He was calm and more cheerful than Joseph had ever known him, and he grew more and more so. One evening as it was growing dark — they had already eaten and prayed — he called out to Joseph and asked him to sit beside his pallet for a while.
“I want to tell you something,” he said cheerfully. He seemed wakeful and not at all tired. “Do you remember, Joseph, the time you were so miserable in your cell near Gaza and tired of your life? And then you fled, and decided to find old Dion and tell him your story? And in the cenobite settlement you met the old man whom you asked to direct you to Dion Pugil? You remember. And was it not like a miracle that the old man turned out to be Dion himself? I want to tell you now how that happened. Because you see, it was strange and like a miracle for me too.
“You know what it is like when an ascetic and father confessor grows old and has listened to so many confessions from sinners who think him sinless and a saint, and don’t know that he is a greater sinner than they are. At such times all his work seems useless and vain to him, and everything that once seemed important and sacred — the fact that God had assigned him to this particular place and honored him with the task of cleansing human souls of their filth — all that seems to him too much of an imposition. He actually feels it as a curse, and by and by he shudders at every poor soul who comes to him with his childish sins. He wants to get rid of the sinner and wants to get rid of himself, even if he has to do it by tying a rope to the branch of a tree. That is how you felt at the time. And now the hour of confession has come for me too, and I am confessing: it happened that way to me also. I too thought I was useless and spiritually dead. I thought I could no longer bear to have people flocking to me so trustfully, bringing me all the filth and stench of human life that they could not cope with, and that I too could no longer cope with.
“I had often heard talk of a hermit named Josephus Famulus. People also flocked to him for confession, I heard, and many preferred him to me, because he was said to be a gentle, merciful fellow who asked nothing of them and did not berate them, but treated them like brothers, merely listened to them and dismissed them with a kiss. That was not my way, as you well know, and the first few times I heard stories about this Josephus, his method seemed to me rather foolish and infantile. But now that I had begun to doubt my own way, it behooved me not to pass judgment on this method of Joseph’s, or to set up my own as superior to it. What kind of powers did this man have, I wondered. I knew he was younger than I, but still ripe in years. That reassured me, for I would not have found it easy to trust a young man. But I did feel drawn to this Josephus Famulus. And so I decided to make a pilgrimage to him, to confess my misery to him and ask him for advice or, if he gave no advice, perhaps to receive consolation and strength from him. The very decision did me good, and relieved me.
“I set out on my journey and made my way toward the place where his cell was said to be. But meanwhile Brother Joseph had been having the same experience as myself, and had done exactly what I was doing; he had taken flight in order to seek advice from me. When I ran into him, under to be sure odd circumstances, he was enough like the man I had expected for me to recognize him. But he was a fugitive; things had gone badly with him, as badly as for me, or perhaps worse, and he was not at all inclined to hear confessions. Rather, he was all agog to make a confession of his own, and to place his distress in another’s hands. That was a singular disappointment to me, and I was very sad. For if this Joseph, who did not recognize me, had also grown tired of his service and was in despair over the meaning of his life — did that not seem to mean that both of us amounted to nothing, that both of us had lived uselessly, were both failures?
“I am telling you what you already know — let me be brief. I stayed alone that night while you were shown hospitality by the cenobites. I meditated, and put myself into Joseph’s mind, and I thought: what will he do if he learns tomorrow that his errand is in vain and he has vainly placed his faith in Pugil; if he learns that Pugil too is a fugitive and subject to temptation? The more I put myself into his place, the sorrier I was for Joseph, and the more it seemed to me that God had sent him to me so that I might understand and cure him, and in doing so cure myself. After coming to this conclusion I was able to sleep; by then half the night was gone. Next day you joined up with me and have become my son.
