| Who we are |
Ss. Cor Iesu Sollemnitas 
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Abba Poemen asked Abba Joseph, saying, 'What am I to do when passions rise up against me, wishing to make me quake? Will I stand up against them, and drive them away, or will I allow them to enter?' The old man said unto him, 'Let them shake you, and do you strive with them.' But to another brother who had come from Thebes, and gone down to Scete, and asked the same old man the same question, he spake differently; and when he returned from Scete to Thebes, he said before all the brothers, 'I went to Abba Joseph, and I asked him, saying, 'If passions draw near to me, will I drive them away so that they may not make me shake, or will I permit them to enter into me?' And he said to me, 'you will not let them draw near to you in any way, but cut them off quickly.'' Now when Abba Poemen, who happened to be there, heard that Abba Joseph had spoken differently to that Theban, he rose up and went again to Abba Joseph, and said to him, 'Abba, have believed in you as in God, and I have revealed to you my thoughts, and behold, you have spoken to that Theban in one way, and to me you have declared the opposite.' The old man said to him, 'Do you not know that I love you?' And he answered and said to him, Yes, I do.' The old man said to him, 'Did you not say to me, Tell me as if you were telling yourself? If, then, thoughts enter into you, and you are mingled with them, and you give and take, and are not injured, they prove you to be one who is tried and chosen especially. Now I spake to you as I would to myself. But there are others whom the passions cannot even approach or touch, nevertheless it helps them to cut them off quickly.'
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