known to heaven and earth the holiness that their humility kept hidden.
Because they hide their virtue from men. With regard to the first point, my dear brethren, true piety and their virtue virtue have this property and inclination, that they are always from men, anxious as far as may be to remain hidden from the eyes of men, and to creep out of the light into the darkness. To wish to be looked on as pious, and therefore to make one’s good works public, and to speak and act in a boastful manner, is nothing but hypocrisy and affected piety, of which true goodness, which is founded on humility and self-contempt, knows nothing. Hence saints chose to live in solitude, and made their dwellings in deserts and in caves in the wilderness; and they were wont to go from one country to another, that they might remain unknown and hidden from the eyes of men; for the same reason many of them concealed their noble descent under mean clothing, their great natural gifts under continual silence, the supernatural favors conferred on them by God under the appearance of a childish simplicity, nay, sometimes they actually pretended to be mad and out of their senses.
God has sometimes made known the holiness of His servants.
It has indeed often been the case that God has brought His humble and hidden servants out of the retirement and obscurity they loved so well into the clear light of day, and made them known to the world in order to put the wicked to shame and to encourage the weak by their holy example. Thus the first hermit, St. Paul, after having lived a hundred years in the desert without other company than the wild beasts, was visited and reverently saluted by St. Anthony, to whom an angel had revealed Paul’s great sanctity. Thus the humble servant of God, who had disguised himself as a charcoal burner to escape being recognized, was betrayed by a little child and raised to the dignity of bishop against his will. Thus St. Alexius died in his father’s house after having spent forty years in it unknown, living as a poor mendicant in a closet under the staircase; if God Himself had not taken care to publish this fact after the saint’s death, his heroic humility would have remained concealed from the world. Such too would have been the case with that Mark, who for seven years pretended to be a fool, if his holy wisdom had not been at length discovered; but the day after his secret was found out he was found dead in his hut. In like manner an Egyptian nun named Isidora, simulated folly with such success that for a long time the whole convent looked on her as a fool
