A brother asked Abba Motius, “If I go and live somewhere, how do you want me to conduct myself there?” The elder said, “If you live in a place, do not try to make a name for yourself by saying, ‘I do not go to the synaxis,’ or, ‘I do not eat at the agape.’ Such things create an empty reputation, and afterward you find trouble, because people run wherever they find such practices.” The brother asked, “Then what should I do?” The elder replied, “Wherever you live, follow the others. Whatever you see the devout people whom you trust doing, do that, and you will find rest. This is humility: to be on the same level as they are. Then people will see that you are like everyone else and no one will trouble you.”
Abba Isaac, the disciple of Abba Motius, related this about him; both of them later became bishops. The elder first built a monastery at Heraclea. After withdrawing from there, he went to another place and built again. Through the activity of the devil, a brother there became hostile toward him and troubled him. So the elder withdrew to his own village, built himself a monastery, and shut himself away.
After some time, elders from the place he had left came to ask him to return to his monastery, bringing with them the brother who had been at odds with him. As they approached the place where Abba Sores was, they left their sheepskins near him together with the brother who had troubled Motius. When they knocked, the elder put up a little ladder, peered out, recognized them, and asked, “Where are your sheepskins?” They replied, “There, in that place, with such-and-such a brother.”
As soon as Motius heard the name of the brother who had grieved him, he was filled with joy. He took an axe, broke down his own door, ran to where the brother was, made a prostration before him before the brother could do so, embraced him, and brought him into his cell. For three days he made them glad and rejoiced with them, something he did not ordinarily do. Then he rose and went with them.
Later Motius became a bishop and a wonder-worker. The blessed Cyril also made his disciple Abba Isaac a bishop.