Ascetic Works 3-1 part 1/3

Those who dwell in the heavenly realm fix their gaze upon labors, not upon the belly nor upon anxiety for things that perish;

not like those who make their prayers for the sake of gain, supposing that piety is a means of profit; but with the mind's vision they partake of the nourishment of things on high—pure festal companies, encircled with light from the divine glory.

And you yourself, O Eulogios, initiate into the virtues, nourishing your sacred being upon the radiance of the highest things, and through the gathering together of your thoughts stripping off the burden of the flesh—knowing that the matter of the flesh becomes the food of the thoughts—and as one who has grasped the enemy's stratagems by the goad of labors, you appoint me to become a mouth for your works against them. And were it not a bold command of love to break, I would have declined such a sea-voyage of this crossing;

but since one ought rather to be persuaded by those of like soul, and not to set oneself against them,

be you for me the things toward God, that an utterance may be given me in the opening of my mouth; and I will be for you the things of obedience, that it may be granted you to reap the fruits of the sowing.

The first of the glorious contests is exile, especially when you go forth toward it even alone, athletically stripping off fatherland, kindred, and possessions, standing before the glorious contests.

If you thus begin, walking according to God upon the path of the beginning with fervent faith and a divine Spirit, and preserving this safe to the end of endurance, the soul will be as one whose wings of virtue are gilded over, departing from its own places and hastening to fly to heaven itself.

But the begetter of evil contrives to clip the wings of this way of life, holding up before you as in a mirror the land from which your kindred came forth, especially in the assaults that befall through sickness;

and in the home-staying of your most fervent departure he draws you back for a little, until he discerns the soul growing seasick amid the afflictions; and then, bringing on the night of the thoughts, the night-raven darkens the soul against the ray of the better things.

But if he draws up his battle line against you when you are alone in the wrestling-school of the desert, and it happens that the body is wounded by sickness, all the more does he make your exile harsh to the soul,

suggesting that the things of virtue are set right not by place but by manner, and that, having at home the comfort that comes from kindred, there you could without toil have preserved the prizes of renunciation;

there too would be a gentle service for your weakness, and not, as now, hardship and painful fainting;

amid all this, especially since zeal for hospitality has grown scarce among the brotherhood;

wherefore he says above all: ‘Depart, bringing joy and glory to your kindred, to whom you have unfeelingly left behind unbearable grief;

for many, even without fleeing their fatherland, have chosen virtue from the midst of their kindred.’

But he who has put on the purple of afflictions in the battle line of exile, and is crowned in his labors with hope through faith and endurance, shakes off from things external the snow-flurries of these thoughts of thanksgiving; and the more they burrow to turn back the heart, so much the more let us drown them out with psalmody.

having emptied them out, and let them break through the thanksgiving that is in endurance—and so thereafter, with much license and from what is fitting, they would widen their snares.

Therefore let him who is beginning to lay hold of virtue reckon also the war that comes against it, lest, being found untrained, he be dragged down as one unprepared.

For the courage of virtue is praiseworthy even when there is peace, but its valor is exceedingly praiseworthy when war stands upon it;

for this is virtue, made manifest not only through what it accomplishes, but also through the dread things by which it is warred upon: dispassionate is he who through very many wars has conquered suffering, but passion-ridden is he who claims to possess a virtue that is unwarred-against;

for corresponding to the battle line of the virtuous generalship of labors, the wickedness of the adversaries is also drawn up in array;

a heart that has no war has been deprived of being in virtue.

For virtue (aretē) has been so named from valorous deeds (aristeia), as a name denoting action.

Virtue does not seek the praises that come from men, for it does not delight in honor, the mother of evils.

At any rate, the beginning of love of honor is the pleasing of men, and the end of it is pride.

For he who demands honors exalts himself, and such a one does not know how to bear contempt;

the appetite for honor is a fantasy, for he who loves it imagines an inheritance for himself.

Let honor be for you the labor of the virtues, and dishonor the praise that comes by self-will; seek not glory from the flesh, you who are dissolving the passions of the flesh, but seek the better thing, and glory will be yours. He who wishes to be honored envies the one who outshines him,

and to this one he heaps up hatred through jealousy—he who is overcome by excessive honors wishes no one to be preferred above himself, but snatches the first places lest he appear inferior; he cannot bear to honor the man of repute when absent, but even in his own labors he boasts of low-creeping glory. Insult is to the lover-of-glory a most piercing slaughter, and he by no means escapes wrath from it.

Such a one serves a barbarian mistress, and has been sold to many masters—to arrogance, and envy, and jealousy, and the aforesaid choice band of spirits. But he who shatters the spirit of honor with humility will pull down the whole legion of demons; he who through humility offers himself as a slave to all will be conformed to Him who humbled Himself and took the form of a slave.

If you measure yourself by the smallest measure, you will not measure yourself against your companion; and he who uncovers the weakness of his soul with lamentations will not think great things about his own labors.

The demons bring meanness and insult upon the humble-minded, so that, not bearing the contempt, they may flee humility; but he who through humility nobly bears dishonors is rather lifted up by them to the height of wisdom.

David, when insulted, did not answer back, but even restrained Abishai from vengeance.

And you too, when insulted, do not return insult, but rather rightly calm even the one who would avenge you;

bear the insult—it is your advancement—and with your lips shut the door of wrath;

you shall not answer those who threaten at all, that by silence you may put to sleep the smoldering lips; then you will pain those who threaten and insult, when you put a bridle on your own jaws.

For you, by keeping silent, will not be devoured by the insult, while he is bitten all the more by your silence, when you patiently bear the insolence of the one who insults;

shake off the praise of men from within, that you may shake off before it the thought that loves display.

Watch over self-complacency especially in stillness, lest at any time, being magnified, you set at naught the one who behaved insolently.

A certain one of the brethren was insulted by a devout man, and having endured the injustice he went away both sharing in joy and in grief—joy, because being wronged he was insulted and was not provoked in return; grief, because the devout man was deceived and, having deceived, rejoiced.

Consider with me that the deceiver too suffered two things: in that he provoked one who altogether rejoiced, and in that, as for the one who was not provoked in return, he was rather grieved.

When the demons see that we are not inflamed at the same scraping of insults, then, standing by in stillness, they pry up the ruling faculty, so that with those toward whom we were at peace when present, we may grow insolent toward them when they are gone.

Whenever, then, you carry out contradiction or insult toward your brother, reckon yourself to have stumbled, lest while keeping stillness you find a battle of thoughts in your heart—one reproaching the manner of the insult, the other reproaching back that the dreadful things were done because you did not return insult.

Whenever provocation embitters the brethren in a cenobium, then the thoughts press in to call the solitary blessed, that, having emptied out long-suffering, they may also cut him off from love.

But he who overturns anger with long-suffering and grief with love overturns two evil beasts that war with rage by twofold acts of valor;

he who entreats and falls on his knees that he may drive away the anger of the one who has been provoked, drives them both away from himself, for he who makes peace among those who are angry wars against the spirit of anger;

but he will be wroth at this man with the wrath of his own kind, rousing it boldly against him, because he has taken upon himself the battle of his neighbors. Yet he who bears with the bold-hearted for the sake of peace forces himself to become a son of peace;

but the bond of peace is to be sought not among men only, but also in your body, and in your spirit, and in your soul.

For when you unite the bond of this triad of yours in peace, then, as one united by the commandment of the divine Trinity, you hear:

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’ For indeed, if by your labors you make at peace the flesh that lusts against the spirit, you will have renown of the beatitudes beyond the age, having conquered the war in your body that wars against the law of your mind and takes you captive to the law of sin that is in your members.

Great is the bond of peace, in which joy too is united, illuminating the eye of the understanding for the contemplation of better things. If, then, we acquire the peaceful joy that is in labors, we shall by it thankfully repel the hardships that come, and shall not admit the bellowing demon of grief, who, maiming us especially in afflictions, leaps upon the soul and prepares a place for the spirit of acedia, so that they may darken the soul and at the same time gather up the labors.

Let there be, then, written upon our heart as a law, the joy of peace, that sinks grief and drives away hatred and makes wrath vanish and dissolves acedia and exchanges sorrow.

For lurking in peaceful long-suffering, and lying as in a calm harbor upon thanksgiving and endurance, it is a sea of virtues, drowning the opposing array of the devil by the cross.

But consider with me that the opposite joy stands by in a troubled form, lest somehow, being overshadowed with one thing instead of another, you be deceived into holding it.

For the demons fashion themselves even into the likeness of spiritual gifts, in order that by the counterfeit shadow they may lead the mind astray.

For a spiritual joy comes upon the heart with no occasion set before it, because it finds the ruler of the godly grief lifted off its guard; and afterwards it delivers the soul to the spirit of grief, because it has made the soul captive of the spiritual joy.

And I say this too, as experience of the things in question dictated to one of the brethren: that in place of rejoicing in the Lord, the avenger introduces in its stead a joy of his own.

The griefs of evil are twofold, yoked to each work: the one comes upon the heart with no grievous cause being seen, the other is born thrust forward by strange causes; but the grief that is according to God recalls the soul with tears, not accepting the contrary joy and grief, but is anxious about the death that is to come, and the judgment;

and this little by little it gapes wide in expectation.

Desires that have failed plant griefs;

but prayers and thanksgivings wither these away;

between those who are angry, grief is shaken in the midst.

He, then, who first comes to his senses, if he rises from the passion and gives a hand to the other in apology, drives away the bitter grief.

Grief is a disease of soul and of flesh: the one it carries off as captive, the other it withers on the spot.

Out of contrarieties grief is begotten, and out of grief wrath; and from these are born delirium and reviling;

if you wish to trample down grief and wrath together, embrace the long-suffering of love, and put on the joy of guilelessness; let your joy not be grief to another;

he who rejoices in injustice will lament in his good fortune, and he who endures griefs, suffering unjustly, will splendidly exult;

for the things to come are contrary to those present.

In afflictions be thankful above all, for through them you perceive more clearly the grace of help.

For thus, shaking off the afflictions that come with thanksgiving, you will not dim the most radiant beauty of fortitude; whenever a demon dashes a scourge against your flesh, he is found to be the procurer of a very great reward for you, if you receive the blow as an occasion for thanksgiving.

For thus you will also put him to flight from you. And that your reward may rain down more abundantly through endurance, let your endurance be general over all your courageous labors, because through every kind of evil acedia too wages war against you as a counter-general, and spying out all your labors it tempts; and whomever it does not find nailed fast to endurance, this one it weighs down under itself and bends low; but if the demon of acedia grows faint against the endurance of labors, then again the beast bites at the achievement with self-conceit (presumption);

if, then, by the understanding of carefulness you drive this away, you will also drive away the vainglorious spirit in it at the time of the synaxis (assembly for prayer).

Whenever the spirit of acedia falls upon you, it votes that psalmody is burdensome to the soul, and casts up sloth as the opponent of zeal, so that, touching the flesh with haste, it may lay it down to recollection, as though it were worn out, forsooth, by some cause.

Whenever, then, we are awake by night, let us not lay down the synaxis to acedia, lest the demons standing by gather the tares of the thoughts and at the same time sow them down in the heart;

for whenever we lose the assembly of hymns, then we gather together the muster of the thoughts;

having been roused before the synaxis, let us train up beforehand in the heart thoughts of light, that, being made ready, we may with watchful understanding stand by the psalmody.

At one time the psalm is to be uttered with a rush in watchfulness, at another it is to be tested by lingering meditation in psalmody;

for according to the ambush of the adversary, we too must of necessity transform ourselves, because at one time they suggest that the tongue be driven on, when acedia encompasses the soul, and at another they incite the words to be sung melodiously, while the noetic eye takes its nourishment, as it were its strength, from the light.

For he who stretches himself out toward the vision of the things on high will receive a more keen-sighted eye, after the example of Elisha.

When a hostile thought stands by your heart, do not, through prayer, seek one thing instead of another, but whet the sword of tears against the enemy;

for thus, if we dash most vehemently into the battle, we shall make it depart from us more swiftly.

Love beauty (do good work) together with the work of your hands, and especially the remembrance of prayer;

for the former is not always possible, but the latter has the unceasing resource of activity.

In your work disturb the body, lest you also disturb together with it the heart's prayer.

Just as the outer man within us works with his hands so as not to burden anyone, so let the inner man work within the mind, so as not to burden the mind.

For the thoughts then offer their own activity to the soul, whenever they find it idle of the thoughts that are according to God.

Plough the works of your hands toward love of mankind, and the mind of the reasoning faculty toward love of wisdom, that the one may be a hospitality to strangers and a burning-up of sloth, the other a general of contemplation and a casting-out of thoughts;

let us rebuke the pleasures of the thoughts with boldness, turning all our anger against them, lest, receiving with pleasure the things from them, we become on the contrary gentle toward them.

Prepare yourself to be gentle and a fighter—the one toward your own kind, the other toward the enemy;

for in this lies the use of the irascible part: in fighting against the serpent according to enmity;

and in this lies also the fairness of the gentle man: in being long-suffering toward the brother according to love, and warring against the thought.

Let the gentle man, then, be a fighter, his gentleness being distinguished from the guileful thoughts, just as also his fighting is distinguished from those of his own kind by nature;

do not turn the use of the irascible part to that which is against nature, so as to be angry indeed at your brother, after the likeness of the serpent, but to befriend the serpent according to the consent given to the thoughts.

The gentle man, even if he suffers dreadful things, does not depart from love;

for on account of this he is long-suffering and forbears, is kind and endures.

For if long-suffering belongs to love, fighting-with-rage does not belong to love;

for rage rouses up grief and wrath, but love diminishes the three.

If you have a firm foundation in love, attend rather to this than to the one who trips you up;

with fear and with love serve God—the one as to a Master and Judge, the other as to one who loves mankind and a Nourisher;

he who has acquired the virtues of love takes captive the passions of the base; and he who has these three from the Holy Trinity—faith, hope, love—will be a triple-walled city, towered up with the virtues.

You will be shown to be loving not only in not taking from another, but you will be recognized as renunciant in giving unsparingly; in your giving of material things, strive to cast pure seeds, lest, instead of wheat, a nettle come forth for you.

In what you give, remember God, both the giver and the receiver, that He may reckon to you, with praises, the rewards of renunciation.

The man without possessions has the pleasure of life free from care, but the lover of possessions has anxiety, the pain of wealth, throughout;

then will you drive the populace of thoughts captive, when you do not give your heart to cares about material things;

then too will you bear the cross undistracted, when you deny the desire of acquiring; but the thought of material things divines old age for you,

and sicknesses, that it may divide your hope in God with money.

Let him who has chosen to practice renunciation be walled with faith, and made strong with love, and made firm with hope.

For faith is not an abandonment, but the substance of better things in the hope of endurance, and in the love of life.

Whenever you renounce all the outward material things, attend to the gloomy thoughts that reproach you with poverty, and bring upon you want and meanness and inglory, in order that the murderous ones may guilefully work in you a change of mind about so splendid a virtue.

If, then, you give heed with the understanding of the contest, you will rather find this: that through the very things by which they reproach you, through these your crown is woven for you;

for indeed, in renouncing, you renounce for the sake of those very things by which, as contests, you are reproached.

not by mere exercise are the contests joined together, but in the wrestling of the thoughts too the matter of the crown is sought.

Judge the thoughts at the tribunal of the heart, so that, when the robbers are destroyed, the chief robber may be afraid;

for indeed he who is an exact examiner of the thoughts is also a true lover of the commandments.

Whenever, then, a thought hard to discern stands by your heart, then kindle against it intense labors all the more;

for either, not bearing the heat as something hostile, it will run away, or it will endure this as being native to the straight way.

There are times when the demons, throwing a seemingly good thought into the heart, and immediately transforming themselves, pretend to oppose it, in order that, from the opposition, you may suppose that they also know the reflections of your heart;

and not only this, but that they may sit in judgment, judging your conscience, as though the evil had been overcome by the good through the opposition;

and there are times again when they hint at their own contrivance to you, that in your own eyes you may seem to be prudent.

When the thoughts transfer you to the place they have suggested that we love, then they make you repent again, that they may make us unstable on every side, and unfruitful.

Therefore let us not flit ourselves from place to place, but let us bend rather toward stillness and labors, because it is from our own slothfulness that the thoughts take their power against us.

But he who has known the trial of a thought, let him remain in the place in which he was called, with God; while he who has not known it walks still in conflict.

Let the transfer of places be toward the more spiritual, and not toward the more restful;

for endurance and long-suffering and love give thanks in afflictions;

but acedia and frivolity and self-love rejoice in restful comforts.

The restless man is warred upon in his soul through the senses concerned with sights, but the lover of stillness, guarding the senses, wars against the thoughts.

Let your ruler (governing mind), then, gather the order of the senses under the ordinance of the law, lest by look and by hearing you stir up scourges of evils for your soul;

existing in two substances, guard yourself in distributing to each its order, that the one may excel, and the other may not gainsay, and do not give your commands to the tyrant, for when this is given to its fire, you will pay back even the last farthing.

When, warring against the causes of the passions, you put them to flight, let not an evil thought magnify you, lest somehow, having trusted a spirit of error, you be driven out of your senses also;

but seek to reckon up the excesses concerning the things in which you labor, that you be not robbed, through what is within, of the consummations of your achievements.

Some, having been well spoken of for their achievements, in time grew slack in their labors through acedia, and the good report passed on, but the labors were dissolved.

Some, hard-pressing themselves for the sake of the swelling pomp of good deeds, were reckoned great; and the conscience of the soul was ulcerated, while the disease of good report was enlarged, and the thoughts, leading the soul astray from its wounds, carried off the labors amid the good reports.

Whenever those most given to labor grow rich in honors from men, then at that very time the demons, having contrived dishonors, bring them on, so that, coming from the honors, they may not bear the dishonors, nor sustain the insults.

Whenever you give great repentance over your sins, then the thoughts, magnifying the contests of your labors, make your sins small, and often cover them with forgetfulness, or even signify that these have been forgiven, in order that, slackening in your labors, you may not reckon up the lamentations over your faults, to howl against them all the more.

But he who fights as a boxer to cut off the passions that have fallen upon him will marshal more men-at-arms of the passions to the battle.

but keep the remembrance of your sin—the mourning—toward your humbling, that, being humbled, you may of necessity cut off pride.

If anyone of those who have done lawless things wishes to live afterward in the best way, let him stand directly opposite his deeds, by an exchange for the better things;

for indeed he who sets the directly opposite action against each wickedness shoots the dragon with the prudent quiver of the virtues; and the sharpest weapon of the beast is vainglory, shooting down the labors, which he who has forestalled it by the hidden generalships of his works has drawn near to bring down the whole head of the devil.

Seal the spices of your labors with silence, lest, loosed by the tongue, they be plundered by glory;

hide your tongue in the practical manner of asceticism;

for indeed, by keeping silent, you would have your labors—those trustworthy fellow-livers—as witnesses of your life.

Let him who has no one to whom to bear witness from his present labors not bear witness to himself by the tongue;

for some, having stripped themselves of the labors of hard discipline, as a cloak for their slothfulness compare in time the deeds of bygone years, unreliably furnishing as evident witnesses works that are not present.

Just as you hide your sins from men, so also hide your labors from them;

for indeed the counter-art of the hidden things of the heart—the secret trippings-up and the counter-wrestlings—prop themselves up against them;

but if we hide our transgressions with safety, while we uncover, to our peril, our labors against them, then in both we are doing the contrary.

But you are ashamed of the publicizing of shameful things, lest somehow what is profitable to your soul should bring reproach and contempt.

Fear also the showing-off of your labors, lest somehow a man-pleasing accusation should bring upon you the ruin of the soul;

but if you reveal even to God alone the falls of your shame, do not reveal to men the contests against them, lest they be thought to be the crowns of victory.

Let those who receive the power of their labors from grace not suppose that they have this as from their own strength;

for the cause of all good things to us is the word of the commandments, just as the cause of evil things is the deceitful one of the castings-away.

Whatever good things, then, you accomplish, offer thanksgiving to the cause of good things;

but whatever evils trouble you, cast them upon the originator of these.

To the end of every affair, assign thanksgiving to the Better One, that, your offering being presented lawfully, wickedness may be put to shame.

For he who has joined thanksgiving to his action will have the treasure of his heart impregnable, having towered up a double wall against wickedness.

Praiseworthy is this man, who has yoked the gnostic (contemplative) to the practical, that from both springs the region of the soul may be watered toward virtue;

for the gnostic gives wings to the noetic substance by the contemplation of better things, while the practical mortifies the members that are upon the earth—fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil, evil desire;

those, then, who are fenced about by the full armor through both of these will thereafter easily tread down the wickedness of the demons.

The demons make war on the soul through the thoughts, and those are warred against more grievously through endurance; and growing fearful, they thereafter approach the battle warily, dreading the strong general of the fight.

If you wish to play the general against the phalanx of the demons, fence the gates of your soul with stillness, and put your ear to the words of fatherly counsel, that you may then all the more learn to burn up the thorns of the thoughts, after you have hearkened to fatherly admonition.

Be not a judge of deeds, but an examiner of words.

...lest they draw you away from profitable admonition.

Do not refuse to be admonished, even if you are a gnostic (man of knowledge);

for if the practical is unyoked from the gnostic, there is need of Him who yokes the harmony of the two kinds of virtues at the dread judgment-seat of the Judgment.

He who shakes the fatherly commandment out of his ear will also be disobedient to the lawful commandment; do not delight merely to talk of the achievements of the Fathers, but also demand of yourself to be a most diligent worker of them.

He who more diligently inquires what sort of thought is opposed to what sort of labor is found to be a craftsman in the wrestling against error; and in all your noetic labors, in whichever you fall short, the one who has stripped this one bare slips in in its place.

Remember to keep the heart safe by the understanding of the labors, lest forgetfulness of the care for better things, having plundered it, deliver it to the captivity of the thoughts;

for forgetfulness leaps upon wickedness from the captivity, so that, the mind being stolen away by it, this one (wickedness) may readily slip in; a mind stolen away from God, and removed far from remembrance, also sins indiscriminately through the outer senses;

for such a one is unable to discipline his hearing and his tongue, because he has let go from the outer things the love-charm of labors.

He who loves to listen out for the one who blames so-and-so, the two work together with two co-working spirits;

for evil-hearing happens to be a fellow-worker of accusation, and they love one another to the destruction of the heart.

Fence your ears against slanders, lest you sin doubly together with them—accustoming yourself to a dreadful passion, and not checking those from their tongue-wagging.

The mocker plunders the soul of better things, burrowing into a rotten ear with slanders;

but he who escapes the reviling tongue of his neighbor also puts to flight his own reviling;

he who lends pleasant ears to the reviler milks the poison of the beast into his ears.

Let not your ear taste of this bitter antidote, lest somehow you too mix up such a thing for another; do not let your ear be bewitched by slanders, lest, sold to passion, you be enslaved to manifold passions;

for one passion out of the many, having found a place in you, brings in others also into the same fold;

then is the ruler (mind) enslaved by a multitude of evils, whenever, being yoked to a passion, it unyokes the labors.