Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony: "What should I do?" The old man replied: "Don't trust in your own righteousness, don't care about the past, and control your tongue and your stomach".
It was the custom in the desert that monks, known for their special wisdom, would be approached by others who would ask them how to act in order to attain salvation. Questions along the lines of: Abba, say the word .... What should I do... obviously appear very often in the Apocalypses.
In the above, the questioner is Abba Pambo (who also has some very nice stories about him).
Let's look at the answer he gets from Abba Anthony.
First of all, it is appropriate to consider what the words mean: "Do not trust in vassal justice". This is very important because, whatever it is, we tend to associate justice rather positively, as a virtue worth having and worth living. And St Anthony would probably agree. For his point is not to reject justice as such. It is about not making oneself the centre of justice.
In interpreting this apophthegm, it is worth recalling the words of Saint Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, first chapter, ninth verse: "But in ourselves we have found the sentence of death: not to trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead".
St Anthony points out that man has the capacity to twist even the most beautiful virtue in a peculiar way. When he tries to make himself a point of reference. When he places himself at the centre of a cause, he almost always ends up caricaturing something, twisting something. That is why he advises against using one's own righteousness and trusting in the divine, recalling the admonition of the Apostle of the Gentiles himself.
In the same way, Anthony warns against dwelling too much on the past. It has already happened. Yes, it has left its mark on us in some way, but it is already past and cannot be changed. Focusing too much on it does not lead to good and, moreover, can keep us stuck and prevent us from growing.
Restraining the tongue and the belly, on the other hand, means acting in the present. It is all the more important because it focuses on refraining from doing evil.
To understand this better, it is worth reading the teaching of Evagrius of Pontus on the "Eight Spirits of Evil", among which gluttony appears as one of the first ways of living badly, which can lead to even worse downfalls.
Traces, or rather the origins, of this way of thinking can be found in the words of Abba Anthony, who advises restraint in speech and fasting as a way of living well.
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