…St Simon Stylites chose for his retirement to live upon a pillar forty cubits high and practiced such penance there as the like had never been known before. He was continually exposed to all the inconvenience of heat and cold; he passed whole Lents without eating or drinking, and added so many other austerities to these, that some, thinking it impossible for a man to undergo such rigorous penances, doubted whether or not he was really a man. Several fathers of the desert hearing of this strange new way of living, met to consul about it; and the result of their debate was to send a messenger to him in their names, who should say to him: What new kind of life is this that you lead? Why have you forsaken the high road marked out to us by so many saints, and taken this by-way which never man trod before? The fathers of the desert, from whom I come, have met in full assembly about you, and command you to come down from your pillar, to live like them, and to distinguish yourself no longer by such singularities…..He (messenger) had scare finished his words, “the fathers of the desert have ordered you to come down from your pillar,” but the saint put himself in a posture of descending and obeying their orders. The messenger seeing this great obedience, put the second part of his commission into execution, and spoke thus to the servant of God: “Take courage, father, and continue this sort of life with the same generosity you have begun to embrace it; it is God that has called you, your obedience declares it, and all the fathers of the desert are of this opinion.” Let us take notice here, on the one hand, how readily Stylites obeys, how soon he abstained from a holy action, to which he really believed God had called him; and on the other, in what esteem the ancient fathers held obedience and submission, since they really believed they needed no other proof of God’s having called him; and on the contrary, they require no other sign but disobedience to their orders, to conclude that his vocation was not from heaven. –St Alphonsus Rodriguez ‘The Practice of Christian & Religious Perfection III’

St Alphonsus Rodriguez