September 16, 2026, a brother wanted humility, so he hired a man from the marketplace: follow me, rebuke me, mock me, do not spare me.
Day after day the hired mouth did its work. The monk bowed his head. He whispered that he deserved it. People thought they were watching a great struggler.
Then a stranger – unpaid, uninvited – used the same words.
Rage. Justification. “Who are you to speak to me like that?”
The humiliation he purchased, he could bear. The one he did not arrange unmasked him.
This is the hypocrisy the Desert Fathers keep exposing. We love the crosses we choose. We hate the ones God sends.
Abba Anthony heard a monk praised and tested him with insults. The man could not endure them. Anthony said: you are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but destroyed from within by robbers.
Outward struggle. Inner ruin.
The Lord spoke without softness: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones.” (Matthew 23:27)
We pay for the appearance of humility. We refuse the reality.
“If anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Galatians 6:3)
St. John Climacus saw how vainglory and hypocrisy walk together: we want to be seen as humble more than we want to be humble. The hired mocker leaves us in charge. The free mockery does not. That is why it inflames us. The old man is still alive, still defending a reputation.
Abba Agathon was called a fornicator and a proud man. “Yes, it is very true,” he said. They called him a heretic, and that one charge he refused, because it touched the faith. Everything else he accepted, because it was useful for his soul. He was no longer protecting an image.
The Lord did not bless arranged insults. He said: “Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.” (Matthew 5:11)
Blessed when it comes unbidden.
Anger at an unpaid word means the paid word was never death to self. It was management of self.
What then? Do not despise the exercise you choose. Use it. But do not stop there. When the free mockery comes – from family, parish, a stranger, a look – do not ask first whether it is fair. Ask first: what self am I still protecting?
The Fathers taught the brother to say: it is because of my sins that this is happening to me. Not as despair. As truth. Even an unjust word can serve the soul if we stop defending the corpse of our name.
There is another saying of the Fathers. A disciple paid for insults for three years. At the gate he was insulted for nothing, and he laughed: for three years I have paid to be insulted, and now I receive it free of charge. Abba John said: this is the gate of the Lord; the Fathers entered the city of God through many injuries.
One man raged because his humility was still a costume.
The other laughed because the training had reached the heart.
Which of the two are you when the mockery is no longer something you arranged?
The hired word can train you.
Only the free word tells the truth.
Source: An Orthodox Priest from Romania, Fr. Christopher