There is a poem by a man named [David Budbill] that goes a little bit like this:

I want to be
famous
so that I [can] be
humble
about being
famous.

What good is my
humility
[when I am
stuck
in] this
obscurity?

That’s from a book called [Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse], a great little book with some very unusual poems, but it points to something very important in today’s saint.

On June 19, we commemorate Zenon, our venerable father, who lived about the early to mid-fifth century. One of the Desert Fathers who went about Sketis and Gaza and all the places in Egypt, living as a solitary for the most part. And he had some rules that were given to him by one of his elders that said: Don’t settle near a great man, and don’t settle in a famous place, and don’t dare to erect the foundations of a cell yourself. In other words, he wasn’t to take anything for granted in terms of what the Lord was going to give him, nor did he want to be influenced by anyone famous in order that he might maintain his humility and not get too puffed up by such an association.

Zenon himself was a very, very humble man, someone who was perhaps in the practice of humility that we might call extreme. Although Mr. [Budbill]‘s poem probably makes a good point about most of us wanting to exercise our humility with some degree of fame perhaps, Zenon would have none of it.

The man was someone who was even so concerned about the idea of borrowing some food that he was afraid of the punishment that might ensue. In fact, one day when he was in a cucumber patch, he saw one of the cucumbers and was very hungry and thought to pluck it and eat it. But then it came to him, “If I do this, I’m actually stealing, and if I am stealing, there will probably be punishment that follows. So what should I do?” So he went out and stood in the sun, the burning, scorching-hot sun, for five days. After that five days, he couldn’t bear it any longer, so he thought, “I can’t bear this punishment inflicted upon myself, so how am I going to bear the punishment for stealing, which would certainly be imposed on me?”

At another time, our venerable Father Zenon was considering many, many other things in terms of the spiritual life that he had embarked upon. One of these was the very idea of prayer itself. He was told by an angel that if only he would pray fervently at the very beginning of his prayers for his enemies, that that would ensure that any other petition that he had was sure to be heard. And he followed this for the rest of his life. Around 451 AD, finally realizing that this world had nothing for him, nothing that interested him, he went in entire seclusion and was never seen again until his repose years later.

What can Zenon teach us today? Well, this was a man who was obviously well-attuned to the idea of humility, of not being important in anyone’s eyes or even associating with anyone who was important. Too often in our daily lives, we do just that. Even if we are someone just working a job, we try to ingratiate ourselves with someone who is perhaps more well-noted in the office place, to associate with them so that perhaps others might begin to associate our own efforts with those of the person that is more noted.

Zenon, of course, would have none of this. He believed that in absolute quietude and in absolute disregard for the things of the world was to be heard the still, small voice of our Lord Jesus Christ. We may not be able to go the whole nine yards in that regard, but in terms of humility it’s something that we could all do a little bit more and a little bit better job of acquiring. The rewards will be great, and the things that we think that we’re going to get from the world in that regard, well, ultimately they’re not going to be worth it.