Fifty Spiritual Homilies 1 part 8/19

but if they remain in the marketplaces and are mocked or detained by those they meet, the door is shut and no one opens to them—so also those who press on toward our Master Christ, the truly Beloved, to reach Him, ought to despise and overlook all other things.

And just as those who enter the palace before the king, being counts or prefects, are in much fear, how they shall give their answers and not, stumbling in their defense, be subjected to reckoning and punishment;

but the rustic and common folk who have never beheld a ruler live in freedom from care—so indeed this world also which is under heaven, from kings to the poor, being ignorant of the glory of Christ, has its care about the affairs of life;

and one does not quickly remember the day of judgment.

But those who enter in thought to the judgment seat of Christ, where His throne is, and are continually before Him, are always in fear and trembling lest they stumble in anything concerning His holy commandments.

And just as the rich of the earth, when they have brought many fruits into their storehouses, again work each day for more, that they may have abundance and not be in want;

but if they are confident in the wealth laid up in the storehouses and grow negligent, not gathering more, but consuming what is laid up, they quickly fall into penury and poverty;

wherefore, getting income and bringing it in, they ought to labor and gather, lest they come to want—so it is in Christianity, that one should taste of the grace of God;

for it says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.

And this taste is an active power of the Spirit ministering in the heart in full assurance.

For as many as are sons of light and of the ministry of the new covenant in the Holy Spirit, these learn nothing from men;

for grace itself inscribes in their hearts the laws of the Spirit.

They ought not, then, to be assured only by the Scriptures written with ink, but the grace of God also inscribes upon the tablets of the heart the laws of the Spirit and the heavenly mysteries.

For the heart governs and reigns over the whole bodily organism, and when grace takes possession of the pastures of the heart, it reigns over all the members and the thoughts;

for there is the mind and all the thoughts of the soul and its expectation, wherefore grace also passes through into all the members of the body.

So again, as many as are sons of darkness, sin reigns in the heart and passes through into all the members (for out of the heart come evil reasonings), and thus, being poured out, it darkens the person.

But those who say that evil is not a companion growing up together with the person—let them neither take thought for the morrow nor desire;

for at a certain time evil ceased troubling within them, suggesting some desire, so that the person affirmed with an oath that such a passion no longer rises up against me;

and after a little while he was inflamed with desire, so that he was found in this regard to be also a perjurer.

But as many as deny this are convicted and mocked by sin itself, which does not wish to be triumphed over;

for evil is eager to escape notice and to hide in the understanding of the person.

If, then, anyone loves God, He also mingles His own love with this one;

and once trusted by Him, He adds to this one the heavenly faith, and the person becomes twofold.

As many things, then, as you offer Him from your members, He also mingles like members from His own with your soul, that you may be one doing and loving and praying all things purely.

For man is of great worth.

See how great is the heaven and the earth, the sun and the moon, and the Lord took no good pleasure in them, but rests in man alone.

Man, therefore, is more honorable than all created things; and perhaps I will dare to say, not only than the visible creations, but also than the invisible, that is, the ministering spirits.

For it was not concerning Michael and Gabriel the archangels that He said, Let us make according to Our image and likeness, but concerning the intellectual substance of man, the immortal soul, I say.

For it is also written that the camps of angels are round about those who fear Him.

Now the creatures that appear are bound by a certain unchangeable nature.

The heaven was once for all appointed, the sun, the moon, the earth [, and the Lord took no good pleasure in them];

but they cannot be changed beyond that for which they were created, nor do they have will.

But you, on this account, are according to the image and likeness of God, since just as God is self-determining and does what He wills (if He wills, by His authority He could send the righteous into hell and the sinners into the kingdom;

but He neither chooses nor accepts this;

for the Lord is a righteous judge), so you also are self-determining and, if you will, to perish.

If you wish to blaspheme, to make poisons and kill someone, no one opposes you or hinders you.

If anyone wills, he submits himself to God and travels the way of righteousness and masters the desires;

for this mind is an antagonist, able with a strong reasoning to overcome the impulses of evil and the shameful desires.

For if in a great house, where there are vessels of gold and silver and diverse raiment, gold and silver, young men and maidens dwelling together constrain their own mind (even though nature, because of indwelling sin, desires all things), and through the human fear of the masters they restrain the impulses of their desires, how much more, where there is the fear of God, ought one to fight against and oppose the indwelling evil;

for God has commanded you the things that are possible to you.

Now the nature of irrational animals is bound;

for instance, the nature of the serpent is bitter and venomous; all serpents, then, are of this kind.

The wolf is wont to seize; all wolves are of the same nature.

The lamb, being harmless, is seized; all lambs are of the same nature.

The dove is guileless and innocent; all doves are of the same nature.

But man is not so.

One is like a wolf seizing, and another is like a lamb being seized;

both come to be from the same race of humanity.

There is one not content with his own wife, but also committing fornication;

and there is another who does not even allow a desire to arise upon his heart.

There is one who plunders his neighbor's goods;

and there is another who, for the sake of godliness, gives away even his own.

You see how changeable this nature is.

It inclines toward evil, and it inclines again toward good;

and through both it is suitably disposed to turn toward whatever actions it wishes.

The nature, then, is receptive both of good and of evil—of either divine grace or the opposing power—but it is not under compulsion.

Since formerly Adam himself, being in purity, reigned over his thoughts;

[but now thoughts] are held fast by evil.

It remains, then, that you ought to seek a lamp that it may be kindled, and find the pure thoughts;

for these are the natural ones which the Lord made.

Those reared by the sea have learned to swim, and when surges and waves rise up, they are not dismayed;

but those unaccustomed to these, when even a little tempest comes on, are afraid and are drowned.

So are the Christians.

Just as the mind of a three-year-old child cannot contain or grasp the mind of a perfect sage, since much time has passed in between, so also Christians, as infant babes, look upon the world, regarding the measure of grace;

for they are strangers to this age.

But their city and their rest are elsewhere.

For Christians have the comfort of the Spirit—tears and mourning and groaning—and these very tears are a delight to them;

and they have also fear in joy and exultation.

And thus they are like men carrying their own blood in their hands, not trusting in themselves or supposing themselves to be something, but being despised and rejected before all men.

Just as if there were a king and he should entrust his treasure to some poor man;

the one who received it to guard does not have it as his own, but always confesses his poverty, not daring to scatter from the treasure that belongs to another.

For he always considers this, that not only is the treasure another's, but a mighty king entrusted it to me and takes it from me whenever he wills—so also those who have the grace of God ought to consider themselves, to be humble-minded and to confess their poverty.

For just as the poor man who received the deposit of treasure from the king, if, trusting in another's treasure as his own wealth, he is lifted up and his heart takes on conceit, the king takes from him his treasure, and he who had it on deposit remains as poor as he was before—so also those who have grace, if their hearts are lifted up and take on conceit, the Lord takes from them His grace, and they remain such as they were before they received the grace from the Lord.

But many, although grace is present, are robbed by sin and do not know it.

Just as if there were a young woman in some house, and likewise a young man;

and then, being flattered by him, she consents to him, commits adultery and becomes an outcast—so also the dread serpent of sin is present with the soul, titillating and inciting it, and if it consents, the incorporeal soul has communion with the incorporeal wickedness of the spirit, that is, spirit has communion with spirit, and he who consents to and accepts the thought of the evil one commits adultery in his heart.

The measure of your struggle, then, is this: that you do not commit adultery in your thoughts, but that you withstand the mind and make war and struggle within, and do not obey or take pleasure with evil in your thoughts.

And if the Lord finds this preparation in you, in the last day He takes you up into His kingdom.

For there are certain things which the Lord arranges, that He may not leave Himself without witness of His divine grace and His calling;

and there are certain things which He thus arranges by permission, that the person may be tested and trained, that the free will of the person may be demonstrated.

For those who are in afflictions and trials, if they endure, do not fail of the kingdom of heaven.

Christians, then, in grievous matters are not vexed or grieved.

If they are tried in poverty or hardship, they ought not to be astonished, but rather to take pleasure in poverty and to regard it in place of wealth, fasting in place of luxury, dishonor and ignominy in place of glory;

but to flee [from glory] as from fire.

In the visible realm, if some little nation is stirred up to war against the king, he does not toil at warring himself, but sends soldiers with their commanders, and they make the war;

but if the nation that is stirred up is a very great one, able to sack his kingdom, the king himself is compelled to go forth with those in the palace and his armies and to wage the war.

Behold, then, your worth, that God was stirred up with His own army—the angels, I mean, and the holy spirits—coming Himself on your embassy, that He might redeem you from death.

Make yourself secure, then, and consider what providence has come about for your sake.

We have used an example from daily life, as in ordinary living.

Just as if there were a king and he should find someone needy who has diseases, and not be ashamed of him, but heal his wounds with curative remedies and carry him into his own palace and clothe him with the purple and the diadem and make him a sharer of his table—so also the heavenly King, Christ, coming to the person who had diseases, healed him and made him a sharer of His royal table, and this not forcing his will, but exhorting him, He establishes him in such honor.

For it is also written in the Gospel that the Lord sent His own servants, calling those who were willing, declaring to them that the dinner was prepared;

but those who were called excused themselves, saying—one, I have bought yokes of oxen; another, I have married a wife.

You see that the inviter is ready, but those who were called refused.

Surely they became the cause of their own loss.

So great, then, is the worth of Christians.

See that the Lord has prepared the kingdom for them and calls them to enter, but they are not willing.

With regard, then, to the gift which they are to inherit (this one might say), if each one, from the time Adam was created until the consummation of the world, were warring against Satan and enduring the afflictions, he would do nothing great in relation to the glory which he is to inherit;

for he reigns together with Christ unto the boundless ages.

Glory to Him who thus loved such a soul, that He gave and entrusted Himself and His grace to the soul.

According to the things that appear, behold, all we brothers sitting here have one image and one face of Adam.

But is there also in the hidden and innermost things one will of all and one heart? Are we all one, good and godly? Or are there some of us, that some commune with Christ and His angels, but others with Satan and the demons, and all, appearing as one, sit together, all having one face of Adam? You see how the intellectual substance, the inner man, is something other than the outer.

For we all appear as one;

and some are with Christ and the angels, but others with Satan and the unclean spirits.

If, then, the heart has a certain boundless depth, there are dining rooms and bedchambers, doors and porches, and many ministries and passages;

there is the workshop of righteousness and of unrighteousness, there is death, there is life, there is the good commerce and the contrary.

Just as if there were a great palace and this were laid waste and filled with all foulness and many corpses, so also the palace of Christ, the heart, is full of all uncleanness and crowds of many wicked spirits.

It is necessary, then, that this be rebuilt and reconstructed and that the storerooms and the chambers be made ready;

for there the King Christ comes with the angels and the holy spirits to rest and dwell and walk about and set up His own kingdom.

[There He sets] the mind as pilot, the conscience as accuser, thoughts that accuse and defend;

among one another the thoughts accusing or even defending.

You see that the conscience does not hide such thoughts that obey sin, but immediately convicts;

for what shall it say before God? In the day of judgment it bears witness, as one always convicting.

Just as if there were a chariot and reins, the animals and all the equipment are under one charioteer;

then, when he wills, the chariot is borne along with swiftest impulse, and when he wills, he holds it back;

again, wherever he wills to turn it, there it goes with him;

the whole chariot, then, lies in the authority of the charioteer—so also the heart has many natural thoughts bound up with it, and the mind and the conscience are there, rebuking and directing the heart and rousing the natural thoughts welling up in the heart.

For the soul has many members, though it is one.

For from the time Adam transgressed the commandment, the serpent, having entered in, became master of the house and is as another soul together with the soul.

Everyone who does not deny himself and does not hate his own soul is not My disciple; and:

He who loves his soul shall lose it.

For sin, having entered into the soul, became a member of it and is glued to the very bodily man, and many unclean thoughts well up in the heart.

He, then, who does the wills of his soul does the wills of the heart, since it is intertwined and mingled with the soul.

He, then, who subdues his own soul and is angry with himself and with the desires that are present with him, this one is as one subduing a city of his enemies, and this one is counted worthy to come into the good measures of the Spirit and receives, through the divine power, the pure man and becomes greater than himself;

for such a one is henceforth deified and becomes a son of God, receiving the heavenly sign in his soul.

For His elect are anointed with the oil of sanctification and become dignitaries and kings.

For human nature is such that even one who is in the depths of evil and a slave to sin has the power to turn toward the good;

and likewise one who is bound to the Holy Spirit and intoxicated with heavenly things has the power to turn toward evil.

Just as if a woman clothed in rags, starving and filthy, should after much toil attain to royal dignity, put on the purple and the crown, and become the bride of a king: she remembers her former squalor and may have the wish to return to her old state, yet she does not choose to go back to her former shame;

so also those who have tasted the grace of God and become partakers of the Spirit, if they are not on their guard, are quenched and become worse than they were when they were worldly.

Not that God is changeable or weak, nor that the Spirit is quenched, but the people themselves do not act in harmony with grace;

for this reason they are turned aside and fall into countless evils.

For those who have tasted that gift have both states present in them together: joy and consolation, fear and trembling, gladness and mourning;

for they mourn for themselves and for all Adam, since the nature of human beings is one.

And the tears of such people are bread, and their mourning is sweetness and rest.

But if you see someone puffed up and conceited as though he were a partaker of grace, even if he should work signs and raise the dead, yet does not hold his soul as worthless and despised, and is not poor in spirit and abominable in his own eyes, he is robbed by evil and does not know it; and even if he works signs, he is not to be believed;

for the mark of Christianity is this: that one who is truly approved of God should strive to remain hidden from people;

[saying:] 'He has entrusted this treasure to me, for I am poor, and whenever He wills, He takes it back from me.'

But whoever says, 'I am rich, it is enough, I have acquired it, I no longer have need,' such a one is not a Christian, but is a vessel of error and of the devil;

for the enjoyment of God is insatiable, and the more one tastes and eats of Him, the more hungry one becomes.

And such people have an uncontrollable burning and love toward God;

and the more they strive to advance and to gain, the more they regard themselves as poor, as destitute and possessing nothing.

For they say this: 'I am not worthy that this sun should shine upon me.'

This is the mark of Christianity; this is humility.

But if anyone says, 'I am content and have been filled,' this one is a deceiver and a liar.

Just as the body of the Lord was glorified when He went up onto the mountain and was transfigured into the divine glory and into the boundless light, so also the bodies of the saints are glorified and shine forth.

For as the glory of Christ, being within, was spread over His body and shone forth, in the same way the power of Christ that is within the saints will, on that Day, overflow outwardly into their bodies.

For even from now they partake of His very essence and nature in their mind.

'For both He that sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one'; and:

'The glory which You gave Me I have given to them.'

Just as from one fire many lamps are kindled, so too the bodies of the saints, being members of Christ, must necessarily become the very thing that Christ is.

Question: How do Christians become higher than the first Adam? For he was immortal, incorruptible in both soul and body,

whereas they die and are corrupted.

Answer: The true death is within, in the heart, and it is hidden, and the inner man is put to death.

If anyone, then, has passed over from death to life according to that which is hidden, this one truly lives forever and does not die.

But even if the bodies of such people are dissolved for a time, they are raised again in glory;

and therefore we call the death of Christians a sleep and a falling-asleep.

But if a person were immortal and incorruptible also in body, the whole world, seeing the marvel of the thing—that the bodies of Christians do not decay—would then come to the good by some necessity and not by free will.

But in order that free will, which God gave to man from the beginning, might be displayed once for all and might endure, for this reason matters are providentially ordered and the dissolution of bodies takes place, so that it may rest in the will of man to turn himself either to good or to evil.

For neither is the one who is perfected in evil and deep in sin, and has made himself a vessel of the devil—by whom he is wholly dominated—bound by any necessity, but he has the freedom to become a vessel of election and of life.

Likewise again, those who are intoxicated in the Godhead, although they are filled and bound to the Holy Spirit, are not held fast by any necessity, but have free will to turn and to do whatever they wish in this age.

Question: Is evil refined and rooted out little by little, and does one advance in grace; or, if one is granted a visitation, is the evil at once rooted out? Answer: Just as the embryo in the womb is not at once formed into a man, but becomes an image little by little and is born, and yet is not yet a perfect man, but grows over many years and becomes a man;

and just as the seeds of barley or wheat, when cast into the earth, do not at once take root, but winters and winds pass by, and only then in due season do the ears come; and the one who plants a pear tree does not at once partake of its fruit—so also in spiritual things (where there is such great wisdom and subtlety) a person grows little by little and comes to be a perfect man, unto the measure of stature, not as some say;

[As a pupil first] learns his letters, and when he becomes first there, he goes off to the school of Latin and is the very last of all;

again, when he becomes first there, he goes off to the school of the grammarians and is once more the very last of all, a beginner;

then, when he becomes an advanced student, he is a beginner and the last of all the advocates;

again, when he becomes first there, then he becomes a governor;

and when he becomes a magistrate, he takes to himself an assessor as a helper.

If, then, things visible have so many stages of advancement, how much more do the heavenly mysteries have stages and grow through many degrees!

And then, through much exercise and many trials, the one who escapes through becomes perfect.

For the Christians who have truly tasted grace and who bear the sign of the cross in mind and heart—these, from kings down to the poor, count all things as dung and stench; and these are able to know that the whole earthly world and the treasures of the king and wealth and glory and the words of wisdom are in a kind of fantasy, having no firm foundation, but passing away.

And whatever is under heaven is contemptible to them.

Why? Because the things above the heavens are strange and wondrous—things that consist neither in the treasures of kings nor in the wisdom of words nor in worldly glory and dignities or such wealth as those people acquired—for they have the Lord and Creator of all in the inmost man, a possession that does not pass away but abides.

For Christians know the soul to be precious above all created things;

for man alone was made according to the image and likeness of God.

Behold, how exceedingly vast is the heaven and the earth, and the creatures in them are precious and great are their furnishings;

yet man is more precious than all these furnishings, since the Lord took pleasure in him alone; and the sea-monsters and the mountains and the wild beasts are, in appearance, greater than man.

Behold, then, your dignity—how precious you are!

For God made you higher than the angels, since He Himself, in His own person, came upon the earth for your intercession and redemption.

God, therefore, and the angels came for your salvation.

For the King, the Son of the King, took counsel with His Father, and the Word was sent forth, and clothing Himself with flesh and hiding His own Godhead, that through like He might save like, He laid down His life upon the cross.

So great is the love of God toward man;

the Immortal One chose to be crucified for your sake.

Behold, then, how God loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son for them;

'How shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?' And again He says in another place:

'Truly I say to you, He will set him over all His possessions.'

And He shows in another place too that the angels are ministers of the saints.

For when Elisha was on the mountain and the foreigners came against him, the servant said:

'Many are coming against us, and we are alone';

[and Elisha said:] 'Do you not see the camps and multitudes of angels round about us, helping us? Do you see that the Master and the multitudes of angels are present with His servants?'

How great, then, is the soul, and how honored by God, since both God and the angels seek it for their own fellowship and for the kingdom;

but Satan and his powers seek it for their own part.

For just as among visible things the king is not served by base men, but by comely and well-trained ones, so also in the heavenly palace those serve the heavenly King who are blameless, irreproachable, and pure in heart.

And just as in the palace the comely maidens who have no blemish, the most beautiful, go to the fellowship of kings, so also in the spiritual realm:

souls adorned with all good ways, these have fellowship with the heavenly King.

And [as] when it happens that some house has some impurity, it is set in order and much adornment is made and fragrances are poured out—how much more does the house of the soul, in which the Lord rests, need much adorning, that the spotless and blameless One may be able to enter there and find rest;

for in such a heart God and the whole heavenly Church find their rest.

Among visible things, if a father has possessions, and also has diadems and precious stones, he hides these away in store-rooms and reserves them for his beloved son, and gives them to him;

so also God has entrusted His own possession, together with His own precious things, to the soul.