoke of the cooking fire. He came out obediently, but closed his eyes, and greeted his mother and her attendants, saying, "I hope you are well."

None of them, not even his mother, knew who he was. Again she sent a message to the hermit, saying, "Abba, send me my son, I want to see him."

He said to Mark, "Didn't I tell you to go and let your mother see you?"

Mark said to him, "I went as you said, abba. But please, don't give me that order again, for I am afraid of being disobedient to you."

The hermit went and said to his mother, "Your son is the man who came out and greeted you with 'I hope you are well.'" He comforted her, and sent her on her way.

~~Bronze Pokora / Humbleness, 1993, by Zoubek Olbramh.

Hosts of Angels

Mark said to Arsenius, "Why do you go away from us?"

Arsenius replied, "God knows I love you. But I cannot be with God and with men. The countless hosts of angels have only a single will, while men have many wills. So, I cannot leave God, and be with men."

~~Myriads of God's hosts protrayed by Walter Russell in The Bible and Its Story, Vol 5.

O for Obedience

They said that Silvanus had a disciple in Scetis called Mark, who possessed the virtue of obedience in large measure. He was a copyist of old manuscrips: and Silvanus loved him for his obedience.

Silvanus also had seven other disciples, and they were sad that he loved Mark more than them. When the nearby hermits heard that he loved Mark above the others, they took it badly.

One day when they visited him, Silvanus took them with him out of his cell, and began to knock on the door of each of his disciples, saying, "Brother, come out, I have work for you." Not one of them appeared immediately.

When he came to Mark's cell, he knocked, saying, "Mark," and as soon as Mark heard the voice of Silvanus he came out and Silvanus sent him on an errand.

So, Silvanus said to the other hermits, "Where are my other disciples?" He went into Mark's cell, and found a book he had just begun to copy, and he was making the letter O, but when he had heard the voice of Silvanus, he had not finished the line of the O.

The visitors said, "You are right, abba, and we also love the one whom you love, for God loves him too."