on monasticism

Woe to the man who offers those last goodbyes to his father and mother! They will remain stuck like an odor to his clothes and to his mind at all times. He who returns to say goodbye to his family does not actually say goodbye to them but to the Kingdom. He can no longer enter the Kingdom with the same intensity of zeal and power. And if he goes out to serve while still conscious of an attachment to his family, it becomes a hundred times harder to sever them than if he had done so while he was in the world. It requires a heavy knife to cut the emotional ties that bind a person if already on the road; but if he cuts them while still near his family, the issue is sealed.

—Matthew the Poor, Words For Our Time: The Spiritual Words of Matthew the Poor