Basil the Great (d. 379) was one of the four great doctors of the Western Church. He founded his own monastic colony whose rules are still followed by monasteries of the East. He wrote important theological works in fighting heresies.
He wrote to his friend Saint Gregory of Nyssa, 
wryly describing the difficulties he was having with his monastic life on the river Iris: “I blush to tell you what I myself do night and day in my retreat. For I have renounced city occupations, as the occasions of my innumerable misfortunes. But I have not been able to detach myself from myself. I am like those who, on the sea, because they are unaccustomed to sailing, but everywhere they are ill at ease and feel equally sick, for their own bile and their own nausea has followed them. That’s about what has happened to us here: we brought out own domestic troubles with us, and are subject to the same troubles everywhere, to such an extent that we have not profited much from our isolation.”
Wow! Don’t you find that to be the case with you? “I have not been able to detach myself from myself!” Our own bile and nausea follow us! We bring our own domestic troubles with us. Thanks be to God for His grace!
Your thoughts?
Dr. Larry Dixon